It doesn’t look like much – a wood finished wall with protruding plastic arms, legs and cables.
I’m beginning to think more and more modern exercise equipment takes a page from a book on medieval torture devices, but with a design that somehow entices people to want to get fit.
This time around it’s Kinesis – a functional exercise training system designed by a company called Technogym.
The set-up looks like a hybrid between a Pilates Reformer machine and a weight training apparatus you would see at the gym.
But that’s where the similarities end, Kinesis is much more smooth and fluid than any weight machine I’ve tried.
“The way the cables pull on the body really challenges core. From the foundations of your feet right to the alignment of your shoulders, you’re challenged the whole time through the push and the pull of the movement,” says Krystle Johner, mind body and special populations programmer at Servus Place, where the Kinesis machines are located on the second floor.
The Kinesis wall, which hides a network of stacked weights, cables and pulleys, is divided into four pods – alpha, beta, gamma, delta – their design sleek and minimal, almost futuristic.
Kinesis operates on a unique 360-degree pulley-system, which means the user can move in three planes without having to change pivot points, adjust weights or cables.
Johner and I start with a few warm-up activities off the wall including sitting leg lifts on a stability ball and squats.
There will be plenty of balance and stabilization movements to challenge the core and lower body, she warns.
On the alpha station, we begin with a simple chest press. I can feel the tension of the cables pulling back at me, causing me to lean back. Johner instructs me to take a step away from the wall to increase the resistance.
Combine the chest press with alternate lunges, to make it even more challenging.
“It’s really important to keep the stacking of the joints and not to let the cables pull you, you’re pulling the cables,” reminds Johner.
Cross-over back fly, reverse fly and oblique twists are a just a handful of other exercises that can be done on alpha. On beta, we do everything from bicep curls to shoulder presses and deadlifts.
Each station loads the body a different way, which allows for more than 500 exercises and almost double the number of modifications, boasts Technogym’s website.
Johner shows me how to do a lat pulldown on the gamma station. When using a fixed weight, or for people with limitations through the shoulder joint, it can be difficult to externally rotate the shoulders and elbows to get proper activation of the latissimus dorsi, she says.
Kinesis is adaptable – exercises can be done standing, sitting on a stability ball or from a wheelchair.
Servus Place offers several Kinesis classes including Kinesis bootcamp, Kinesis with spin, TRX and for participants with multiple sclerosis and other neurological disorders.
“It’s a good workout in terms of strength and cardiovascular, but it’s also very neuromuscular stimulating. The motor neurons of the body get a lot of activation, which is great for developing control, proprioception (the sense of the orientation of one's limbs in space) and kinesthetic awareness (the body’s sense of its own relative position in space),” says Johner.
People with disabilities and athletes alike can be challenged with Kinesis.
We get the fitness gurus on the wall and they have terrible balance or no idea how to properly use their core, admits Johner. “It’s a really fun way to challenge even fit participants.”
Gazette reporter Amy Crofts is trying a different workout each month in an attempt to inspire people to spice up their fitness routine. If you have a workout idea, email: [email protected]
