Fitness Meets Eco-Friendliness
Fitness buffs regularly go to the gym to burn calories and power their muscles. The good news is – fitness enthusiasts can do more than just performing their exercise routines. Now, the force they utilize in their aerobic exercises can already be efficiently captured and effectively converted into a productive renewable energy rather than just becoming a wasted energy. Fitness now meets eco-friendliness. And this is something that the modern world can somehow take pride in.
How It Works
Eco-gyms of today turn their retrofit aerobic machines such as elliptical trainers, stationary bicycles and steppers into equipment that generate electricity. With this, they are not only able to promote green technology in their business, but also reduce their electric bills at the same time. The stationary bike, for example, create resistance and produce heat through friction. So, instead of wasting people’s energy, it is processed through a generator to power the building’s electrical system. Not only that. The energy coming from the exercise machines can also charge mobile phones and laptops.
Tracing Its History
The idea of fastening a generator to an exercise machine is already an old concept. Moreover, this technology started to gain popularity when California Fitness, a gym in Hong Kong, used exercise equipment to power fluorescent light bulbs and charge battery. From that, the fitness innovation has already been marketed in different ways across the globe.
Limitations and Challenges
Although the idea of getting fit while getting green is inviting and at the same time promoting responsible usage of energy, it still has to hurdle challenges to continue its rise into the mainstream. One challenge of this green technology is producing low amount of energy to feed back to the electrical system. Looking at the performance of an average person who is in good shape, he can only generate up to 150 watts in an hour of vigorous exercise. Captured energy from such physical activity would not do much to produce electricity. Perhaps, just an hour to power television for every person pedaling on the stationary bike.
Second challenge to this innovation is the high upfront cost of acquiring such exercise equipment. According to companies that sell this kind of equipment, the costs of these retrofitted equipment vary from each other depending on the type of electrical installation incorporated in it. Approximately, a gym can cost as much as $1000 to purchase such exercise machines. Aside from being costly, it would also require much time to payback the cost associated with buying the equipment.
Conclusion
It is good to note that not only hotels and malls involve themselves in promoting a better environment, but also gyms as well. Although exercise machines with generators still have a long way to go, what we have now is a great jumpstart to having environment-friendly equipment even in the fitness sector. The future of green technology continues to be promising and we would be looking forward to seeing more innovations ahead. In time, people’s physical fitness would achieve more than just the outer body form, but also a healthier inner side from cleaner environment.
