Exercise can be intimidating for many people for a multitude of reasons. However, a possible solution has been presented with the new EGYM equipment line.
The EGYM machines are a hot topic within the world of exercise and with the new installment of these machines at the Georgia Southern Grube Recreation Activity Center, or RAC for short, I had to see them for myself.
They use electromagnetic resistance to stimulate the muscle precisely to the resistance needed for a person’s exact height and weight. All the information is stored in a wristband that contains a RFID chip according to Jonathan Rivera, the facility director of the RAC.
The main facilitator for the EGYM, Rivera explained that when he first saw these machines, he was sold immediately.
“When I got exposed to that demo, I had this vision,” Rivera said. “I just had this instinct that I knew this was the future of fitness and I wanted to bring that to Georgia Southern.”
While these machines do all the heavy lifting of figuring out what resistance force to prescribe as you do your exercise, you get to play video games.
There are two types of games that can be played, the ball tracking game or the gameday challenge.
The ball tracking game consists of a yellow ball that needs to be guided through a set course that is displayed on the EGYM screen and your movement dictates whether the ball is lifted or lowered.
If you do the movements on time and follow the track the ball should be following, you obtain orbs named activity points.
After the ball has traveled the predestined path dictated by the machine’s internal computer, you get graded on how well you followed the path and how many points you gained.
The gameday challenge, however, is a bit more complex. This game takes the maximum amount of resistance you can extort into the machine and divides it into 5% intervals per repetition. So, you start off light, but with every repetition it gradually gets heavier until you can’t give anymore.
It then takes the total sum of weight you worked with and uses that to put you on a leaderboard that anyone can be a part of. This leaderboard updates in real time.
Principal Lecturer Rebecca Collins, who specializes in kinesiology and exercise science at Georgia Southern, mentioned the effects these games have on the psychological aspect of the participants.
Collins explained that the worry of doing an exercise correctly or in a safe way is taken away as the brain can just focus on the game at hand.
She used the example of social media to relate it to what happens to your brain when you play these games.
“That quick, immediate fix, instant gratification, you’re getting that through the game aspect,” Collins said.
She then later mentioned that for older generations, the games can also help with Alzheimer’s and dementia prevention because it helps train coordination and reaction time that you don’t always get in most exercises.
However, Sarah Davis, a fellow senior lecturer in kinesiology and exercise science at Georgia Southern, sees a few cracks with these machines.
“I still think that there’s still no substitute for real world movement,” Davis said. She used the example of picking up a box to demonstrate this point.
“You can do a deadlift or picking up a medicine ball to mimic picking up a box or picking up your suitcase, that’s real-world functional movement,” Davis said. “A machine will never replace real world functional movement.”
However, more people are going to the gym because of these machines with Rivera and Collins both showing that at the RAC and at the Statesboro Family YMCA they have seen an influx of new members due to the EGYM equipment.
While only time will tell if these machines are truly the future of fitness that Rivera sees them as, there is one thing you can hang your hat on. The wristbands do look pretty cool.