Add this to your favoritesCable TV and Home Physical Exercise Gymnasiums
You need to give the people over at ESPN a good deal of credit. Over twenty years ago, the cable channel would run a number of classic home physical exercise broadcasts designed to help people get fit and slenderize. In a way, they encouraged the growth of home physical exercise gymnasiums as an alternate to travel to a local gymnasium to exercise. (Keep in mind, depending on where people live, access to a gymnasium may be prohibitive due to distance, weather, etc) These cable broadcasts understood that their viewers were primarily work at home moms and dads who were not able to get out of the house for ninety minutes but still had the hope to exercise. In addition, these moms and dads had the hope to embark on a dedicated physical exercise. They were, after all, tuning in every day! As such, they were ready, willing and able to convert their living room or basement (or both) into home exercise gyms.
Cable TV and the Simplicity of Home Physical Exercise Gymnasiums
To the cable programs’ credit, the producers understood that the average person watching such a program was not interested in packing on 30lbs of raw muscle and develop a contest winning physique. The viewers of the program simply wanted to get fit and make their home life a bit more physical. As such, the programs did not stress overly strenuous exercises designed to push the viewer to the limit. Instead, they prescribed a number of low to mid-level impact cross training broadcasts that anybody could benefit from with the difficulty level raised or lowered counting on personal athletic ability.
Also, in order to exercise properly, the viewer would need to invest in assembling one or more of the home physical exercise gymnasiums the program would prescribe. Expensive and elaborate equipment would be totally prohibitive to most viewers. While some could afford the expensive $3,000 home gymnasiums sold on infomercials, for the great majority of the viewers such a price was so far in the stratosphere it could seriously be considered. Instead, most home physical exercise gymnasiums consisted of a weight bench, dumbbells and, in some cases, bungee cord resisters. While not the expansive equipment found in a commercial gymnasium, these items were absolutely fine for most makeshift home physical exercise gymnasiums.
When it comes to physical exercise, something is better than nothing and the low impact exercises that these programs notified were far better than doing nothing. In fact, there were perfect for getting people into great shape and starting them on the path to a much healthier lifestyle.