At my local gym S.A.T.S., there are lots of equipment from Technogym. I like the fact that I can set up programs on the treadmill, so it gets more realistic, with hills and speed variations.
What if it was MUCH more advanced?
I love my Xbox. Once in a while I hurdle through the streets of Sydney, Chicago, Stockholm, Edinburgh and Moscow in the game Project Gotham Racing 2, beautifully rendered in 3D, with stereo and superb surround sound. Great fun.
Now, all these cities have marathons too: Sydney, Chicago, Stockholm, Edinburgh and Moscow.
Wouldn’t it be great if I could run the same beautiful tracks from PGR2, as I drive on my Xbox?
Combine treadmills with game consoles
Here is how it could work: I sign up for an Xbox live account. And some kind of Technogym (or other manufacturer of training machines) account. When I’m at the gym (or even at home), I use a digital ID to log on. It could be a small wireless keychain or an USB dongle.
When stepping on to the treadmill, my favourite tracks/cities/landscapes (set up on my Xbox or computer at home in advance) pop up on a LCD screen in front of me. It could be a city like in PGR2, or landscapes, which I think most people would prefer. I could run the French Alpes one day, and the treadmill would raise the angle with the terrain. And play the sounds of the landscape; small rivers, birds singing, wind in my hair. Oh, it’s almost as being there. Almost.
Since all machines are online, I could also run with other people at the same track, in real time. I could put on headset (if I’m not too tired too talk) and talk to other runners in other locations all over the world. I could beat Joi in quick run through Ginza. Or race Jason through Central Park. Easy!
My Polar pulse belt would of course send its data to the machines in the gym, and I would be able to see it all on theTechnogym or S.A.T.S. site from home. And see my progress.
Beat Lance Armstrong (with some cheating)
When bicycling at the gym, I could also choose where to go. And I could participate live with real bicyclists. Like the Tour de France and the Giro d´Italia. If the real cyclists wore GPS units in the race (like the rally cars in WRC does, we could race them from our gyms (and the tv-viewers would get lots better statistics on screen). The real cyclists would of course beat the crap out of me. So I get an x1.5 (or rather x10) to my speed. I can bicycle in realtime when the race is on, or later when the riders are in.
Through a venture with other software makers, Technogym could release a software package where I can create my own tracks. And even upload them on the net. I can map the woods next to my house, and use GPS data to get heights and directions. Good tracks are presented on the website. People could vote for best tracks.
Or the gym could match customer data with GPS positions of tracks to give them tracks where they live. Or even make their own tracks and sell them to customers. “Buy London Marathon track, with the new museums added, only Euro 5.99″. Or “Run Central park at night. Gates included! Only US$ 9.99″.
Or places one never could run in the real life. Like the great chinese wall. Or imaginary places: Run through the castle of Hogwarts in Harry Potter. Or the upper decks of Titanic. Or the fields outside Minas Tirith in of The Lord of the rings, running through hords of orcs and other brutal beings (the nice thing is that the software make them jump away with a scared impression when you approach them!) Or flying, so that your running or bicycling translates to engine power in a small plane or some kind of manpowered flying device.
Since all machines are networked, and my digital ID tracks what I’m doing, the gym gets a very good overview of my progress. It tracks how much I have run, how much I have bicycled, lifted, pulled etc. My personal trainer can pinpoint exactly where I need to change something.
Add your favourite tunes…
Maybe I could subscribe to music streams on the machines too. So when I connect on a machine, I get streams of music according to my taste? Maybe my Last.fm stations I already bring my iPod but new music is always nice.
A bicycle or treadmill with an online Xbox system would certainly make training at home lots more fun. Just a plain version where a nice landscape follows the speed on the treadmill or the bicycle would make things much more inspiring. And the fact that I would know where I “left off” last time; “that small house near the river”, and could start off there next time.
I predict that the next big thing in training with machines is online connections. This is good for statistics, I know my progress and I can’t cheat. And it’s pure entertainment: It’s so much more fun running on Venice beach than in my dark basement with the wind howling outside.
All this would of course be connected to some kind of mail and SMS system. So I get reminders on mail or mobile when it’s time to run/lift/cycle/row again. I could make competitions with my friends. The first one to make a 10% progress in weigths. Or run a marathon. Or cycle Paris-Nice. Or increase oxygen intake or whatever. If you add online weights with the same digital IDs, people could weigh themselves at the gym (if weight loss was the issue) and have the results stored online.
Sony/Microsoft and the game producers could sell advertising along the tracks. When running the London marathon on the treadmill, I pass shops and signs with products of my taste. I just tap the panel in front of me to get the offers mailed to me back home.
Make a standard - the new “MIDI” for exercise maschines
I’m always frustrated with the lack of open standards in the computer world. So to keep up competition, we make a standard for the data that the training machines collect when we train.
I call it EMIL - Exercise Machine Interchange Language.
It sounds like “e mill” (electronic mill) when you say it. And it’s my little homage to Astrid Lindgren’s wonderful character Emil.
It defines what kind of training I’m doing (weight loss, muscles etc.), what kind of the body the exercise is for (lifting weights trains the biceps etc.), how many repetitions or how far (12,4 kms on the bicycle), and with what “weigth” (which gear on the bicycle, how many kilos lifted etc). It’s like MIDI for exercise. This way, different producers of training equipment could hook up to the same standard, and people could move their data with them. Software makers could make software that reads the data from the digital IDs or the websites, so people could use their data at home, analyze them, publish them. Companies that make “sporty” mobile phones like the Nokia 5140 and the Siemens M65 - and Garmin that make a special GPS for training - could use the same standard, so that all your training is stored in one single place. The product would be labeled “EMIL enabled”.
The same could be done everywhere else people train and exercise: Squash halls (the unit stores the number of minutes you played, and heart rate if you used a heart rate monitor/belt), ski slopes (measures how many times you did the slope etc.) and swimming (how many meters etc.).
Use the comments section to improve on the idea!
I’ve posted a little update, looking at Brian Eno and StepUI from Microsoft.
Technogym has now a system to keep track of your training progress. Read about it here.