IHRSA 2012 Recap With Jon Ham

I went to IHRSA 2012 with the intention of bringing you some of the cool new things that are coming up in the world of Fitness.  I spent a couple days trolling the show and there was a bunch of cool stuff.  
First, I noticed that there is a trend in the industry of all the big Iron companies moving toward functional Fitness Body weight training stations.  Life Fitness has their new TRX Training Zones on their Synergy 360, which seem like a lot of fun and makes it possible to do many different exercises with very little setup and downtime.  There were many examples of this throughout the show, with functional fitness monkey bar style gyms from Purmotion with many creative new stations, as well as Movestrong with a station for flagpole training and cell phone dropping.  

Astone Fitness Has a Functional Fitness Wall where you can put your feet up for vertical exercises as well as getting creative with wall jumps with their Human Trainer and Rings.  I also was able to attempt their 2 minute challenge - I’ll post that uncut video soon....

Technology was also trending at this year’s show, with companies building tablets into treadmills and many virtual reality cardio pieces to make you feel like you are hiking in the woods, or doing different stages of the boston marathon. Definitely a theme that I think is here to stay and will evolve rapidly in the future.  As for me, I’ll stick to the real thing.  

I met up with Cem and Josh at Ultimate Sandbag where I let Cem Put me through the ringer... and I’ve never had so much fun being in so much pain! I’ll also post that uncut video soon.
(afterwards - i’m scared of that guy!)

Schwinn has some cool new bikes for you viewers who don’t have perfect weather year round.  I’m big into Mountain biking, so anything cycling related is interesting to me.  What is cool about these new Schwinn bikes is the amount of data you can get out of them these days with their power meters, which allows you to measure at what heart rate you are putting out what power.  As you get more and more trained, you will put out more power with a lower heart rate.   Also these new bikes have very fine adjustments to fit the user on the bike better.  This is awesome for group fitness spin classes to get the class comfortably fit on the bike very quickly.      

I tried the rope climbing challenge at the Marpo booth which was extremely difficult yet fun and I got a cool shirt out of it... and at the time - I had the best score... if it counted for the women’s competition.... Which is quite a feat if you saw some of the women at the show!  I’ll count it as a win.

I also came across some Pilates equipment from Balanced Body I found very interesting... basically like the old creepers you lie on while you roll under a car to change the oil or whatever, but packaged up in a very sophisticated and functional piece of fitness equipment.  Take a look at all you can do with this!

So, which one of these fitness concepts do you think is the coolest?  I want to know what you think so leave a comment below.

Comments

[Meredith]

Hi Jon,
Glad you had a great time at IHRSA. Wonderful recap. Thanks for attending!
Meredith Poppler, @PopplerMeredith
IHRSA

[Jon Ham]

Thanks Meredith! I did have a great time!