It’s probably no surprise to you at all, since exercise equipment such as elliptical machines, treadmills and the like, are pretty high ticket items, with the economy the way it is now, that the amount of larger exercise equipment pieces that are being sold as gifts has been on the wane, not only last year, but so far this year too.

It used to be a much more popular gift, and even one of those gifts that you can give to your loved one that you live with, and you can enjoy the fruits of it as well! Ok, so maybe it’s a bit of a cheat to buy this sort of thing for your partner when you know you’re the one who really wanted it, but more and more couples these days are going in on one single gift to sort of “give to eachother” when it comes to bigger items.

I know several couples who do this type of thing. For example, if you’ve had your eye on some huge flat screen TV or maybe a nice new desktop computer, you can maybe make it a group gift to eachother instead of spending money on one another separately. It’s a great way to build a household of items that you really need and want, or both, without busting the bank in addition to buying gifts for the various holiday for eachother.

When you consider that large cardio exercise machines can range anywhere from $400 to over $1,000, it’s no wonder that these items have fallen slightly out of favor as gifts. It doesn’t mean that people don’t still want them, it just means that, as with a large amount of other consumer goods, we Americans have rearranged our priorities, and where once exercise machines may have been a priority, now more primitive things like food and shelter have become our focus since those things we have taken for granted are lost to so many now.

Also, one word on charity. It was awesome to see the place where I work come up with a goal-breaking number of coats in the Coats for Kids drive this year. I know that people aren’t making a lot of money this year, but for charities like that to still be raking in donations, I think, really speaks to the resilience and generous nature of Americans.

If you’ve been searching for some new gym quality fitness equipment, then right now is one of the best times of the year to start looking, especially online. There are some awesome deals on everything from weight sets and fitness accessories to recumbent exercise bikes and DVD’s of yoga workouts, cardio blasts, and plenty of other workout regimens.

You can even find some steals on elliptical machines, and you can get them shipped right to your house for free many times. I’ve found some great deals on some of my favorite machines around this time in years past, and I’m so glad that I really held out to shop during the Christmas season, because I ended up really making out.
You can get Shwinn recumbent bikes for as little as around $250, and they work really well, and you can get things like boxing gloves and upright boxing punch bags for something like 30 bucks.

That’s something I’ve still been eyeballing and just haven’t had the time or the funds to pursue yet with other priorities floating about that should come before that (like boring bills to pay, yada yada). Even at Best Buy, I saw some exercise DVD’s on sale, and also noticed that the new Jillian Michaels Wii fitness game was on sale.

I want to try that since we have the Wii gaming system, but I know thus far how we’ve been with the other fitness games we have, and we barely use it. I supposed I’m still just a straight DVD or home gym exerciser, and I’m not really used to these “new fangled” forms of exercise yet. Call me old fashioned (just don’t call me old). If you’re looking for yoga mats, or even pedometers, now’s the time to buy those too, or sometimes things like this go on sale at reduced prices after Christmas, since a lot of people get early starts on their inevitable New year’s resolutions to A.) lose weight and B.) get in shape.

Resistance bands, weights, and other accessories also go on sale at deeply reduced prices, so if you’ve been biding your time, waiting for the right opportunity to present itself to buy any of these normally fairly high ticket items, then now’s the time to get off the pot and buy!

Some people think that weight lifting is going to add weight on, but it actually helps you to lose weight and burn calories at a faster rate than if you were just flabby and had a lot of body fat. However, it is important that you still do cardio as well when you are doing your workout regimen, to maintain the actual calorie burning piece of the workout. The thing with lifting weights is that the actual weight lifting itself doesn’t burn tons of calories in and of itself, like cardio activity does, but when you build muscle mass, you actually burn calories at a higher, faster rate when you are sitting still, and that’s where you get your bang for the buck from weightlifting.

Not only do you have a better resting metabolism when you lift weights and build lean muscle mass, but you also will get a lot more comments on looking great because of the fact that lifting weights makes you look cut and buff. Just doing a lot of cardio will keep you thin, but it’s the weightlifting that will actually shape and sculpt your body, and get you noticed.

One trick to burning calories is that you can up the repetitions and keep the weight the same, and then bump up your weight in pounds, and bump up your reps again when that one actually gets too easy. This is a good way to get a good calorie burn in with your weight lifting repertoire. Not to mention, you can get ripped and sculpted doing it this way!

I love using lighter weights and lots of reps because I actually feel like I am doing some sort of lighter cardio, and I feel like I’m burning off some sort of stress – maybe it’s therapeutic, but it feels like I’m doing something that gets the anxiety out!

It is quite possible that with all of this economic turmoil that is occurring, and especially with many top economists predicting that it will continue into the new year and beyond, that we will be seeing some of the best deals on everything from electronics, to clothes and novelty items, to fitness equipment and even dieting and weightloss deals, that we’ve seen in a long time, or even in our lifetime.

Just browsing in our local Dick’s sports store in a nearby strip mall, I saw tons of deals on not only fitness equipment but also novelty games like shuffleboard sets, basement basketball hoop sets, air hocky tables and pool tables, to name a few. I saw kids playing with a lot of these sets, hoping for one from Santa, and witnessed at least one beaming parent who couldn’t believe the cheap prices that were set on these usually more expensive novelty items.

That’s the good news, the prices. However, the bad news is that there’s of course an underlying reason as to why these prices are so low, and that is that stores know that many people are hanging onto their money for dear life and aren’t spending as readily, perhaps because there was already a job loss in the family, or also because there may be some fear about oncoming job losses as well.

Some of the things you may be able to find at reduced prices, that are usually high ticket items, and of course will probably be marked down to their lowest in the days following Christmas since retailers want to get rid of excess inventory, are ellitpical machines, treadmills, recumbent bikes, weight sets and nautilus-type workout sets, rowing machines, stairmasters, weight benches and fitness accessories, and even the very clothes and shoes that you need to work out in.

Heck, I even found a good pair of Adidas cross trainer shoes a few weeks back before all the deep discounts hit the stores, and I ended up paying about thirty dollars for them because my boyfriend also bought a pair, and it was buy one get one half off, and the prices on the shoes were already significantly marked down from suggested retail. This was of course at an outlet style store, but still, that’s quite a nice deal for name brand tennis shoes!

So, if you have the disposable income and are lucky enough to not be sweating about bills right now, it’s a great chance to get fitness equipment at deep discounts.

Tony Little makes a new little stepper that is supposed to help sculpt the problem areas on women – their butts and thighs (aka saddle bags) away with using the piece of equipment regularly. Of course, anything that is reasonably priced that claims to help sculpt and tone these huge problem areas for me, I’m a sucker for, so I got online and purchased one, except I found that the reviews on that particular product were mixed, so I ended up going with something called a Body Slender machine that was very similar but looked more sturdily constructed and costs about $60 used.

I purchased mine off Amazon (go figure, I’m addicted to their great buys), and it happened that the person who was selling it lived right down the road from me practically, so she dropped it off in like two days, so on top of getting a good deal, I also didn’t have to pay for shipping which made me really happy!

It’s a very cool little contraption, and it’s small so you can grab it and pull it out if you’re feeling guilty about vegging in front of the tv all day and want to get a little physical activity in as well. It’s easy to do right in front of the tv actually. When you first step on the machine, it feels a bit awkward, and you do have to balance from side to side in order to get a good rhythm going. This is part of the exercise though, since forcing your body to balance requires specific muscle groups to do work, and this helps them to contract and sculpt themselves.

At first I thought it was fairly easy, but I was out of breath after about five minutes of doing it straight through. Now, I know I’ll build a better tolerance after doing it a few times, but I think it targeted different muscles than I’m used to and that contributed to my early fatigue. One note is that is it tough on carpet, so you definitely do want to get a workout mat to place it on.

Unlike other models of this machine, this one does not slip like many other people complained about with other stepper machines, it pretty much stayed put the whole time I was using it instead of scooching all the way across the mat the whole time. A good mat of course helped as well since it helped grip the metal bottoms in place. All in all, I like the machine, as far as results, I think I will definitely see results after I start using it consistently, judging from how it worked my butt and thighs those first few times.

I got my thigh rocker machine in the mail today. It’s basically the same thing as Tony Little’s Rock n Roll Stepper, but it’s supposed to be a little better quality and didn’t get as bad of reviews for rocking around on the floor too much and bunching up the mat below it. I bought it off Amazon (imagine that), and ended up getting free shipping because the seller happened to live only ten or so minutes away from me! I was pretty delighted with that as well.

Well, other than telling you I ordere it, there’s not much else to say about this machine, other than the fact that it is an easy machine that is supposed to target the butt and the thighs, which are two of my biggest genetic weaknesses and something that I’ve always struggled with whittling down throughout the years.

I’m hoping this rocker will be a simple yet effective machine to add to my workout regimen, which seems to be a getting a big stale at the moment. I will have a full review of this thigh rocker for you hopefully in just about a week. I want to make sure I have time to really try it out and figure out all the pros and cons of this little machine before I review it.

Since gyms today face competition from other public and pay gyms, and also from the ever increasing range of home fitness equipment like elliptical machines, treadmills and recumbent bikes as well as more sophisticated equipment, like pilates machines and weight machines that look like they belong in a professional gym, they are trying to offer more incentives to get your business. And who can blame them? T

hey’re a business too, and they also need to get people coming through the door, but why is it that some still only offer complementary fitness assessments and also tailoring a fitness routine for their clients – at no charge. What I mean is, get you a tailored fitness routine that fits your goals and lifestyle and weight loss and maintenance goals, without draining your wallet because you have to have a “personal trainer” do it for you.

I do know a lot of people who are huge fans of personal trainers because they say that a trainer not only motivates them to get off their butt and move (of course you have to get to the gym first to take advantage of this feature), but also because trainers show them different exercises all the time that get them out of the rutt they’ve inevitably trapped themselves in as well as to create that muscle confusion that is so important to getting and maintaining a sculpted set of muscles and keeping it.

If gyms would just give you a free consultation and show you what you can do though, and then maybe once a month or every two weeks, depensing on how often you happen to work out, maybe show you a set of different exercises to do to kick it up a notch and also to keep your muscles working up to the next level, that would be ideal and also a good money saver for those of us who don’t care to pay hundreds of dollars to get those personal training sessions a couple times a week.

I had to laugh when my sister asked me what was up with the crappy push up bars in our basement, and I told her that I thought they helped align you better to do a better pushup by elevating your body a little more off the ground and helping you to figure out which angle you wanted to do, whether you wanted to target your triceps or biceps, and how intense you wanted to make it.

Pushup bars are really the simplest looking devices. They are just a u-shaped bar, usually made of some sort of metal alloy that can support a couple hundred pounds since people are going to be putting the majority of their weight on them when using them for pushups, and ours has rubber on the top for easier gripping and increased comfort. I think ours is made by Gold’s gym or something like that, it’s some sort of gym I do know that!

The way I do it is align them up by my head, so that they are perpendicular, and then I go ahead and do my various pushups, including the target area for me, which is my triceps, where I tend to retain a lot of surface fat, which is common in women. Women need to be careful when targeting various parts of the arms though if they don’t want to end up looking bulky, so it’s important that they do make sure they are usually targeting the triceps specifically some of the time so that they aren’t always working the biceps, and making for an uneven look that isn’t really all that feminine.

In order to make sure you lose upper arm fat, you can’t really just put all the responsibility in your workout regimen, because you actually need to also watch what you eat and especially limit your fat intake, which will help burn fat in that area since you’re not adding more fat to be burned by the body first, and also since this will help you be better able to get rid of the body fat that you do have. Upper arm fat is especially stubborn on women, as are the hips, but if you really are consistent with getting in those good tricep workouts, and possibly also use a pushup bar as well, you will see results.

Remember seeing those ridiculous vibration belt contraptions that was the dubious piece of “gym equipment” that may have been in a few seventies and eighties gyms across the nation? I rememember actually using one of these vibration belt machines and feeling absolutely ridiculous, and wondering how anyone could possibly think these things, which require no movement other than you just standing there, actually work to burn calories or trim the waistline.

The vibration belt machines became somewhat of a joke, being dubbed the lazy man’s workout, and there was a reason for that. They were never really proven to do anything other than maybe give you the sensation of movement, they were never proven to burn calories or condition your cardiovascular system, so they were pretty much dismised by the fitness and well being world. Until now, where they have found their niche in being able to provide the human body some sort of benefit beyond just standing there and “feeling” like you’re getting a workout.

This time though, the vibration doesn’t come in the form of a vibrating cloth or rubber belt, but rather it comes in the form of a vibrating platform, which has already gained a bit of a following in high tech and expensive gyms for it’s claims that it can intensify the workout and also dramatically improve balance and coordination (those claims I don’t doubt).

It is now thought that the vibrating platform may have some beneficial applications in the quest to help sedentary, older adults keep their muscles and bones in working order, probably because it provides some sort of stimulation and circulation, without the person actually doing strenuous physical movement, which is the point in the older, possibly infirmed or unlikely to work out population.

Pilates is a newer practice that women are falling in love with for it’s notoriety as a long, lean muscle builder. Women who want a “dancer’s body” are flocking to studios that teach pilates, and it’s become an overnight sensation, although admittedly years ago now, in Hollywood where the body is everything and people are obsessed with staying lean and mean.

So, what is this machine that can help you do pilates? I thought that you could do pilates on your own, on the floor, and the exercises were very simple and could be done anywhere, without any machinery or accessories? Well, that is true, but as with everything else, there was a machine made to help you through the exercises, the pilates machine. Let’s talk about what it is and what it does.

What does a pilates machine look like? Well, it looks like (to me), sort of a rowing machine. It is long and flat, and looks like it could be stowed away fairly easily, although not all of them, I’m sure, are foldable or stowable. It has bands coming off of it, almost like a bowflex machine (which, by the way, is noted for creating that same long and lean look in mean and women), which I assume are used as a form of light resistance, just as you would be doing if just doing pilates on the floor by yourself, accept this is a more guided and precise way to make sure your movements are correct.

A good pilates machine will be quiet and have smooth rolling tracks, for a smooth, friction free workout that results in smooth muscle tone and long and lean muscles. Some pilates machines come with rebounders, which is like a small trampoline for a nice light little cardio workout before you begin the muscle workout on the machine. It’s best to get a book or DVD on what exercises to perform and how specifically to perform them on the pilates machine, so you’re not doing them incorreclty, but these often will come with the better models of the machine.