Mat has taken down his post about the "Little black box" that magically fixes production problems in the field (I wish I did have one of those). This is a good start. I really don't have a problem with Mat trashing my products. What I have a problem with is Mat lying about my products. If he actually tried the products out, opened them up, checked the design, component specs etc...and then gave an honest review, I would be happy.
What I would request of Mat "The hunting sensei" Nastos (really, same IP as treadmill Sensei! check it out: http://www.huntingsensei.com/ ) is that he remove the reviews he currently has up on his site for our new products, XE100, XE200, XE300, XE700, XT175. The reason is that he reviews and rates them, but he has never even been on them or looked internally at the design details. If and when he does actually evaluate one of them, then he can comment - honestly - all he wants.
Mat fabricated lies about the products in these reviews. He says:
1) He says the shorter units are repackaged XE125. Completely different design. It is the same as XE150, just shorter.
2) They have plastic flywheels. This from a man with 20 years experience...LOL.
3) The XE300 has a plastic rear shroud. It's steel! The only home use elliptical with steel shrouds
4) Stride length doesn't feel like 20 inches. It is 20 inches but Mat wouldn't know, he did not try the units at the show.
Mat's obvious bias this year is blatant. I would prefer that Mat just remove Spirit completely from his review site. He won't make money off us this year, so I don't know why he has us on there anyway..... except maybe to teach us a lesson on how he can bring us to our knees and show us that our views on Internet sales are wrong. I got news for you Mat, Spirit will grow double digits again this year.... without you.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Monday, September 24, 2007
Snews article
I would like to start with an apology. I have been informed that my posts here appear to be very emotional and a tad angry. I am not a professional journalist, just a humble fitness engineer. I am a native New Yorker who grew up on the streets and my upbringing has taught me to see things for what they really are and not through rose colored glasses. I am frank and honest and if I smell a rat - especially one who is trying to steal my cheese - I need to speak out. I admit my emotions may have gotten the better of me, but liars always have that effect on me. I will, however, keep my comments clinical in future posts.
I hope everyone saw the article that was posted on Snews today titled: “Will the real Treadmill Sensei please stand up?”. It seems I am not the only one calling Treadmill Sensei to the carpet. Read for yourself:
https://www.snewsnet.com/cgi-bin/snews/login.html?dest=09980&expire_message=&needed_group=Subscription
Some highlights:
"Until mid-September, there was a serious-looking, Samurai-like photo of a Japanese man on the home page and other locations. But that was removed on most pages. Turns out the man in the picture was Aaron Akagi, a comic book writing buddy of Nastos who is also a salesman at HomeGym Central. He accompanied Nastos to the IHRSA show in March 2007, Nastos told SNEWS®.
SNEWS®: “Did you introduce Aaron as the Sensei?
”Nastos: “Yup”
SNEWS®: Isn’t that lying?
Nastos: “Uh…yeah.”
"SNEWS® inquired why the Sensei feels it is OK to hide behind a veil because of a fear of having his livelihood damaged while writing reviews and comments that could potentially damage others’ livelihoods, such as dealers and others in the industry.
Nastos: “…I don’t know.”
SNEWS®: Why isn’t the Sensei taking the heat?
Nastos: “There is no answer, and I wish I had one.”
"SNEWS® View: For the record, Nastos has told SNEWS® we could visit the alleged Sensei’s “dojo” … if we sign an NDA. NDAs are however not something that a journalist would sign to visit a place of business that exists publicly. We will however be glad to pay it a visit. Nobody, including SNEWS®, says that Nastos can’t run a review website. There are certainly others out there with other problems and complaints about their review operations. This complaint, however, is two-fold: Not facing the music about what you write by claiming secrecy is bogus, and basing reviews on fees you get from affiliate programs is unethical. If Nastos wants to be truly upfront, he (and we too believe it is a Nastos-run site) would reveal on the home page that the site will alter products’ ratings based on whether he can earn money off them or not, as he wrote to Spirit in August. He would also come clean about who is behind the site and its reviews as well as his lack of experience in the industry and the fact that he considers the endeavor a game."
What can I say after that? Beautiful job!
I hope everyone saw the article that was posted on Snews today titled: “Will the real Treadmill Sensei please stand up?”. It seems I am not the only one calling Treadmill Sensei to the carpet. Read for yourself:
https://www.snewsnet.com/cgi-bin/snews/login.html?dest=09980&expire_message=&needed_group=Subscription
Some highlights:
"Until mid-September, there was a serious-looking, Samurai-like photo of a Japanese man on the home page and other locations. But that was removed on most pages. Turns out the man in the picture was Aaron Akagi, a comic book writing buddy of Nastos who is also a salesman at HomeGym Central. He accompanied Nastos to the IHRSA show in March 2007, Nastos told SNEWS®.
SNEWS®: “Did you introduce Aaron as the Sensei?
”Nastos: “Yup”
SNEWS®: Isn’t that lying?
Nastos: “Uh…yeah.”
"SNEWS® inquired why the Sensei feels it is OK to hide behind a veil because of a fear of having his livelihood damaged while writing reviews and comments that could potentially damage others’ livelihoods, such as dealers and others in the industry.
Nastos: “…I don’t know.”
SNEWS®: Why isn’t the Sensei taking the heat?
Nastos: “There is no answer, and I wish I had one.”
"SNEWS® View: For the record, Nastos has told SNEWS® we could visit the alleged Sensei’s “dojo” … if we sign an NDA. NDAs are however not something that a journalist would sign to visit a place of business that exists publicly. We will however be glad to pay it a visit. Nobody, including SNEWS®, says that Nastos can’t run a review website. There are certainly others out there with other problems and complaints about their review operations. This complaint, however, is two-fold: Not facing the music about what you write by claiming secrecy is bogus, and basing reviews on fees you get from affiliate programs is unethical. If Nastos wants to be truly upfront, he (and we too believe it is a Nastos-run site) would reveal on the home page that the site will alter products’ ratings based on whether he can earn money off them or not, as he wrote to Spirit in August. He would also come clean about who is behind the site and its reviews as well as his lack of experience in the industry and the fact that he considers the endeavor a game."
What can I say after that? Beautiful job!
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Hey Mat, I hope you have a good lawyer
In his latest entry on his faux review site, Mat "comic book boy" Nastos has posted a complete fabrication of the facts about Spirit fitness. He has done this knowingly because I had already had an email exchange with him concerning the test boxes I designed for our dealers. He has also read about it here on my blog...he can't hide his IP address, he's not that clever. He decided to completely ignore the facts and post a deliberate lie because he is a petty little boy who lived in a comic book fantasy world for way too long.
This man-boy is now telling the consumers that Spirit is knowingly shipping bad products and that we hope to fix them later with a "little black box"!? Oy vey, talk about not being Kosher (is Mat Jewish now? I thought he was Japanese?) If this doesn't expose him for the fraud he is, I don't know what will. First off, he continues his charade of the Japanese fitness equipment expert character he created...like one of his comic book super heroes. Then he proves he knows nothing of treadmill design, production or customer service by thinking that a simple issue like a wiring problem could not be easily addressed in the factory, and we are willing to spend untold thousands of dollars in labor claims and building "little black boxes" to somehow magically fix said wiring problem after we ship them. Hey Mat, this isn't your fantasy world of comics...this is the real world of engineering manufacturing, quality control and customer service; all of which you know nothing about. There are no magical "little black boxes" that fix problems, except maybe in the comics.
Here is what Comic book boy writes:
"Unfortunately, the wiring problem seen most often in the Spirit Z88 treadmills this past year has continued and units with that problem (which causes unresponsiveness in the treadmill) will still be shipped out by the manufacturer in the upcoming year. Now, instead of going back to the drawing board and fixing the issue before problem units make it in to the hands of customers, Spirit has designed a testing box (the aforementioned "little black box") that will be shipped out in advance to retailers to help them figure out what is wrong AFTER a customer has received the unit. I don't know about you but that sounds more than a little shady to us...in our opinion, anyway."
What Mat fails to realize - because he's not that bright - is that the Z88 treadmill is a very mature design that had been sold for 3 years in the international market before Sole picked it up 2 years ago, and has been selling it successfully as the F63. That's right, the Z88 with all the "wiring problems" is the F63 in a different color. There are no wiring problems except in Mat's fantasy world. The wiring has not changed in 5 years and there are absolutely no quality issues with this product. Mat Nastos should know this better than anyone because he gave the F63 a best buy award and just fell all over himself praising it!
Mat Nastos then goes on to say this:
"The box was demonstrated to us at the Denver show by a very nice Spirit fitness tech by, I believe, the name of Jeremy (I could be wrong about his name). It seems the head designer, a gentleman also responsible for the engineering of the recalled XE125 ellipticals by the name of Brian Murray, wasn't able to solve the problem so the executive decision to go ahead and ship problem units any way was made. This is hugely disappointing to learn, especially after Spirit's design flaws also caused customers to be shipped faulty Spirit Z700 treadmills last year (if you purchased a Z700 last year and wondered why the consoles were so blurry and unreadable, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about). That problem was also known well in advance of shipment and units were sold without Spirit warning either customers or its retailers.Two different units being shipped with problems known in advance AND a major recall? Not a good sign for a struggling manufacturer."
He basically writes that I am an idiot, who, after 25 years as an engineer in fitness, and 5 previous years as an engineer in military electronics, couldn't figure out a wiring problem. This coming from a man who writes comic books. Mat completely fabricated this fantasy problem and once again proves he knows nothing about the technical workings of a treadmill. If indeed he had 20 years experience fixing treadmills, he'd know that there are no magical "Black boxes" that fix problems. This guy is completely clueless!
If he was a real fitness expert and wanted to know about our new products, he would have spoken to the head designer at the show. I was there...Treadmilldoctor spoke with me at length about product. The only thing Mat did at the show was waddle from booth to booth and talk to salesmen about their internet plans this year. If his presence at our booth was any indication, he didn't even try any equipment at the show. At our booth he stood in the aisle talking to one of our salesmen the whole time. He never got on any of the products!
I will take the blame for the XE125 problems (although they were not design problems and they were not discovered until they were already in the field) but I will add, that as a responsible company, we decided to recall those products instead of continuing to ship them to customers, unlike some of our competitors who keep shipping until the government forces a recall. He is correct in stating the Z700 had an overlay that made the LEDs appear slightly fuzzy (still readable and fully functioning). But he is wrong about the timing because the Z700 has not been built for over 2 years and the fuzzy overlays were only on the very first production run of 300 treadmills, 3 years ago!
I have documented here in my previous blogs why Mat is on this "stick it to Spirit" rampage. We told him in Denver that he won't be getting an undeserved slice of the Spirit pie this year. You see, Mat Nastos is a parasite who lives off others hard work; he creates nothing! Up to now his whole life has been a fantasy and now he finds himself a 34 year old washed up comic book artist with a new wife and baby he needs to support.
I hope you know a good lawyer Comic Boy! You are going to need one very soon.
P.S. Has anyone else noticed that he removed a bunch of reviews from his site today? He had a Horizon review he just put up Friday that is gone and all the other posts he had up are gone going back to August 3rd. Good thing I saved them all!
***Edited to add***
It looks like Mat re-posted what he removed over the weekend. I am checking it against what he had up previously and will get back to you if I find major discrepancies.
This man-boy is now telling the consumers that Spirit is knowingly shipping bad products and that we hope to fix them later with a "little black box"!? Oy vey, talk about not being Kosher (is Mat Jewish now? I thought he was Japanese?) If this doesn't expose him for the fraud he is, I don't know what will. First off, he continues his charade of the Japanese fitness equipment expert character he created...like one of his comic book super heroes. Then he proves he knows nothing of treadmill design, production or customer service by thinking that a simple issue like a wiring problem could not be easily addressed in the factory, and we are willing to spend untold thousands of dollars in labor claims and building "little black boxes" to somehow magically fix said wiring problem after we ship them. Hey Mat, this isn't your fantasy world of comics...this is the real world of engineering manufacturing, quality control and customer service; all of which you know nothing about. There are no magical "little black boxes" that fix problems, except maybe in the comics.
Here is what Comic book boy writes:
"Unfortunately, the wiring problem seen most often in the Spirit Z88 treadmills this past year has continued and units with that problem (which causes unresponsiveness in the treadmill) will still be shipped out by the manufacturer in the upcoming year. Now, instead of going back to the drawing board and fixing the issue before problem units make it in to the hands of customers, Spirit has designed a testing box (the aforementioned "little black box") that will be shipped out in advance to retailers to help them figure out what is wrong AFTER a customer has received the unit. I don't know about you but that sounds more than a little shady to us...in our opinion, anyway."
What Mat fails to realize - because he's not that bright - is that the Z88 treadmill is a very mature design that had been sold for 3 years in the international market before Sole picked it up 2 years ago, and has been selling it successfully as the F63. That's right, the Z88 with all the "wiring problems" is the F63 in a different color. There are no wiring problems except in Mat's fantasy world. The wiring has not changed in 5 years and there are absolutely no quality issues with this product. Mat Nastos should know this better than anyone because he gave the F63 a best buy award and just fell all over himself praising it!
Mat Nastos then goes on to say this:
"The box was demonstrated to us at the Denver show by a very nice Spirit fitness tech by, I believe, the name of Jeremy (I could be wrong about his name). It seems the head designer, a gentleman also responsible for the engineering of the recalled XE125 ellipticals by the name of Brian Murray, wasn't able to solve the problem so the executive decision to go ahead and ship problem units any way was made. This is hugely disappointing to learn, especially after Spirit's design flaws also caused customers to be shipped faulty Spirit Z700 treadmills last year (if you purchased a Z700 last year and wondered why the consoles were so blurry and unreadable, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about). That problem was also known well in advance of shipment and units were sold without Spirit warning either customers or its retailers.Two different units being shipped with problems known in advance AND a major recall? Not a good sign for a struggling manufacturer."
He basically writes that I am an idiot, who, after 25 years as an engineer in fitness, and 5 previous years as an engineer in military electronics, couldn't figure out a wiring problem. This coming from a man who writes comic books. Mat completely fabricated this fantasy problem and once again proves he knows nothing about the technical workings of a treadmill. If indeed he had 20 years experience fixing treadmills, he'd know that there are no magical "Black boxes" that fix problems. This guy is completely clueless!
If he was a real fitness expert and wanted to know about our new products, he would have spoken to the head designer at the show. I was there...Treadmilldoctor spoke with me at length about product. The only thing Mat did at the show was waddle from booth to booth and talk to salesmen about their internet plans this year. If his presence at our booth was any indication, he didn't even try any equipment at the show. At our booth he stood in the aisle talking to one of our salesmen the whole time. He never got on any of the products!
I will take the blame for the XE125 problems (although they were not design problems and they were not discovered until they were already in the field) but I will add, that as a responsible company, we decided to recall those products instead of continuing to ship them to customers, unlike some of our competitors who keep shipping until the government forces a recall. He is correct in stating the Z700 had an overlay that made the LEDs appear slightly fuzzy (still readable and fully functioning). But he is wrong about the timing because the Z700 has not been built for over 2 years and the fuzzy overlays were only on the very first production run of 300 treadmills, 3 years ago!
I have documented here in my previous blogs why Mat is on this "stick it to Spirit" rampage. We told him in Denver that he won't be getting an undeserved slice of the Spirit pie this year. You see, Mat Nastos is a parasite who lives off others hard work; he creates nothing! Up to now his whole life has been a fantasy and now he finds himself a 34 year old washed up comic book artist with a new wife and baby he needs to support.
I hope you know a good lawyer Comic Boy! You are going to need one very soon.
P.S. Has anyone else noticed that he removed a bunch of reviews from his site today? He had a Horizon review he just put up Friday that is gone and all the other posts he had up are gone going back to August 3rd. Good thing I saved them all!
***Edited to add***
It looks like Mat re-posted what he removed over the weekend. I am checking it against what he had up previously and will get back to you if I find major discrepancies.
Friday, September 21, 2007
What's up with this?
I have a lot more on Comic Sensei which I'll post over the weekend. In the mean time I just learned of another review site from one of my readers that at first seems like it might be legitimate, but then I just scratched a little bit and now I am not sure about them. The site is:
http://whenrunninginplace.com/index.php
I sort of like the premise; they say they look at all the review sites online, then average all the reviews to come out with their scores.
Then I did a quick search and found they created this site August 3rd, 2007 and their site is hosted in Arizona by godaddy.com. Their IP comes back to a Chicago location and their mailing address is a PO box in San Diego, care of a company called 4morehits.com which comes back to a Washington State address. Then when I research 4morehits.com it comes back to godaddy.com again.... which by the way is also Comic Boys host...Seems they don't want to be found. This is real confusing stuff...Why would a legitimate site not give a clear indication of who they are? I guess I'm getting old, but I always want to know who I'm talking to before I believe what I'm being told. From their site:
ABOUT US
"When Running was created to help people like you get an objective view on all the reviews written about treadmills and ellipticals ........"
Doesn't it seem that all these review sites start out with the same BS? They just want to HELP YOU...if I was a consumer looking for info and read that opening line, I would question WHY? I read the whole section "About us" and never learned anything about who they are or what qualifications they have. Take a look below and look at their site....leave a comment letting me know what you think about these guys:
From When running's FAQ
6) How do I contact When Running?
You can contact When Running by either clicking on the About Us tab and sending us a message, or sending us via mail at the following address. 4MoreHits.com, LLC, Attn: When Running, PO BOX 34515, San Diego, CA, 92163
==================================
When I search 4morehits.com I get this:
Contact Info
Owner 4MORE Hits.com, Inc.
Email info@4morehits.com
Phone +1 425 483 6815
Address WoodinvilleWA 98072USA
==================================
When I look up whenrunninginplace.com I get this information:
Domain Name: whenrunninginplace.com
Status: ok
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
OrgName: GoDaddy.com, Inc.
OrgID: GODAD
Address: 14455 N Hayden Road
Address: Suite 226
City: Scottsdale
StateProv: AZ
PostalCode: 85260
Country: US
Expiration Date: 2008-08-03
Creation Date: 2007-08-03
Last Update Date: 2007-08-03
Name Servers: ns35.domaincontrol.com ns36.domaincontrol.com
Extended Info
IP Address: 208.109.14.76
Website Status: active
Server Type: ApacheCache
Date: 2007-09-21 05:01:44
=======================================================
When I look up whenrunninginplace.com IP address I get this:
Address to locate: 208.109.14.76
Country Code: US
Country: United States
Region Code: USIL
Region: Illinois
City Code: USILCHIC
City: Chicago
http://whenrunninginplace.com/index.php
I sort of like the premise; they say they look at all the review sites online, then average all the reviews to come out with their scores.
Then I did a quick search and found they created this site August 3rd, 2007 and their site is hosted in Arizona by godaddy.com. Their IP comes back to a Chicago location and their mailing address is a PO box in San Diego, care of a company called 4morehits.com which comes back to a Washington State address. Then when I research 4morehits.com it comes back to godaddy.com again.... which by the way is also Comic Boys host...Seems they don't want to be found. This is real confusing stuff...Why would a legitimate site not give a clear indication of who they are? I guess I'm getting old, but I always want to know who I'm talking to before I believe what I'm being told. From their site:
ABOUT US
"When Running was created to help people like you get an objective view on all the reviews written about treadmills and ellipticals ........"
Doesn't it seem that all these review sites start out with the same BS? They just want to HELP YOU...if I was a consumer looking for info and read that opening line, I would question WHY? I read the whole section "About us" and never learned anything about who they are or what qualifications they have. Take a look below and look at their site....leave a comment letting me know what you think about these guys:
From When running's FAQ
6) How do I contact When Running?
You can contact When Running by either clicking on the About Us tab and sending us a message, or sending us via mail at the following address. 4MoreHits.com, LLC, Attn: When Running, PO BOX 34515, San Diego, CA, 92163
==================================
When I search 4morehits.com I get this:
Contact Info
Owner 4MORE Hits.com, Inc.
Email info@4morehits.com
Phone +1 425 483 6815
Address WoodinvilleWA 98072USA
==================================
When I look up whenrunninginplace.com I get this information:
Domain Name: whenrunninginplace.com
Status: ok
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
OrgName: GoDaddy.com, Inc.
OrgID: GODAD
Address: 14455 N Hayden Road
Address: Suite 226
City: Scottsdale
StateProv: AZ
PostalCode: 85260
Country: US
Expiration Date: 2008-08-03
Creation Date: 2007-08-03
Last Update Date: 2007-08-03
Name Servers: ns35.domaincontrol.com ns36.domaincontrol.com
Extended Info
IP Address: 208.109.14.76
Website Status: active
Server Type: ApacheCache
Date: 2007-09-21 05:01:44
=======================================================
When I look up whenrunninginplace.com IP address I get this:
Address to locate: 208.109.14.76
Country Code: US
Country: United States
Region Code: USIL
Region: Illinois
City Code: USILCHIC
City: Chicago
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Treadmill reviews XT200 elliptical reviews XE100
My blog is currently educating consumers about scam artists on the Internet who pass themselves off as experts who only want to help everyone avoid buying poor quality fitness equipment. On such gentleman is:
http//treadmillsensei.com
His site reviews products and rates them to help guide you to the "good stuff". The site looks genuine enough...it seems to be a guy who knows what he's talking about, 20 years in the business, has a repair shop he calls the "Dojo"...etc, etc...He claims to do this to help consumers because there is so much bad information and so many scammers on the Internet, and he's come to be your guide to fitness...or "Sensei" as he refers to himself.
The problem is that none of what is on his site is true. There is no Dojo, no expert with 20 years experience, nothing but a struggling comic book artist (Mat Nastos) in S. California, at home with his computer. He has scant little knowledge of fitness equipment, as he claims, and he's not Asian either. He has a connection with treadmillcentral.com, an Internet retailer, and this is where he gets his information from. He reads manufacturers websites for product detail and pictures, checks to see if it can be bought on the Internet, then rates the equipment. He does not try any of it out personally, he can't fix a treadmill and I doubt he's ever put one together. He is very overweight, so I don't think he uses fitness machines at all.
The comic boy rates equipment depending on how much money he makes off of it. If it sells on the Internet, and you click on the product on his site, and end up at Amazon, or someplace else, and buy it there, Mat makes money. If the product he reviews is not sold on the Internet, he makes no money, and in the case of Spirit fitness products (the company I work for) he trashes the product quality. He does this because we made a decision to not offer our products on the Internet this year because we have high end products that are sold through specialty fitness retail stores, whom we support and protect.
The specialty stores are experts on equipment and offer many advantages to the consumer that you won't get from the Internet guys. Specialty stores teach you how to use and maintain the product, how to properly workout, delivery and set-up of the product and service it if there's a problem. If you buy on the Internet, who will fix your product if there's a problem? Mat Nastos ain't coming to your house to fix it, I can guarantee that.
Read my other posts to learn more...Also check back often, because I will eventually get back to teaching the specifics of fitness equipment design.
Leave a comment if you like. If you have a question about fitness equipment design and quality I'll answer it for you.
http//treadmillsensei.com
His site reviews products and rates them to help guide you to the "good stuff". The site looks genuine enough...it seems to be a guy who knows what he's talking about, 20 years in the business, has a repair shop he calls the "Dojo"...etc, etc...He claims to do this to help consumers because there is so much bad information and so many scammers on the Internet, and he's come to be your guide to fitness...or "Sensei" as he refers to himself.
The problem is that none of what is on his site is true. There is no Dojo, no expert with 20 years experience, nothing but a struggling comic book artist (Mat Nastos) in S. California, at home with his computer. He has scant little knowledge of fitness equipment, as he claims, and he's not Asian either. He has a connection with treadmillcentral.com, an Internet retailer, and this is where he gets his information from. He reads manufacturers websites for product detail and pictures, checks to see if it can be bought on the Internet, then rates the equipment. He does not try any of it out personally, he can't fix a treadmill and I doubt he's ever put one together. He is very overweight, so I don't think he uses fitness machines at all.
The comic boy rates equipment depending on how much money he makes off of it. If it sells on the Internet, and you click on the product on his site, and end up at Amazon, or someplace else, and buy it there, Mat makes money. If the product he reviews is not sold on the Internet, he makes no money, and in the case of Spirit fitness products (the company I work for) he trashes the product quality. He does this because we made a decision to not offer our products on the Internet this year because we have high end products that are sold through specialty fitness retail stores, whom we support and protect.
The specialty stores are experts on equipment and offer many advantages to the consumer that you won't get from the Internet guys. Specialty stores teach you how to use and maintain the product, how to properly workout, delivery and set-up of the product and service it if there's a problem. If you buy on the Internet, who will fix your product if there's a problem? Mat Nastos ain't coming to your house to fix it, I can guarantee that.
Read my other posts to learn more...Also check back often, because I will eventually get back to teaching the specifics of fitness equipment design.
Leave a comment if you like. If you have a question about fitness equipment design and quality I'll answer it for you.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
No Dojo...Doh!
As much as I have tried I have had no luck in finding anyone who knows where The Sensei's legendary Dojo is located. I know there must be a Dojo because that's where the Sensei repairs product, reviews new stuff and writes witty tidbits about exercise, good and bad products and the evil equipment manufacturers and unscrupulous fitness dealers. On the site there is a phone number:
"You can reach the DOJO by phone or fax at: 206-339-7022"
But alas, I found out that this is an unlisted number from Seattle Washington, not So. California. Real businesses don't have unlisted numbers.
I was so disappointed when I found out that there isn't a real Sensei. It was reminiscent of the devastation when learning there was no Easter bunny. Now I am just beside myself with grief after learning there is no Dojo either. I am now resigned to the fact that there is only Mat "Comic book Sensei" Nastos and his computer; no Dojo, no senior partner with 20 years experience, only a man with a minimum of fitness experience passing himself off as an expert. Why would he make all this up? His comic book career is over and he needed something quick, what with a new family to support. So he used his comic book experience to create a fantasy world he calls "Treadmill Sensei".
You see, Mat learned during his comic days about something called "Affiliate marketing". Here is a snippet from his blog on the Nifty comic site (which he recently deleted...luckily I saved it before then)....
Monday, February 19, 2007
Comic Book Publishing -- Marketing Techniques for Dummies
"If you're a comic book publisher and you aren't familiar with Internet marketing techniques like article directories, tagging, blog directories, or link campaigns then you're in trouble. If you don't know what the terms PR, PPC, CPA or CPC then you shouldn't be online."
"If you're a comic book publisher and you aren't maintaining a mailing list (online and off) then you're in a lot of trouble."
"Finally, if you're a comic book publisher with a trade paperback (or other higher priced product) and you don't have an affiliate program for it, then you're a fool. If you don't know what an "affiliate program" is then you're a moron. "
From my crash course over the last few days I have learned that affiliate marketing is when you start a site (doesn't matter what it is) you can earn money if people click on a link from your site to go to Amazon, for instance, and buy something. He makes nothing if someone buys the product from a store instead of the Internet. Since this hasn't worked out so well in the comics game (I'll bet commission on a $2,000 treadmill is a whole lot better than a $5 comic book) he started his little fantasy fitness review site. Knowing this information, how would you think he answered this question on Treadmillsensei:
Friday, April 06, 2007
Treadmills and Ellipticals - online buying vs offline buying
Ohiyo!
"As the Treadmill Sensei and knower of all things fitness related, a lot of readers email me here at the DOJO and ask, "Oh, great Sensei, where should I purchase my new treadmill or elliptical? Should I buy it at a local store or online? Which is better?"
I won't bore you with his answer, you can go to his site and read it for yourself...his answer is what you'd think though. All this is fine and legal, but what I object to is out and out lying about a product when you pass yourself off as completely objective and not in it for the money because..as it says on his site "I have a good day job".... I don't think so!
I hope Spirit's dealers will read this next part carefully...from an email Mat sent out:
"I'm just going to be blunt here, and please don't take it as either an insult or an attack. I enjoyed supporting Spirit this past year and being a major factor in building the recognition of your brand and I loved the commissions I made from my affiliate partners in doing so. The fact is, whether your company can admit/accept it or not, without the focus my site (and the Treadmilldoctor's site) brought to Spirit you would not be in the outstanding place you are in today. Spirit does no advertising or marketing as far as I can tell. Spirit's brick-and-mortar shops don't really do marketing/advertising to increase the recognition of the brand (having local sales doesn't really count). What built you to where you are right now is my site exposing 1000-10,000 (depending on what time of year it is) people PER DAY to positive reviews about your equipment and glowing commentary on your company.....
Just remember, your brick-and-mortars are down by 30% on the whole and places like Home Gym Central are up 50-100% because of the sales I bring them. That's right -- I allowed them to as much as DOUBLE their sales from previous years, even in the supposedly "slow months" of summer (last month they pulled in almost $250,000 in sales versus $110,000 in July from the previous year).
I make my money by finding high quality equipment and I support it -- My only requirement is that the equipment be available for purchase online. If it's not, then I can't support it as fully because it does me absolutely no good."
Well, well, well...not only has he not "fully supported it", but he completely trashed it!!! This is what we get for telling him in Denver that we will not allow the X series product to be sold on the Internet. He looked at our equipment from the edge of the booth in Denver and never even got on our new, and much improved over last year, product. He then writes complete product reviews including comments about plastic flywheels, bad quality, wiring problems, using a frame design from a recalled product...and more...without ever even giving the product a good look.
To be continued....
"You can reach the DOJO by phone or fax at: 206-339-7022"
But alas, I found out that this is an unlisted number from Seattle Washington, not So. California. Real businesses don't have unlisted numbers.
I was so disappointed when I found out that there isn't a real Sensei. It was reminiscent of the devastation when learning there was no Easter bunny. Now I am just beside myself with grief after learning there is no Dojo either. I am now resigned to the fact that there is only Mat "Comic book Sensei" Nastos and his computer; no Dojo, no senior partner with 20 years experience, only a man with a minimum of fitness experience passing himself off as an expert. Why would he make all this up? His comic book career is over and he needed something quick, what with a new family to support. So he used his comic book experience to create a fantasy world he calls "Treadmill Sensei".
You see, Mat learned during his comic days about something called "Affiliate marketing". Here is a snippet from his blog on the Nifty comic site (which he recently deleted...luckily I saved it before then)....
Monday, February 19, 2007
Comic Book Publishing -- Marketing Techniques for Dummies
"If you're a comic book publisher and you aren't familiar with Internet marketing techniques like article directories, tagging, blog directories, or link campaigns then you're in trouble. If you don't know what the terms PR, PPC, CPA or CPC then you shouldn't be online."
"If you're a comic book publisher and you aren't maintaining a mailing list (online and off) then you're in a lot of trouble."
"Finally, if you're a comic book publisher with a trade paperback (or other higher priced product) and you don't have an affiliate program for it, then you're a fool. If you don't know what an "affiliate program" is then you're a moron. "
From my crash course over the last few days I have learned that affiliate marketing is when you start a site (doesn't matter what it is) you can earn money if people click on a link from your site to go to Amazon, for instance, and buy something. He makes nothing if someone buys the product from a store instead of the Internet. Since this hasn't worked out so well in the comics game (I'll bet commission on a $2,000 treadmill is a whole lot better than a $5 comic book) he started his little fantasy fitness review site. Knowing this information, how would you think he answered this question on Treadmillsensei:
Friday, April 06, 2007
Treadmills and Ellipticals - online buying vs offline buying
Ohiyo!
"As the Treadmill Sensei and knower of all things fitness related, a lot of readers email me here at the DOJO and ask, "Oh, great Sensei, where should I purchase my new treadmill or elliptical? Should I buy it at a local store or online? Which is better?"
I won't bore you with his answer, you can go to his site and read it for yourself...his answer is what you'd think though. All this is fine and legal, but what I object to is out and out lying about a product when you pass yourself off as completely objective and not in it for the money because..as it says on his site "I have a good day job".... I don't think so!
I hope Spirit's dealers will read this next part carefully...from an email Mat sent out:
"I'm just going to be blunt here, and please don't take it as either an insult or an attack. I enjoyed supporting Spirit this past year and being a major factor in building the recognition of your brand and I loved the commissions I made from my affiliate partners in doing so. The fact is, whether your company can admit/accept it or not, without the focus my site (and the Treadmilldoctor's site) brought to Spirit you would not be in the outstanding place you are in today. Spirit does no advertising or marketing as far as I can tell. Spirit's brick-and-mortar shops don't really do marketing/advertising to increase the recognition of the brand (having local sales doesn't really count). What built you to where you are right now is my site exposing 1000-10,000 (depending on what time of year it is) people PER DAY to positive reviews about your equipment and glowing commentary on your company.....
Just remember, your brick-and-mortars are down by 30% on the whole and places like Home Gym Central are up 50-100% because of the sales I bring them. That's right -- I allowed them to as much as DOUBLE their sales from previous years, even in the supposedly "slow months" of summer (last month they pulled in almost $250,000 in sales versus $110,000 in July from the previous year).
I make my money by finding high quality equipment and I support it -- My only requirement is that the equipment be available for purchase online. If it's not, then I can't support it as fully because it does me absolutely no good."
Well, well, well...not only has he not "fully supported it", but he completely trashed it!!! This is what we get for telling him in Denver that we will not allow the X series product to be sold on the Internet. He looked at our equipment from the edge of the booth in Denver and never even got on our new, and much improved over last year, product. He then writes complete product reviews including comments about plastic flywheels, bad quality, wiring problems, using a frame design from a recalled product...and more...without ever even giving the product a good look.
To be continued....
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Where's the Sensei?
No wonder Mat the comic book Sensei hasn't written anything on his faux fitness review site since last Thursday....he's been too busy covering his tracks!
He has taken down the picture he had of his partner, Toshiro the Treadmill Sensei (AKA Aaron Akagi...comic book illustrator) from his site. Not only that, but Mat also deleted any reference to Aaron from his Nifty comics site and his Myspace too. It seems Aaron (Mellow Yellow) Akagi has now become shy and removed his profile on Myspace altogether. Mat has even taken down his movie review site!
According to Mat's emails to me, the Treadmill Sensei had all the fitness experience and Mat was just his helper (good thing too, because Mat doesn't have enough experience to be doing technical evaluations of fitness equipment). If that is true then why take the expert's picture off the site, Mat? Who is going to be doing the technical reviews? Not you I hope!!! Egads, that would be a disaster.... Someone passing himself off as an expert in fitness equipment design when in fact they have no eperience in this area would be perpetrating a huge fraud on the public.
This leads me to my question: Who, and more importantly where is the Treadmill Sensei?
From Mat's email:
"Oh, in regards to your Asian statement: my partner, the Treadmill Sensei, is full Japanese and his family has lived here since the early 1900s. His grandparents (on both sides) and parents were all in the internment camps here in California during WWII (they're from Marin up in Northern California). He has been a repair/service guy since he was either 19 or 20 and just turned 42, and he does most of the review process. Please keep any racist statements about his heritage to a minimum, especially when writing as a representative for Spirit Fitness."
Take care,
-Mat N. (and Toshiro)
http://www.treadmillsensei.com/
===================================================
Oh yeah...I almost forgot, I have been receiving a little inside information recently that makes me wonder; where exactly is "The Dojo" anyway? I have not seen any pictures on the Treadmill Sensei website of the Dojo. I can't find anyone who has been there or anyone who has had a fitness product repaired at, or by the Dojo. I also can't seem to find any legitimate fitness repair companies in So. Cal who know of the Dojo or Toshiro the Treadmill Sensei himself. I will be contacting more repair companies and fitness dealers in So. California to try and track down the elusive Dojo. I will keep you updated on what I find out...
Exerpt from the Treadmillsensei.com website:
"One of the things the Treadmill Sensei likes to do from time to time is take on a repair/remanufacturing project that is a bit too difficult for some of the younger Senseis here at the DOJO. To me there is nothing better than being able to take a nearly destroyed treadmill or elliptical and rebuild it to look and perform like new. Having recently done a couple of BladeZ Fitness reviews, I decided to see if I could search out and find a BladeZ treadmill to put back together. "
==================================================================
He has taken down the picture he had of his partner, Toshiro the Treadmill Sensei (AKA Aaron Akagi...comic book illustrator) from his site. Not only that, but Mat also deleted any reference to Aaron from his Nifty comics site and his Myspace too. It seems Aaron (Mellow Yellow) Akagi has now become shy and removed his profile on Myspace altogether. Mat has even taken down his movie review site!
According to Mat's emails to me, the Treadmill Sensei had all the fitness experience and Mat was just his helper (good thing too, because Mat doesn't have enough experience to be doing technical evaluations of fitness equipment). If that is true then why take the expert's picture off the site, Mat? Who is going to be doing the technical reviews? Not you I hope!!! Egads, that would be a disaster.... Someone passing himself off as an expert in fitness equipment design when in fact they have no eperience in this area would be perpetrating a huge fraud on the public.
This leads me to my question: Who, and more importantly where is the Treadmill Sensei?
From Mat's email:
"Oh, in regards to your Asian statement: my partner, the Treadmill Sensei, is full Japanese and his family has lived here since the early 1900s. His grandparents (on both sides) and parents were all in the internment camps here in California during WWII (they're from Marin up in Northern California). He has been a repair/service guy since he was either 19 or 20 and just turned 42, and he does most of the review process. Please keep any racist statements about his heritage to a minimum, especially when writing as a representative for Spirit Fitness."
Take care,
-Mat N. (and Toshiro)
http://www.treadmillsensei.com/
===================================================
Oh yeah...I almost forgot, I have been receiving a little inside information recently that makes me wonder; where exactly is "The Dojo" anyway? I have not seen any pictures on the Treadmill Sensei website of the Dojo. I can't find anyone who has been there or anyone who has had a fitness product repaired at, or by the Dojo. I also can't seem to find any legitimate fitness repair companies in So. Cal who know of the Dojo or Toshiro the Treadmill Sensei himself. I will be contacting more repair companies and fitness dealers in So. California to try and track down the elusive Dojo. I will keep you updated on what I find out...
Exerpt from the Treadmillsensei.com website:
"One of the things the Treadmill Sensei likes to do from time to time is take on a repair/remanufacturing project that is a bit too difficult for some of the younger Senseis here at the DOJO. To me there is nothing better than being able to take a nearly destroyed treadmill or elliptical and rebuild it to look and perform like new. Having recently done a couple of BladeZ Fitness reviews, I decided to see if I could search out and find a BladeZ treadmill to put back together. "
==================================================================
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Comic book Sensei...Mat Nastos
Well, well, well...It seems that my favorite fitness equipment "expert", Treadmill Sensei, is actually just moonlighting in the fitness industry. His real job is comic book writer! His faithful sidekick (whos picture he passes off as the Sensei on his site) is also a comic book guy..... check them out at Mat's comic book site:
http://www.niftycomics.com/nerd/archive/2006_05_01_niftycomics_archive.html
It seems Mat is also a film critic:
http://filmsensei.com/
...and film producer:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0473334/
What I can't seem to find is any mention of him being a fitness equipment expert... not even in his bio:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mat_Nastos
When I wrote to Mat to discuss why he wrote a review of my product without actually evaluating it and why he lied about the design, he only lashed back with more false accusations about my designs, attacked me personally as a racist, and then finally just blocked me from his email. I tried contacting him through his comic book site, but I guess he blocked me there too.
That's OK... if he won't talk to me, I'll just put the emails here for all to see:
----- Original Message -----
From: brianm@spiritfitness.com
To: sensei@treadmillsensei.com
Cc:
Sent: Monday, September 10, 2007 7:15 AM
Subject: Your Spirit review
I was directed to your website to read your recent review of Spirit products. Seeing as I am the engineer who designed them, along with all the Sole products, I was looking forward to seeing what you thought. Imagine my suprise when I read your less than flattering review. I tried to comment, but it seems you don't encourage that...now I know why. I copied my comment below for your reference.
Sensei, you are a very dangerous man. I have designed fitness equipment for 25 years and have never came across the likes of you. You are a scary person and I hope to let as many people as possible know how you operate. And please remove reference to Dyaco building Smooth and Sports Art products...just more of your misinformation and another reason I am convinced you have no idea what you are talking about.
Brian Murray
Spirit XE300 Elliptical - 2.5 buddahs may have been a bit too generous for this under-performer.
All I can say is WOW! This treadmill Sensei guy has absolutely no business reviewing fitness products. He obviously doesn't know all that much about fitness product design, engineering, quality or biomechanics; not to mention not knowing what product he is reviewing! This is painfully obvious by what he says in this review of the Spirit XE300.
I am an engineer with over 25 years experience in designing fitness products, from $200 - $10,000. I happened to have designed all of the Sole and Spirit elliptical products. I don't mind people being critical of my designs (I've dealt with these critics for a loooong time) but when a review is completely wrong, I must say something.
The Sensei states that the Spirit XE300 is the same platform as the older Spirit XE125??? Sensei, maybe you need your vision checked or maybe you're drinking too much sake. First off, the product has not been shipped yet, and secondly, you didn't even work out on it at the trade show, nor have a detailed look inside. The XE125 and the new XE300 are completely different designs! Yes, we have shortened the platform (now the same basic platform as the Sole E25, which you gave a best buy rating to!) but in no way has that affected the stride length, as you say in your review; it IS 20 inches.
The flywheel weight is indeed 30 pounds of cast iron steel, not 16 pounds of plastic (where did you get that idea...sheeesh) I don't even know how you think it's 16 lbs, or made of plastic, you never even looked inside the machine! You state that we have dropped quality??? How can you say that without even having one of these to look at? I think you are not being truthful here. I have increased the steel tube sizes, added a steel rear shroud over the track, improved the pedal adjustment to an acme shaft with infinite adjustment, gone from copper bearings to sealed ball bearings in critical pivot points, added features to the electronics, upgraded all hardware to grade 8 (health club quality), improved tolerance specifications in critical areas and improved the powder coating to higher grade. Otherwise this is the same machine specification as last year’s XE350, which you gave 4 Buddhas and a runner up for best buy in its category with lesser specs than this year’s model! I'm confused…..by the way it is spelled Buddha, not buddah! Not much of an Asian, are you? That's right, you're not!
-----Original Message-----
From: The Sensei [mailto:sensei@treadmillsensei.com]Sent: Monday, September 10, 2007 11:30 AM
To: brianm@spiritfitness.com
Subject: Re: Your Spirit review
Mr. Murray:
Thanks for your note. It's funny how if we review something positively I'm told we're great and if we give a negative review I'm the worst possible person in the world. In fact, this summer we have been getting more complaint emails every week about Spirit product - to the tune of 8-10 right now but it has been has high as 10-15 (which I will begin publishing in my reviews shortly, along with some very interesting problem video sent in by a few different readers). That's more than we get about Proform or Bowflex. As I said in my articles, the new models were all reviewed at the Denver show and would be updated in more detail once we've been able to take one apart. If you've fixed the flywheel issue from last year then that will be reflected. The only unit we could see "under the hood" was one of the incredibly unimpressive Esprit line, which was even mentioned in one or two of the articles.
I do have a question for you, were you also the engineer who designed the Z88 and Z700? Both of those units shipped out with problems known to Spirit and, in the case of the Z88, still haven't been fixed. According to the tech I spoke with in Denver (Brian J introduced me to him..Jeremy, I believe...I'm horrible with names) that problem hadn't been fixed on the new model either.
Now, I do understand that you are completely in love with the equipment you design and feel it is the best equipment on the market. Every manufacturer feels that way -- we've gotten similar notes to yours from guys at Icon and Bowflex (a guy named Ron Arp emails me every few weeks from Bowflex). My reviews are my opinions and I state it as such in every article. I also tell our readers to go out and get on equipment at a local shop to try them out (we even wrote an entire article on it last year). No other review site does that.
The Truth of the matter is, we supported Spirit like crazy last year because of initial reactions to the product. Unfortunately, as problems with the units began to surface and my readers began to complain to me because I directed them to your product, I can't give Spirit as much support this year. Luckily, the wisdom I was presented with at the trade show was that this internet thing really doesn't affect the marketing and advertising Spirit is doing and has little to no affect on sales (I believe the phrase I was told was "minor incremental increase"). I'm confused about a company not wanting the $1mil+ in sales my site generated for them last year again in the upcoming year, but I'm not as business savvy as some I guess.
Oh, in regards to your Asian statement: my partner, the Treadmill Sensei, is full Japanese and his family has lived here since the early 1900s. His grandparents (on both sides) and parents were all in the internment camps here in California during WWII (they're from Marin up in Northern California). He has been a repair/service guy since he was either 19 or 20 and just turned 42, and he does most of the review process. Please keep any racist statements about his heritage to a minimum, especially when writing as a representative for Spirit Fitness.
Anyway, thank you again for your comments and your opinions. Please feel free to write either of us with questions or comments any time.
Take care,
-Mat N. (and Toshiro)
www.treadmillsensei.com
From: brianm@spiritfitness.com
To: The Sensei, brianm@spiritfitness.com
Cc:
Date: Monday, September 10, 2007 07:57 pm
Subject:
Re: Your Spirit review
Mat,
My email and comments stand, you're a hack. I am not concerned in the least if you give my designs a bad review and I certainly don't care what my counterparts in the industry write to you about. What I do care about is you blatantly lying about my products. It is funny how you rave about Sole products when they are the same basic specification as Spirit.
You don't know much about products you review, plain and simple. We had no flywheel issues, I don't know where you're getting your information. By the way, a flywheel is a weight...nothing more. The only problems it could possibly have is to be unbalanced or have a bad bearing, and we have had neither of these problems. The "unimpresive" Esprit line you saw was the Sole line painted white, you idiot!
The Z88, exactly the same product as the F63 (from treadmillsensei: "The Sole F63 Treadmill Review - Excellence in Execution") only the color is different, built on the same assembly line by the same people and same quality control. This product is very mature and Dyaco was building this model for years befor Sole picked it up.
The Z700, same as Sole S77 except for color (from treadmillsensei: "The Sole S77 Treadmill -- Best Non-Folding under $2000") also has no manufacturing quality issues.
Your feeble attempt at disgracing me by calling me racist is contemptible. My wife is Taiwanese and Taiwan is my home for the past 15 years. I never said anything racist....I merely stated that you are not Asian, which you are not, but you pass yourself off to be on your website. You write the reviews and you state on your site that your assistant Mat helps you. You came to the Denver show, not Toshiro. You wrote the reviews as Sensei and stated you (Sensei) rode the equipment in Denver...In case you forgot what you wrote about yourself on your own site:
"About TreadmillSensei.comTreadmillSensei.com was founded in mid-2006 by the Treadmill Sensei in an effort to help people confused by the sheer number of treadmills and ellipticals now available for sale. After having looked around and seen the rather anemic, and sometimes misleading, reviews on other sites, the Treadmill Sensei dedicated himself to writing the most detailed and helpful reviews available anywhere on the net. Using his knowledge as a service/repair tech the Treadmill Sensei is able to provide more extensive and in-depth reviews than anyone else online. allowing customers to be well educated before spending thousands of dollars on new fitness equipment.To help get his words out to the masses, the Treadmill Sensei partnered with Mat Nastos, a 4-year veteran of the fitness industry and former Marketing Director for HomeGymCentral.com, who has more than 15 years of internet experience. With the site running "full steam ahead," the pair now run the site full time from an office in the Treadmill Sensei's legendary repair shop, the DOJO, in southern California"
Have you looked up how to spell Buddha yet, Sensei?
No problems are surfacing anew...and you know it! You have an agenda, period. I will make sure my readers hear all about your inability to objectively review products so consumers can make an educated buying decision. I write a widely read blog and you are my new topic for the foreseeable future..this email will be the next one I post. You are in this to make money, which is fine, but it should never be at the expense of the consumer....your customer.
Brian Murray
From: The Sensei
To: brianm@spiritfitness.com
Cc:
Date: Monday, September 10, 2007 09:21 pm
Subject: Re: Your Spirit review
Is this the same product Spirit is having to design testing boxes to send out to retailers for when problems arise (the now-famous wiring issue)? Great engineering work there! The Z700 had a console issue which made the screen too blurry for owners to see. Both were shipped out knowingly by Spirit. I'd stay off of YouTube if you think the Z88/F63 is such a great product...there is some interesting video on there from "satisfied" Spirit/Sole customers which I'll be linking on the reviews here in the next week.
Good luck and I'm glad you enjoy the website. You have now won a spot in my Spam filter.
Mat N.
From: brianm@spiritfitness.com
To: The Sensei
Cc:
Date: Monday, September 10, 2007 10:58 pm
Subject: Re: Your Spirit review
Mat,
You are a bigger idiot than I thought! We have no "famous wiring issue"....I designed test boxes for all our products as another aide in supporting our main customers, Independent fitness dealers. Funny how you misinterpret good customer support as a quality problem.
The very first shipment of Z700, 4 years ago, had the problem with a fuzzy screen which was imediately addressed....old news. But even our products sometimes have a problem, although our failure rate is well below 2%, unlike Horizon at 71% out of the box failure rate! This number comes from Horizon themselves and is why they had to set up a facility in SoCal to do 100% inspection on every product shipped. Your good buddy Lamar (now out of business) also had a very bad quality track record...but that doesn't seem to dampen your enthusiasm for these two. So you found a few disgruntled customers...every product in the world has them, some more than others, Spirit and Sole far fewer than most in this industry.
You can block me and ignore me, but word will get out about you and your shady business practices. You wouldn't know a good quality treadmill or elliptical if it came up and bit you on your ample rear end! I am having a great laugh while reading your site and will be pointing out your many errors, not only on Sole and Spirit, but on everything you write about. I especially like your lame attempts at giving fitness advice and trying to explain what causes numb toes, among other glaring inaccuracies....LOL! My readers will have a good laugh too.
My next blog will show some behind the scenes machinations by Mr. Mat "comic book sensei" Nastros. He has written many emails to various people that show his true motivations...and they have nothing to do with helping the consumer
Brian Murray
http://www.niftycomics.com/nerd/archive/2006_05_01_niftycomics_archive.html
It seems Mat is also a film critic:
http://filmsensei.com/
...and film producer:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0473334/
What I can't seem to find is any mention of him being a fitness equipment expert... not even in his bio:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mat_Nastos
When I wrote to Mat to discuss why he wrote a review of my product without actually evaluating it and why he lied about the design, he only lashed back with more false accusations about my designs, attacked me personally as a racist, and then finally just blocked me from his email. I tried contacting him through his comic book site, but I guess he blocked me there too.
That's OK... if he won't talk to me, I'll just put the emails here for all to see:
----- Original Message -----
From: brianm@spiritfitness.com
To: sensei@treadmillsensei.com
Cc:
Sent: Monday, September 10, 2007 7:15 AM
Subject: Your Spirit review
I was directed to your website to read your recent review of Spirit products. Seeing as I am the engineer who designed them, along with all the Sole products, I was looking forward to seeing what you thought. Imagine my suprise when I read your less than flattering review. I tried to comment, but it seems you don't encourage that...now I know why. I copied my comment below for your reference.
Sensei, you are a very dangerous man. I have designed fitness equipment for 25 years and have never came across the likes of you. You are a scary person and I hope to let as many people as possible know how you operate. And please remove reference to Dyaco building Smooth and Sports Art products...just more of your misinformation and another reason I am convinced you have no idea what you are talking about.
Brian Murray
Spirit XE300 Elliptical - 2.5 buddahs may have been a bit too generous for this under-performer.
All I can say is WOW! This treadmill Sensei guy has absolutely no business reviewing fitness products. He obviously doesn't know all that much about fitness product design, engineering, quality or biomechanics; not to mention not knowing what product he is reviewing! This is painfully obvious by what he says in this review of the Spirit XE300.
I am an engineer with over 25 years experience in designing fitness products, from $200 - $10,000. I happened to have designed all of the Sole and Spirit elliptical products. I don't mind people being critical of my designs (I've dealt with these critics for a loooong time) but when a review is completely wrong, I must say something.
The Sensei states that the Spirit XE300 is the same platform as the older Spirit XE125??? Sensei, maybe you need your vision checked or maybe you're drinking too much sake. First off, the product has not been shipped yet, and secondly, you didn't even work out on it at the trade show, nor have a detailed look inside. The XE125 and the new XE300 are completely different designs! Yes, we have shortened the platform (now the same basic platform as the Sole E25, which you gave a best buy rating to!) but in no way has that affected the stride length, as you say in your review; it IS 20 inches.
The flywheel weight is indeed 30 pounds of cast iron steel, not 16 pounds of plastic (where did you get that idea...sheeesh) I don't even know how you think it's 16 lbs, or made of plastic, you never even looked inside the machine! You state that we have dropped quality??? How can you say that without even having one of these to look at? I think you are not being truthful here. I have increased the steel tube sizes, added a steel rear shroud over the track, improved the pedal adjustment to an acme shaft with infinite adjustment, gone from copper bearings to sealed ball bearings in critical pivot points, added features to the electronics, upgraded all hardware to grade 8 (health club quality), improved tolerance specifications in critical areas and improved the powder coating to higher grade. Otherwise this is the same machine specification as last year’s XE350, which you gave 4 Buddhas and a runner up for best buy in its category with lesser specs than this year’s model! I'm confused…..by the way it is spelled Buddha, not buddah! Not much of an Asian, are you? That's right, you're not!
-----Original Message-----
From: The Sensei [mailto:sensei@treadmillsensei.com]Sent: Monday, September 10, 2007 11:30 AM
To: brianm@spiritfitness.com
Subject: Re: Your Spirit review
Mr. Murray:
Thanks for your note. It's funny how if we review something positively I'm told we're great and if we give a negative review I'm the worst possible person in the world. In fact, this summer we have been getting more complaint emails every week about Spirit product - to the tune of 8-10 right now but it has been has high as 10-15 (which I will begin publishing in my reviews shortly, along with some very interesting problem video sent in by a few different readers). That's more than we get about Proform or Bowflex. As I said in my articles, the new models were all reviewed at the Denver show and would be updated in more detail once we've been able to take one apart. If you've fixed the flywheel issue from last year then that will be reflected. The only unit we could see "under the hood" was one of the incredibly unimpressive Esprit line, which was even mentioned in one or two of the articles.
I do have a question for you, were you also the engineer who designed the Z88 and Z700? Both of those units shipped out with problems known to Spirit and, in the case of the Z88, still haven't been fixed. According to the tech I spoke with in Denver (Brian J introduced me to him..Jeremy, I believe...I'm horrible with names) that problem hadn't been fixed on the new model either.
Now, I do understand that you are completely in love with the equipment you design and feel it is the best equipment on the market. Every manufacturer feels that way -- we've gotten similar notes to yours from guys at Icon and Bowflex (a guy named Ron Arp emails me every few weeks from Bowflex). My reviews are my opinions and I state it as such in every article. I also tell our readers to go out and get on equipment at a local shop to try them out (we even wrote an entire article on it last year). No other review site does that.
The Truth of the matter is, we supported Spirit like crazy last year because of initial reactions to the product. Unfortunately, as problems with the units began to surface and my readers began to complain to me because I directed them to your product, I can't give Spirit as much support this year. Luckily, the wisdom I was presented with at the trade show was that this internet thing really doesn't affect the marketing and advertising Spirit is doing and has little to no affect on sales (I believe the phrase I was told was "minor incremental increase"). I'm confused about a company not wanting the $1mil+ in sales my site generated for them last year again in the upcoming year, but I'm not as business savvy as some I guess.
Oh, in regards to your Asian statement: my partner, the Treadmill Sensei, is full Japanese and his family has lived here since the early 1900s. His grandparents (on both sides) and parents were all in the internment camps here in California during WWII (they're from Marin up in Northern California). He has been a repair/service guy since he was either 19 or 20 and just turned 42, and he does most of the review process. Please keep any racist statements about his heritage to a minimum, especially when writing as a representative for Spirit Fitness.
Anyway, thank you again for your comments and your opinions. Please feel free to write either of us with questions or comments any time.
Take care,
-Mat N. (and Toshiro)
www.treadmillsensei.com
From: brianm@spiritfitness.com
To: The Sensei
Cc:
Date: Monday, September 10, 2007 07:57 pm
Subject:
Re: Your Spirit review
Mat,
My email and comments stand, you're a hack. I am not concerned in the least if you give my designs a bad review and I certainly don't care what my counterparts in the industry write to you about. What I do care about is you blatantly lying about my products. It is funny how you rave about Sole products when they are the same basic specification as Spirit.
You don't know much about products you review, plain and simple. We had no flywheel issues, I don't know where you're getting your information. By the way, a flywheel is a weight...nothing more. The only problems it could possibly have is to be unbalanced or have a bad bearing, and we have had neither of these problems. The "unimpresive" Esprit line you saw was the Sole line painted white, you idiot!
The Z88, exactly the same product as the F63 (from treadmillsensei: "The Sole F63 Treadmill Review - Excellence in Execution") only the color is different, built on the same assembly line by the same people and same quality control. This product is very mature and Dyaco was building this model for years befor Sole picked it up.
The Z700, same as Sole S77 except for color (from treadmillsensei: "The Sole S77 Treadmill -- Best Non-Folding under $2000") also has no manufacturing quality issues.
Your feeble attempt at disgracing me by calling me racist is contemptible. My wife is Taiwanese and Taiwan is my home for the past 15 years. I never said anything racist....I merely stated that you are not Asian, which you are not, but you pass yourself off to be on your website. You write the reviews and you state on your site that your assistant Mat helps you. You came to the Denver show, not Toshiro. You wrote the reviews as Sensei and stated you (Sensei) rode the equipment in Denver...In case you forgot what you wrote about yourself on your own site:
"About TreadmillSensei.comTreadmillSensei.com was founded in mid-2006 by the Treadmill Sensei in an effort to help people confused by the sheer number of treadmills and ellipticals now available for sale. After having looked around and seen the rather anemic, and sometimes misleading, reviews on other sites, the Treadmill Sensei dedicated himself to writing the most detailed and helpful reviews available anywhere on the net. Using his knowledge as a service/repair tech the Treadmill Sensei is able to provide more extensive and in-depth reviews than anyone else online. allowing customers to be well educated before spending thousands of dollars on new fitness equipment.To help get his words out to the masses, the Treadmill Sensei partnered with Mat Nastos, a 4-year veteran of the fitness industry and former Marketing Director for HomeGymCentral.com, who has more than 15 years of internet experience. With the site running "full steam ahead," the pair now run the site full time from an office in the Treadmill Sensei's legendary repair shop, the DOJO, in southern California"
Have you looked up how to spell Buddha yet, Sensei?
No problems are surfacing anew...and you know it! You have an agenda, period. I will make sure my readers hear all about your inability to objectively review products so consumers can make an educated buying decision. I write a widely read blog and you are my new topic for the foreseeable future..this email will be the next one I post. You are in this to make money, which is fine, but it should never be at the expense of the consumer....your customer.
Brian Murray
From: The Sensei
To: brianm@spiritfitness.com
Cc:
Date: Monday, September 10, 2007 09:21 pm
Subject: Re: Your Spirit review
Is this the same product Spirit is having to design testing boxes to send out to retailers for when problems arise (the now-famous wiring issue)? Great engineering work there! The Z700 had a console issue which made the screen too blurry for owners to see. Both were shipped out knowingly by Spirit. I'd stay off of YouTube if you think the Z88/F63 is such a great product...there is some interesting video on there from "satisfied" Spirit/Sole customers which I'll be linking on the reviews here in the next week.
Good luck and I'm glad you enjoy the website. You have now won a spot in my Spam filter.
Mat N.
From: brianm@spiritfitness.com
To: The Sensei
Cc:
Date: Monday, September 10, 2007 10:58 pm
Subject: Re: Your Spirit review
Mat,
You are a bigger idiot than I thought! We have no "famous wiring issue"....I designed test boxes for all our products as another aide in supporting our main customers, Independent fitness dealers. Funny how you misinterpret good customer support as a quality problem.
The very first shipment of Z700, 4 years ago, had the problem with a fuzzy screen which was imediately addressed....old news. But even our products sometimes have a problem, although our failure rate is well below 2%, unlike Horizon at 71% out of the box failure rate! This number comes from Horizon themselves and is why they had to set up a facility in SoCal to do 100% inspection on every product shipped. Your good buddy Lamar (now out of business) also had a very bad quality track record...but that doesn't seem to dampen your enthusiasm for these two. So you found a few disgruntled customers...every product in the world has them, some more than others, Spirit and Sole far fewer than most in this industry.
You can block me and ignore me, but word will get out about you and your shady business practices. You wouldn't know a good quality treadmill or elliptical if it came up and bit you on your ample rear end! I am having a great laugh while reading your site and will be pointing out your many errors, not only on Sole and Spirit, but on everything you write about. I especially like your lame attempts at giving fitness advice and trying to explain what causes numb toes, among other glaring inaccuracies....LOL! My readers will have a good laugh too.
My next blog will show some behind the scenes machinations by Mr. Mat "comic book sensei" Nastros. He has written many emails to various people that show his true motivations...and they have nothing to do with helping the consumer
Brian Murray
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Beware of Fitness equipment experts
I have known quite a few so called "Fitness experts" over the years who have set up websites that review treadmill and elliptical fitness products. Many of them are legitimate, but some of them are hacks who are not experts, but instead trash products if they are not making money off them somehow. One such reviewer is "Treadmill Sensei":
http://www.treadmillsensei.com/
This guy worked for an internet fitness store for a few years called treadmillcentral. He learned just enough about fitness equipment from behind his computer screen, to be very dangerous. He doesn't know what a good piece of exercise equipment is....which is painfully obvious when I read his reviews. This has not stopped him from claiming to be an expert though. He also gives advice on exercise, which is scary when you see him because it's obvious he is quite estranged from exercising, unless typing at his keyboard counts.
He has a picture of someone on his site who isn't even him! The "Sensei" works alone, although he has some fictitious helper according to his site.... and he isn't even Asian!.... check out the way he spells Buddha (he spells it buddah). He claims to have 20 years in the industry, when in fact he does not. He rates equipment manufacturer's products based on who he can make money from, not on the quality of the equipment. This is helping consumers?
How do I know this? I have designed several of the products he reviews. Look at his website and read the reviews for two of the companies I design for; Sole and Spirit, and see how you feel about each company and their products. It is true they are separately owned companies, but they share the same manufacturer, who I happen to be the head engineer for (and they don't produce products for Sports Art or Smooth as he states on his website). I designed all the equipment for both, and many of the products are relatively the same although you would never know from the reviews.
You will notice that this year Spirit has gotten rotten reviews while Sole (with virtually the exact same product) has gotten raves and best buys. Why would that be? Because he makes money off Sole, while he does not from Spirit. He gave Spirit great reviews last year for virtually the same products he trashed this year but he made nothing off Spirit last year and he's not happy, ergo the trashing this year.
In the Sensei's review of the Spirit XE200 Elliptical he says this:
"The Spirit XE200 Elliptical looks to be a very strange hybrid of the old Spirit XE350 (which performed well for most of 2007, even with its plastic flywheel issues) and the Spirit XE125, an elliptical which was recalled back to China due to a large number of manufacturer's defects and problems. What Spirit seems to have done this time around is taken the short and much less stable frame of the XE125 and tried to beef it up with the XE350 components."
Apparantly he saw a different elliptical than the one I designed. I did not use the XE125 frame as he claims (not that he'd know the difference anyway) but the same exact frame as the Sole E25.... which he gave a best buy rating!!! The flywheel is 30 pounds of cast iron steel, not 16 pounds of plastic. There is not one elliptical product I know of, from any manufacturer, that uses a plastic flywheel. This guy has no idea what a flywheel is it seems....from the Sensei:
"The other issue with the unit is from Spirit's continued use of a plastic flywheel in its drive instead of a metal one. Even the weight they give is considerably off and comes from weighing the entire drive assembly instead of just the flywheel. Now, Spirit has done a great job in gearing the wheel with a second, smaller flywheel, to give you that longer ramp up speed and slowdown, but the issue doesn't come in the feel of a 30 pound flywheel, it comes in the longevity and durability of a plastic flywheel. You hear about 10+ year old metal flywheel ellipticals still running well. What you don't hear about is those with plastic flywheels lasting more than 4-5 years at the most, and even then they have a lot of maintenance issues."
"Spirit did a great job of gearing the wheel with a second flywheel"???? What the hell is he talking about? I designed the machine and I have no idea what the Sensei means. Maybe too much sake, eh Sensei? If he did know what he was talking about he'd know that it would not matter what material a flywheel is made from because it is just a spinning weight used for inertia (storing energy), it can't wear out....what a maroon.
I have a whole lot more to say about the Sensei and his misinformation, and I will be saying it over the next few weeks....so stay tuned.
http://www.treadmillsensei.com/
This guy worked for an internet fitness store for a few years called treadmillcentral. He learned just enough about fitness equipment from behind his computer screen, to be very dangerous. He doesn't know what a good piece of exercise equipment is....which is painfully obvious when I read his reviews. This has not stopped him from claiming to be an expert though. He also gives advice on exercise, which is scary when you see him because it's obvious he is quite estranged from exercising, unless typing at his keyboard counts.
He has a picture of someone on his site who isn't even him! The "Sensei" works alone, although he has some fictitious helper according to his site.... and he isn't even Asian!.... check out the way he spells Buddha (he spells it buddah). He claims to have 20 years in the industry, when in fact he does not. He rates equipment manufacturer's products based on who he can make money from, not on the quality of the equipment. This is helping consumers?
How do I know this? I have designed several of the products he reviews. Look at his website and read the reviews for two of the companies I design for; Sole and Spirit, and see how you feel about each company and their products. It is true they are separately owned companies, but they share the same manufacturer, who I happen to be the head engineer for (and they don't produce products for Sports Art or Smooth as he states on his website). I designed all the equipment for both, and many of the products are relatively the same although you would never know from the reviews.
You will notice that this year Spirit has gotten rotten reviews while Sole (with virtually the exact same product) has gotten raves and best buys. Why would that be? Because he makes money off Sole, while he does not from Spirit. He gave Spirit great reviews last year for virtually the same products he trashed this year but he made nothing off Spirit last year and he's not happy, ergo the trashing this year.
In the Sensei's review of the Spirit XE200 Elliptical he says this:
"The Spirit XE200 Elliptical looks to be a very strange hybrid of the old Spirit XE350 (which performed well for most of 2007, even with its plastic flywheel issues) and the Spirit XE125, an elliptical which was recalled back to China due to a large number of manufacturer's defects and problems. What Spirit seems to have done this time around is taken the short and much less stable frame of the XE125 and tried to beef it up with the XE350 components."
Apparantly he saw a different elliptical than the one I designed. I did not use the XE125 frame as he claims (not that he'd know the difference anyway) but the same exact frame as the Sole E25.... which he gave a best buy rating!!! The flywheel is 30 pounds of cast iron steel, not 16 pounds of plastic. There is not one elliptical product I know of, from any manufacturer, that uses a plastic flywheel. This guy has no idea what a flywheel is it seems....from the Sensei:
"The other issue with the unit is from Spirit's continued use of a plastic flywheel in its drive instead of a metal one. Even the weight they give is considerably off and comes from weighing the entire drive assembly instead of just the flywheel. Now, Spirit has done a great job in gearing the wheel with a second, smaller flywheel, to give you that longer ramp up speed and slowdown, but the issue doesn't come in the feel of a 30 pound flywheel, it comes in the longevity and durability of a plastic flywheel. You hear about 10+ year old metal flywheel ellipticals still running well. What you don't hear about is those with plastic flywheels lasting more than 4-5 years at the most, and even then they have a lot of maintenance issues."
"Spirit did a great job of gearing the wheel with a second flywheel"???? What the hell is he talking about? I designed the machine and I have no idea what the Sensei means. Maybe too much sake, eh Sensei? If he did know what he was talking about he'd know that it would not matter what material a flywheel is made from because it is just a spinning weight used for inertia (storing energy), it can't wear out....what a maroon.
I have a whole lot more to say about the Sensei and his misinformation, and I will be saying it over the next few weeks....so stay tuned.
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