Joan Price: Save Your Bucks: Exercise Money-Wasters

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Our criteria for the Money-Wasters were simple: the machine or gadget doesn't do much; it especially doesn't do what it's supposed to do; and/or it allows you to do what you could do perfectly well without it. In general, any item that claims it "spot reduces" is pulling your leg, because spot reducing is a myth. Any machine that claims fat-burning or aerobic training but doesn't let you get in your higher-intensity heart rate range is also a loser.

Ab rollers. These hot sellers promise you perfect crunches. Well, duhhh -- you can do perfect crunches just as well on your own. In fact, you can do them better without the assistance, because rollers don't train the upper, lower and transverse abdominal muscles in the specific ways you can without the device, says Marc Evans, former U.S. triathlon team coach and author of Endurance Athlete's Edge (Human Kinetics, $20). That's because the roller assists the curl, taking away the activation of those specific muscles that would engage if you weren't hanging onto the bar. Plus it limits the variety of abdominal exercises you can do. Bottom line: learn good form and do it on your own.
ThighMaster. Much worse than the lowly adductor/abductor machines is this best-selling piece of plastic that promises inner thighs of a star. Raspberries also go to Bun Blaster, BunMaster and any and all press-this-flab-and-the-fat-will-go-away gimmicks and gizmos. You can't exercise one part of the body and expect to lose fat in that area. Repeat after me: There's no such thing as spot reducing!
Aerobic rider. Despite the inflated calorie-burning and full-body-workout claims, these riders only deliver if you're a beginner. In a study sponsored by the American Council on Exercise (ACE) and conducted by California State University at Northridge, aerobic-rider exercisers following manufacturers' guidelines burned only 50 percent or fewer calories than on a treadmill. Even when they pushed to the most strenuous workouts possible, the rider exercisers still burned about 25 percent fewer calories than on a treadmill. The only muscles consistently exercised on all brands were the hamstrings.
Aerobic glider. This gives you the delusion you're getting a workout. "You stand on it, your hips move back and forth," says Edmund R. Burke, Ph.D., sport scientist at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and former Olympic coach. The glider, one of the fitness industry's top-selling infomercial products, rates lower than walking for a fit exerciser. Researchers at California State University at Northridge found that moderately-fit males, ages 23 to 29, couldn't get their heart rates up over 155 bpm on these devices, no matter how much they exerted themselves. They should have been able to reach a heart rate of 194 bpm during a peak-performance test.

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