h a l f b a k e r yRight twice a day.
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I divide workout devices into two categories : those with delayed feedback, and those with instant feedback.
The delayed feedback ones may take a month before you get even a glimpse of those wash-board abs - even if you put in top effort.
The
instant-feedback devices however, tell you instantly that you've made some progress, even if it's a very small amount.
Significantiy they've been around for a long time.
The treadmill with distance and speed readout is the best example, often noisy and always requiring a power-supply, but seldom if ever ending up in the junk.
The next best ezample is the exercycle, which with its instant speed and distance readout has been continuously popular for several generations.
But these two are outside the $39.99 range, so I set myself the task of halfbaking a series of cheap workout devices wuth built-in feedback.
I've chosen the pump and the tank as the model because a visibly filling tank can cheaply give instant information of work done. especially with a timer added.
In former days I'd be in the workshop by now making prototype I, of many, probably using car parts, and plastic bits and pieces.
I made many mythical millions in that workshop.
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Instant feedback or not, exercycles and treadmills
bore me to pieces. Give me something to chase, a storyline, music to dance to, not some stupid dial. |
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Treadmills don't always require a power supply. The YMCA summer camp I was crammed into one childhood year had non-motorized ones.<I got into the weight area and leg-lifted 600 pounds at 13...I was a big kid...> You step on the higher part and gravity pulls you downward, moving the belt. |
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Like Jutta says, if they weren't so mind-numbingly boring more people would likely use exercise devices. |
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I agree about the boredom but in trade and exchange publications treadmills and exercyles are common currency and have been for generations whereas infomercial novelties seldom appear. |
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Why, I wanted to know, and concluded, was that instancy, not quality of feedback, was the reason. |
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Many of the comments in the 'Bakery bore many of us no doubt, including this one, but we keep coming back for more, addictively, because of the ... instancy of feedback. |
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Chat-rooms provide i/f too but without the elegant and unique self-disciplinary infrastructure of the Halfbakery. |
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u could go 4 a walk or a run
in the sunshine or with a friend , just an idea |
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Have you noticed that most animals of of the wild seemingly have no exercise contraptions at their disposal but manage to stay rather fit nonetheless. I wonder how they pull that off? |
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I agree with Jutta - I find real bicycles a lot more fun than exercise bicycles. My bicycle has an odometer which is a nice form of feedback (Hmm! 3000 miles/year commuting - alas no longer. I now take the train...). |
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