This morning from my gym on 60th St. overlooking Columbus Circle I saw that there were a few tents on the Central Park side set up. That particular side of the park is quite beautiful and is usually a hot spot for buskers of all kinds: There are Pedicab hawkers, horse drawn carriage rides, those acrobat guys, and occaisaonally these tent people.

Today it happened to be Wii people showing off the newest addition to Nintendo’s home gaming system phenom the Wii. It is called Wii Fit and it is a bit misleading as one would think that it is a device meant to get you in shape which it will not. However it can play a role in your fitness development if you use it correctly.

I am glad I found this review of the Wii Fit system online at one of my favorite gadget blogs as it is written well, and is a fair assessment.

Actually it is better than I could have written so I have linked to it for you. If you are even remotely interested in getting your body into better shape AND you own the Wii then please read this review.

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After 10 years as a personal trainer I felt confident that I knew enough about how to get a person into the best shape of their life but not enough about the current state of fitness in America.

It certainly seems like we are in the middle of a near catastrophic decline in physical culture here. Despite radical advances in the technology of fitness we still only have about 14% of the population enrolled in a health club. But I wasn’t satisfied with just some numbers, I needed to find out firsthand what was going on with fitness in the good ol’ USA.

So I grabbed a camera and a mic and headed out to the annual Cub Industry East fitness trade show to talk with fitness entrepreneurs and other professionals to see…

What’s going on in Fitness?

What I found was that fitness technology has improved by leaps and bounds and some people are creating incredible changes in how we approach fitness, interact with fitness equipment, and develop stronger bodies.

And yet we still seem to be a nation with a steadily growing waistline, so I checked out the new fitness gear and asked around this gathering to see what people were experiencing in American physical culture in 2008.

Life Fitness is now taking orders on their new treadmill with integrated ipod dock. Sweet!

Especially as Apple rocks along with its continual product release cycle the way we are integrating our personal and portable media collection is playing a greater and greater role in our daily lives.

If you browse fitness or geek blogs almost anywhere online you will find that chief among internet people’s complaints about exercise is the boredom or lack of connectivity that working out imposes.

So geeks rejoice! Your days of being bored on a treadmill are over, with Life Fitness’ newest product The Platinum Club Treadmill

Life Fitness is currently taking orders for delivery by November 30th 2007 just in time for you to work off some of those extra Thanksgiving meal calories you love to eat so much.

Using a 15″ screen to access your ipod info is pretty sweet and will make watching any video you have stored there even sweeter. The treadmill also has a port for USB drive (which means you can get better tracking information) and it also has visual representation of the courses you are running on.

It ain’t cheap. But it is pretty cool.