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.