The LifeFitness 9500HR Treadmill will help you get fit!
Written: Jul 13 '02 (Updated Jul 13 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Effective, user-friendly
Cons: Like all treadmills, dangerous!
The Bottom Line: A treadmill that any gym-goer should use.
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| cripper's Full Review: LifeFitness LifeStride 9500 HR Treadmill Remanufac... |
In Hong Kong, there are an abundance of gyms inside various recreational/country clubs, and funnily enough, the clubs I am a member of do not seem to have gyms. But, all that changed a few months ago. One of the clubs I have a membership with opened up a gym. I have been dying to use a gym at one of these clubs, and was absolutely ecstatic when I found out that the club opened up a gym. So, I headed off to the gym with my little brother just to see what was in there. I was absolutely surprised by the amount of state-of-the-art equipment there was in this gym and was even more surprised that members of the club could use the gym FOR FREE! To me, it opened at the perfect time and I wanted to use the equipment immediately.
In my opinion, I am slightly overweight and therefore, in an attempt to lose some flab around the tummy (yes, I have developed some love handles, LOL!), I decided to use the treadmill, and since the first encounter with this treadmill about 3 months ago, I have been using it on quite a regular basis. Yes, and the treadmill in the gym is the LifeFitness LifeStride 9500HR Treadmill (Remanufactured) or to shorten it, it is basically the LifeFitness 9500HR Treadmill.
The treadmill itself is very easy to use. The treadmill has a screen on the top, which allows you to choose what type of training you want. You can use the Quick Start mode, which allows you to start immediately to run in a 60 minute period. However, I would only recommend one doing this at about 5km/h - 6.5km/h (kilometers per hour), because anything above it (unless you are a marathon runner) could tire your legs out quite quickly (at least it does for me). Then, there is the Fat Burn mode, which allows you to burn off fat, running at a speed between 6.5km/h and 7.5km/h. This also controls your heartrate at about 120 beats per minute. Another mode is the Cardiovascular training mode, which allows you to run at speeds between 7.5km/h and 8.5km/h, which controls your heartrate at about 150-170 beats per minute. This is only recommended to people who can run while their hearts are beating frenetically. In both of the aforementioned modes, you have to key in your weight, an incline and a set time before you start running. There is also the Manual mode, which allows you to key in and control the running by yourself (incline and even the speed). What is great about this mode is that it allows you to control speed and whether you want to increase or decrease the incline. There is also the Random mode, which automatically puts you in one of the other modes. On top of this, there are various “profiles” which are shown on the screen and are used to show the overall effectiveness of the workout.
Overall, I was very impressed by the user-friendliness of the machine. The keypad is easy to use and I never have a hard time keying in the numbers whenever I key in numbers at the beginning of a workout. After you key in everything, the screen clearly shows the incline, speed and the amount of time you have run. It also measures your heartrate with sensors that are just below the screen, and the machine recommends that you hold onto these, while you run. However, I feel that the sensors are placed in an awkward position, because when I hold onto them, I have to bend my back, since I am tall and it is not healthy for me to be bending my back while I run. Despite this, the sensors does its job efficiently and measures the heartrate accurately.
The machine also provides two ways of stopping the machine in case of injury or fatigue. If you feel like you have a cramp while running and you are holding the sensors, you can simply just press the “STOP” button next to the right-hand sensor. When you press this button, the machine stops instantly (not instantly to the point where it just stops dead, but it serves its purpose by stopping). If you do not want to hold onto the sensors and not concerned about your heart rate, then it is advised that you clip this cord to your shirt. This is used just in case you get fatigued. If you are too slow for the speed you are running in, the cord will be stretched and if you are running too slowly, the cord will pull the emergency stop (this is different from the one I mentioned earlier; this is connected to the back of the machine) and it will stop immediately as well.
At the end of any workout on the machine (even with a workout where you had to press the emergency stop button), the machine will give you a workout summary of the number of calories you burned off through training, the number of calories per hour, the distance traveled and the time taken to workout. This is efficient and is highly helpful if you are planning a workout schedule and plan to lose a certain number of calories or travel a certain distance in a certain time through working out.
However, another downside to the machine is the annoying noise it produces as the speed increases. It starts to drive you crazy and the high-pitch it reaches as the speed increases gets very irritating and it distracts you when working out. Then again, all treadmills are similar when it comes to producing sounds as the speed increases.
Despite all that has been said, the LifeFitness 9500HR Treadmill is a very efficient treadmill, which serves its purpose very well, and I would advise any person willing to workout to give this one a try.
Thank you for reading this review.
Recommended:
Yes
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cripper
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Member: Chris Ying
Location: Sydney, Australia
Reviews written: 348
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