Home Fitness

Bowflex. Nordic Track. Total Gym. And anything with Chuck Norris's face and/or signature on it. All losers.

Don't get me wrong, they're all great successes and marketing ploys with most likely good intentions, but all monumental tragedies and bear traps to the consumer'’s finances, good credit, and New Year's resolutions.

Personally I love exercise. Makes me feel good, rejuvenated, accomplished. And that's why I go to the gym. Not home, the gym. I go. Go out. Go out of my house and go to the gym. Leave my place of cushiony relaxation and a smorgasbord of fatty culinary delights and surround myself with sweaty people in an atmosphere conducive to physical fitness. Because when I get home from work, that's all, folks. I'm on vacation until the next day of business. No strenuous tasks for me, like turning on the TV without the remote -- never mind blasting my pecs or running in place for a "Cosby Show" episode's span of time.

You see, the problem with purchasing home fitness machines and attempting to turn that guest room into a Gold's Gym is that, although it initially sounds like a good idea, you're trying to run a 10K and do a thousand crunches within a 15-foot radius of your food pantry where the doughnuts and Oreos are. Let's be honest, it's really only a matter of days before that monstrous, metallic mold of muscle machinery is reduced to a drying rack for your XL T-shirts.

Workout videos aren't much better. Just Wal-Mart impulse buys: Look at the cover of that video case with the blonde bombshell and her bodacious buns of steel in that tri-colored leotard. Put the Pepperidge Farm cake back, honey, because your wife's gonna look like this in six weeks!

Now, how many times are you actually going to watch that same aerobic VHS tape with the same instructor yelling out the same buzzwords of motivation and performing the same exercises? My guess is four. And that fourth time will be from your couch while you're dunking those aforementioned Oreos with your feet propped up on the coffee table.

Truthfully, I'm not 100% positive the human body is really even capable of circumflexing itself into any of those pretzel twists portrayed by the video aerobic and yoga instructors. As they bend and contort their bodies, I can't help but think that, yes, if my childhood memory serves me correctly, this appears to be the point at which my Batman figure's leg would snap off.