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Accouracy of Life Fitness cardio computers?


dcx17

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Hi all.

Anyone know how accurate the computers on Life fitness gear is? I'm a club physical member and I've tried a a number of ellipticals and treadmills at the different locations.

The other day I burned 227 cals in 15 minutes on one elip, and the next day tried another and did nowhere near that. The resistance felt like it was just slightly more although I had the machine at the same level.

Some deal with treadmills - 150 cals in 25 minuites at a speed of 5.8 and incline of 2. At another branch on a different model, I do 45 cals.

Are some machines way off base on their estimates/approximations, or are some machines more "broken in" than others?

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  • 4 weeks later...

I think it can depend on how often they're calibrated. The cardio equipment at my gym over here is the same aswell. Sometimes the resistance on one machine can be quite hard, but on another quite easy but at supposedly the same level. It's quite a pain in the a*s when you're trying to keep track of things.

Do you wear a heart rate monitor? Sometimes if someone on a nearby machine has one, your machine can pick up their heart rate, and that could push the calories being burned up a bit (..if they're working at a higher rate...)

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I've had a lot of experience with these, particularly the star-trac brand. Star-trac's calorie quantifiers work off a linear type graph curve, that is it takes into account your sex, age, heart rate, and weight, then applies that to a graph to see how many calories 'on average' are burnt over the time you have spent on the machine.

Some heart rate montiors are more accurate, and can calculate calories burnt, but get quite expensive.

As said before too, machines can pick up other heart rate monitors and indeed other electrical fields to scramble information.

Can you tell us the brand of the machine you were working on?

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All the club physicals I've been to have the Life Fitness ones - some of them are set for metric measurements, some for imperial.

And sure enough, resistance feels different on many of them. Curiously, at my main gym there is one that keeps breaking down - it's resistance is waaaayyy more than the other machines at any level, and after each "repair" it is the same.

I figure CP must have signed a deal to get a discount - would be good to get some other brand stuff. A look at bodybuilding.com shows a long list of faults. I've never actually tried ellipticals made by anyone else - are their computers questionable too? I image one which asks for age, sex and weight would be better than the LF ones which ask for weight only.

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All the club physicals I've been to have the Life Fitness ones - some of them are set for metric measurements, some for imperial.

And sure enough, resistance feels different on many of them. Curiously, at my main gym there is one that keeps breaking down - it's resistance is waaaayyy more than the other machines at any level, and after each "repair" it is the same.

I figure CP must have signed a deal to get a discount - would be good to get some other brand stuff. A look at bodybuilding.com shows a long list of faults. I've never actually tried ellipticals made by anyone else - are their computers questionable too? I image one which asks for age, sex and weight would be better than the LF ones which ask for weight only.

They can change the metric/imperial settings quite easily, just involves a tech coming in and changing that setting. I would have thought that should be done as standard. As for getting a deal, most suppliers of commercial fitness equipment don't hold stock, rather order it as they get orders. Buying in bulk does tend to get bigger discounts.

When calories expended are calculated, surely you'd realise that age/weight/sex etc should be taken into account. Just use those calories burnt settings as a rule of thumb.

At the gym I used to manage there was one dude who decided to do a 'marathon' on an elliptical. Took him ages, and he burnt X calories on a particular resistance setting. Once he had recovered, he tried again on the same setting. Beat his time, but burnt the same calories. Go figure!

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As said before too, machines can pick up other heart rate monitors and indeed other electrical fields to scramble information.

This is the first I've heard of it, but I imagine cellphones would be a prime culprit here...

I was on an elliptical today with my cellphone on in my pocket - I counted my real RPM vesus what the computer was saying. My real was 85, the computer reading was 78. Tomorrow I might try it with my cellphone off :pfft:

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  • 6 months later...

posted this in another post but its got to do with disterbance from other equipment. lots of electrical equipment, other machines, tv's fans , cell phones etc can cause eletrical disterbance within certain machines there for altering values.

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