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.