We have had this excercise bike for over six months and have had no problems at all. It is lightweight, so it is easy to move around the living room. It is also almost completely silent which makes it easy to watch tv at the same time. I am now purchasing one for my mom, too.
Archive for Exercise
Phoenix 99608 Magnetic Recumbent Exercise Bike
I purchased the Phoenix 99608 to rehab my knee injured a few months ago. It’s great! I couldn’t ask for more features – they’re easy to read and easy to set up. However, setting up the machine itself wasn’t so easy. The holes on the seat back weren’t aligned properly so it was a real task to install the back. The machine is quite heavy too, so if you can’t lift a lot I’ll be glad to send my 15 year old grandson over to set up your bike too! Operation was a bit noisy a first but some 409 strategically placed as directed in the instruction manual took care of that.
100% Whey Protein – Gold Standard
People often say in reviews of protein powders and other health and fitness dietary products that the product is delicious. I try it and am underwhelmed. The people who rave over protein powder are clearly unaquainted with good food (that’s what comes of living on egg whites and skinless chicken breasts), or they’re comparing it to some of the really horrible stuff out there. The best I can say about the flavor of any of these products is that it’s uninteresting. So let me say that the flavor of this whey protein is uninteresting. It certainly isn’t bad. It could certainly be made better by the addition of ice cream, but that sort of seems opposed to the spirit of drinking protein powder.
I’m sold on this stuff because it passes the kid test. My kids like it. Like most kids, they aren’t into interesting flavors, and they aren’t into eating the delicious and nourishing food we put in front of them every night. Also like most kids, they like chocolate. The double rich chocolate version is convincingly chocolatey to anyone who doesn’t know better (like my kids). I put this powder in a Nestle’s Quick can and tell them it’s chocolate milk (note: I don’t actually lie and say that it’s Nestle’s Quick, but my equivocation puts me on shakey moral ground and I’m sure I’ll someday pay for it), and they’re quite happy with it. I, alas, am something of a chocolate connoisseur and can’t be so easily fooled as my kids, but still I find the flavor entirely okay. I suspect that when my children first taste real Nestle’s Quick at a friend’s house, they’ll wonder what Dad’s been feeding them and there will have to be some sort of a reckoning, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime, they’re getting a pretty decent protein supplement to make up for the meat and fish that they won’t eat at dinner.
On the technical side, this powder stirs into milk fairly easily, though I find it works best if I make a thick paste by adding a little milk to the powder and then adding more milk. If you try stirring the powder into a glass of milk, you’ll never get rid of the lumps. (I haven’t tried mixing it with water and don’t intend to – that sounds revolting – but if I were going to go that route, I’d put it in the blender with some ice-cubes, a banana, a little vanilla, and a shot of chocolate syrup.) (Okay, curiosity got the best of me; I just went in the kitchen and tried that recipe and it was sort of okay; I tried it again with some blackberries and it was actually almost good.) I can’t say anything about the quality of this product relative to other protein powders (that would require a large scale study), and I have no basis on which to say that it’s a worthwhile product for body builders or for people who are simply physically active. On the basis of no apparent malnutrition in my family, it seems to do no harm. Accepting the label for amino acid composition as accurate, it should be nutritious. On the basis of price and flavor, this is a solid product.
Marcy PL-43211 Upright Mag Cycle
I’ve had this bike for a couple weeks now and couldn’t be happier with it. I was a bit nervous buying it sight unseen, especially since I’m a pretty big guy (I fit in right around the bike’s 300-pound limit). Still, I’ve found this bike to be extremely sturdy, even under my admittedly large amount of weight. I’ve been using this unit about 3-4 times a day for about 15 minutes each time since I got it and have been very pleased with how quiet and smooth it is to use. I will agree with a previous reviewer that the tension cable is extremely difficul to connect, but I can’t really hold that against the finished product. Overall, I think that in terms of quality for the price, this unit would be impossible to beat.