Most Bizarre Exercise Equipment

People will try just about anything to make their weight loss and fitness routine easier, including some really weird exercise fads. Promises of toned muscles with minimal effort seduce desperate shoppers into purchasing some bizarre exercise equipment. Either the device itself is weird, or videos of people using it are nearly not-safe-for-work. Here are some of the weirdest.

The most obvious choice for this list is the Shake Weight, the dumbbell that went down in viral video history for showing female users moving their hand up and down the handle/shaft of the weight, which happened to be pointed at their smiling faces. In case you have been living under a rock, here is a link to the official advertisement on YouTube. It promises to get your arms in shape for wearing tank tops, but theoretically, it would also build muscles used in certain XXX activities. For the record, there is a version specifically for men, too. The difference is that at 5lbs, the men’s Shake Weight weighs twice as much as the original, but the commercial involves fewer smiling faces.

No one thought there could be a piece of exercise equipment more suggestive than the Shake Weight, but there is. Inventors in Korea have come up with the Horse Riding Fitness Ace Power. A video advertising this device (in Korean) has gone viral due to the raunchy movements users do on it.  The idea behind Fitness Ace Power is a person’s movements while horseback riding…only those movements look a lot different when you’re not on a horse. In fact, the movements look more like you’re on another person in the middle of intercourse.

Fitness Ace Power looks like a bicycle seat on top of bouncy ironing board legs, so a user can choose to simply bounce up and down (presumably to work the quads), or he can amp up his workout by making figure-eights with his hips or moving the pelvis back and forth while moving the device up and down, It’s even dirtier than you’re picturing in your head.  You can see the advertisement video via Buzzfeed here.

Osim seems to have beaten the Korean company in the race to bring horseback riding-related fitness gear to the market. The iGallop takes a different approach to riding exercises and focuses more on moving the hips in a forward, circular motion. The device seems to be set up more like a pivoting bicycle seat on top of a small, stationary barbeque. The commercial tries to play up the hip gyrations: the camera focuses on svelte women’s pelvises as they wiggle around on the seat. By the way, all of the women are dressed in white, cowboy-inspired outfits. The iGallop embraces the suggestive movements, but theirs are nothing compared to the stuff going on in the Fitness Ace Power, plus there’s something charming about the middle-aged users in the Korean video who seem oblivious to the dirty moves.

If you have a landline and don’t mind looking ridiculous while you use it, there’s a dumbbell phone.  The product reportedly came from Japan, but it seems it is no longer in production. Internet searches produce a photo of a woman holding a large dumbbell attached to a phone that is held to her ear but no further information. If you’re often stuck on long phone calls, wishing the other person would hang up already, imagine how much worse it would be if you were holding a 10-pound weight to your ear the entire time. You would have some amazing guns, though.

Running on the spot can make you feel pretty silly, especially when you’re alone (because you just know someone will walk in on you). Well, there’s a way to look even more ridiculous as you run on the spot. Velcor shoes come with Velcro attached to the soles and a Velcro mat.  Again, there is very little information on this item other than a stock photo (people who bought it were probably too embarrassed to come forward and talk about it on the web). I assume it could be used to run on the spot, step on and step off, or other such moves that lift, then lower the feet. The Velcro would provide some resistance, but it’s not like Velcro is incredibly strong. If you’re bummed that you can’t buy the Velcor set, just buy some ankle weights and get resistance without this weird thing.

Do these devices actually work? The commercials say they do. Odds are, if you’re looking for a piece of equipment that will get you out of the hard work it takes to get in shape, you’re not actually going to use the gimmicky device. Just go for a jog. It’s free and you won’t have to store this bizarre gear.