Does anyone have experience with buying treadmills? The one at my gym is about $1000, but I notice the machine can only handle about 15 mins of running. Is this normal? Are any of the cheaper models actually worth trying?
The problem with cheap ones is that they fall apart very quickly after a few months if you use them allot. I have a 3,000.00 one and have used it over 6 years without any problems it is a Life Fitness machine and I highly recommend it. It also goes up to about 20 degrees to make like your walking up a hill and you can vary the up and down movement to seem that your walking up and down hills and valleys.
Nah, this place is not busy at all. The motor trips and you can't reset it for about 5 mins. It's not a very good way to give others a chance.
5500 HR is the model I have but I'm certain they will have updated it by now. Here's a link to them. It has a 1 inch spring in the tread area so that when you walk fast it will "give" a little to absorb and cushion your impact. http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q...ls&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=ff&oi=froogler http://www.google.com/pagead/adclic...OqqUGwBEApTAAZoPEACCgpFsTZw_PAAAAAABAAA&num=4
Most stuff is built cheaply because Americans as a demographic group are fickle and don't retain their interest in anything they've got for long enough to see it wear out. That includes their marriages, educations, and in the case of the very rich, their corporations. It certainly applies to their exercise equipment. For every person you meet here (which of course is a very far from average sample of the population) who has used their treadmill religiously for many years, there are fifty Americans who have one with less than 100 miles on its odometer gathering dust in their basement. So if you want to get your money's worth, you've got to shell out more money. Buy the models you see in commercial fitness centers. They get a lot of use and the corporations that own them want to get their money's worth. We were lucky when we lived in L.A. Because of the film/tv industry, there are always a lot of props for sale cheap. When they film a scene in a gym they have to make it realistic, so they go out and buy $200,000 worth of the commercial-grade equipment you'd expect to see in a real gym. When the production is over they just let the prop department dispose of it and all they want to do is get rid of it quick, so they sell the whole lot wholesale to a retail store that now has some great equipment that cost them practially nothing. We got a $2,500 treadmill for $1,000. This was fifteen years ago, today it would be a $4,000 model. It worked for fifteen years, being used an average of four or five times a week, and finally crapped out. We got our money's worth out of it. We have an Aerobicycle that's a few years older, and it still runs like new. It cost $1,300 in 1982, We'd like to get a newer model with all the comfort and new ergonomic features, but we refuse to throw something away that isn't broken. We've also got a 1988 Jenn-Aire range, a 1982 Riccar microwave oven, and a 1978 diesel Mercedes that still work as good as new. You really do get what you pay for if you're careful. Find a machine you like in your local health club and buy one of those. Even if you have to go into debt. You'll come out ahead in the long run.
I have ran for an hour on my home machine with no troubles and 40-60mins on the gym treadmills with no problems. You should report that faulty treadmill. 15 mins is not even a warm up for some people.
Not sure why, but I could never get the feel of the elliptical. It just feels uncomfortable/unnatural.
