[Ab Solo]

Having trouble scoring a date? Do the villagers keep knocking on your door with lit torches and pitchforks in hand? Not to worry, there are plenty of gadgets out there that can help get you cleaned up, toned up and *ahem* beefed up for the ladies. But remember, it's not just about looks or how successful you are—women will see right past that to your inner beauty—your sparkling personality. Hahaha! Seriously though...these 10 gadgets can work wonders.

Grooming:

Mangroomer: Alright guys, let's start with the basics. You are never going to find a woman that finds it erotic to run her hands through your back hair. None of this "take me as I am" bs...shave it off with a Mangroomer electric shaver. You are making everyone sick there, Chewbacca. [Amazon via Link]

Goatee Saver: Moving around to the front, we have a contraption designed to keep your goatee neat and clean for the ladies. Just bite down on the clip inside to hold it in place and adjust the frame to the desired width using the gears. Don't expect miracles, though. Not everyone can work a goatee as well as Mark Wilson and I. [GoateeSaver via Link]

Just Kitting Kit: Traveling downtown we have a grooming kit specially designed to not only manage your excessive pubic hair growth, but turn it into a work of art. Each kit comes with a set of stencils that allow you to shape your pubes into patterns like a heart and a star. Unfortunately, there are no balloons, moons, rainbows, horseshoes, hats or pots of gold. [Makeup]

Sunshower Deluxe: If I have to tell you that taking a shower once in awhile is essential for attracting the ladies, there may not be any hope for you. Nonetheless, I will forge ahead with Sentavi's Sunshower Deluxe. It not only gets you clean, it also leaves you with a golden brown tan. [Sentavi via Link]

Exercise:

Treadmill Desk: You're fat—there is no getting around it. Sometimes you just have to suck it up and exercise. Fortunately a number of options exist that are aimed squarely at nerds. This treadmill desk with its five-display setup definitely falls into that category. [Link]

Springflex UB: The treadmill handled your cardio routine, now the Springflex will handle your strength training. As you can see, you never have to leave your precious computer when you do a workout. All you have to do is clamp the Springflex arms to your desk and get crackin' on those puny biceps. [Skymall]

Garmin Forerunner 405: If you can't afford a personal trainer, the Garmin Forerunner 405 may be the next best thing. Users can record data regarding speed, distance, heart rate and location (using built-in GPS) as well as info about courses, goals and specific workouts. It even wirelessly syncs to your computer when you enter the room. [Link]

Abdominal Etching: All the exercise and dieting in the world may not get you that six-pack that you have always wanted. That's where medical science comes to the rescue. In addition to standard liposuction, abdominal etching involves sculpting grooves in the fat layers to emphasize muscle. [Link]

Deception:

Wonderjock: If basic grooming, exercise and plastic surgery are not enough, you could go the extra mile and try to throw women off. For example: the Wonderjock is quite literally a Wonderbra for men. It separates and lifts, pushing your manhood forward—which gives the appearance of enhanced size. Rumor has it that Ewan McGregor bought a ton of them. [Aussiebum]

Ugly Bags: Okay guys, it's the end of the line. If all else fails just put on an ugly bag, turn down the lights and find a woman with poor eyesight. [MyStore]

Call me crazy, but moving your feet while sitting down isn't a form of exercise. It certainly isn't jogging. If you're sitting on a bed, you aren't going to get much aerobic exercise. I'm no doctor, but if you're so morbidly obsese that you can't stand up and walk around, you're beyond this thing's help. And if you're just lazy and want a way to "exercise" while still drinking milkshakes and watching Gossip Girl in your living room, well, you are also beyond this thing's help, albeit for other reasons. [MedLaunches via Gadget Lab]

One drug, known as Aicar, increased the mice’s endurance on a treadmill by 44 percent after just four weeks of treatment.

A second drug, GW1516, supercharged the mice to a 75 percent increase in endurance, but had to be combined with exercise to have any effect.

“It’s a little bit like a free lunch without the calories,” said Dr. Ronald M. Evans, leader of the Salk group.

The results, Dr. Evans said, seem reasonably likely to apply to people, who control muscle tone with the same underlying genes as do mice. And if the drugs work and prove to be safe, they could be useful in a wide range of settings.

Yeah, settings such as your couch, your desk chair and your bed, as those are the only places you'll be sitting when you're taking a pill that tricks your body into thinking you're some sort of Olympian.

Of course, the initial uses are going to be for people with diseases such as diabetes that are improved with exercise, but you know the major pharmaceutical companies are licking their chops and looking at the insanely-large couch potato demographic. The future is now! [NY Times]

[Yanko]

Why not allow people to jog through, say, the underwater city of Rapture from BioShock? Sure, a country dirt road in the summertime might be nice, but when you can put anything at all up there you might as well think outside the box. And if you can make running on a treadmill feel like a video game, maybe, just maybe you'll be able to get a whole new group of people into exercising. And that wouldn't be something even the biggest cynics could make fun of. Much. [New Launches via Ubergizmos]

The core muscle trainer is designed for low impact exercises, but does include "moderate" and "advanced" programs for when you want to hold onto the handle for dear life. The nine speeds (think Sybian) and seven programs are controlled via an LCD screen on the pommels. Just plop down $1,800, and this bucking grandma machine is yours, today! P.S. — This thing is out there, but it's still infinitely less sad than what Jesus dug up in May. [Hammacher Schlemmer]

[Yanko Design]

Despite it's name, the JW Treadmill desk can accommodate just about any exercise machines you have in the house. It also features electronically controlled monitor height adjustment and a variety of optional laminates, bumper molding and frame colors to match your decor. Unfortunately, precisely how much one of these desks will set you back is not known, but I have no doubt that it will be expensive—especially when customized. [Treadmill Desk via Born Rich]

[Yanko]

To be honest, I don't think the world really needs a Bluetooth headset, heart rate monitor combo—but a modified S9 that would allow users to increase volume, change tracks or answer calls with touch sensitive panels seems promising. However, like any other patent application, there is no guarantee either of these products will ever see the light of day. [Cellpassion]

One of the major problems with home gym equipment is that it is bulky and often requires a dedicated room of the house to use. That is why, in my opinion, the future of home gyms will be equipment that is designed to blend in with the decor. A few weeks ago I came across a concept that attempts to tackle that design challenge, but the final product leaves much to be desired. I'm a certified personal trainer—and if I were to design a piece of functional exercise furniture, I would like to think that it would be something similar to Gabriel Prero's Otto-Bench.

The Otto-Bench conceals an adjustable bench with an Olympic press and free weights inside a stylish ottoman—it even looks as though a leg press could be incorporated into the design. Obviously, it does not give you all of the variety that a commercial gym can offer, but it does offer a good set of basics—which is a good thing because there are plenty of manufacturers out there that try and cram too much into a design making it confusing and impractical to use. To be honest, you would be surprised at the amount of things you can do with a simple bench and some weights. It even won a design competition put on by Life Fitness, so don't be surprised if you see an actual product based on the Otto-Bench design sometime in the future. [Otto-Bench via Born Rich]

[Postfossil via Freshome via LikeCool]

The Verdict: As a personal trainer myself, I welcome any device that will motivate people to work out on their own—especially when outside of the gym. However, far too many of the gadgets that exist for this purpose are gimmicky and serve only to clutter up a garage after a few weeks of use. Unfortunately, I have to group the Gamercize GZ PC-Sport Power Stepper into this category.

Just to be clear, let me start off by saying that the device does what it is supposed to do. If you exercise, you can use the peripheral device hooked up to the machine. If you slack off, it will hijack the device until you get back on track. That having been said, I was a bit miffed about the machine's reliance on batteries. Both the power stepper display and the controller require them (one AA and three AAAs respectively). If the batteries die, it will probably be a while before they are replaced—and that could be the perfect window for unmotivated users to stop their workouts.

Another problem is that steppers of this type don't exactly provide an intense full-body workout (users can choose to hook the device up to an existing stepper with a 3.5mm jack connector). Sure, there are five different intensity levels to choose from and it will burn some calories, but the bottom line is this: If you are going to town on this thing at the office, your co-workers are going to plot against you inside five minutes. As you can hear in the video, the sounds of the power stepper would eventually drive anyone around you into a murderous rage. Even if you only used the device in private, trying to type on a keyboard or use a mouse while stepping can get annoying real fast. It's like trying to thrash on a drum kit and sing at the same time. It's just plain unnatural.

Finally, you are going to need a big desk and some short legs if you want to use the GZ PC-Sport Power Stepper correctly. I'm tall and my legs were up in my chest during the workouts—and adjusting the height of the steps on the machine only serves to reduce your range of motion which, in turn, reduces the effectiveness of the machine. Again, just about any type of workout is better than nothing, but you could get more out of your $200 by getting a gym membership and using your lunch hour for a quick 30-minute workout. [Gamercize]

Above, me at 30. Below, only five years earlier. Life is cruel.

The Basics
Wii Fit the game has special hardware: an electronic sensing balance board the size of a car floor mat. It doesn't just take stock of the pounds you've packed on. The board can tell where my feet are in a two dimensional grid using four sensors, and measure pressure within fractions of pounds, 60 times a second. Nintendo's parlayed the board's capabilities into a watchful eye, taking stock of your balance and skill in several exercises. The 50+ drills take about 1-6 minutes each, and are spread across yoga, strength, aerobics and balance. At first, I entered my height and the board measured my weight. It used both to calculate my body/mass index. It's here that the board told me I was overweight, and the debate is out whether or not that is from the extra mass in my legs or the ring of lard around my waist. (BMI does not account for body fat %.) Next, the game challenged me with some basic agility tests, and combined those results with my BMI to get my Wii Fit Age. I scored a Wii fitness level appropriate for a 48-year-old. (My real age is 30.) Humiliated, I set a goal to lower my BMI (and weight) by a few notches within the next few weeks and improve my general fitness.

Me Before: Eat whatever I want, exercise a lot, get buff.
Me Now: Too out of shape to do any sports, hate going to the gym, think yoga is boring.
Me Now: I guess I can play 30 minutes of Wii Fit for a work break.

Living With Wii Fit
I used the exercises in the yoga section to warm up. There's a decent variety of poses here, from simple breathing exercises to ballet-like poses that'll challenge even the most balanced and flexible. Being neither at this point, I enjoyed the static subtle workouts my feet, leg, hips, core back and abdominal muscles received. All the while, the trainer will encourage you with compliments about your ability to remain static in a stance, or chide you for wobbling. Previous to this, my experience with yoga included a class from some hippie with the last name Love. I was bored out of my mind, but Wii fit made it fun. The short duration of each test, along with the earning of a few "Wii Fit credits" for every few minutes of exercise.

Me Before: 100 explosive push-ups, no sweat.
Me Now: 10 explosive push-ups, no sweat
Me With Wii Fit: 10 slow-paced push-ups, with planks in between each repetition. Lots of sweat.

I earned credits for other types of exercises, too. The strength training has a focus on the core and legs, which I agree with as the most important in general power. There are squats and lunges for the legs, but no calf raises. There are planks and jack knifes for my abs, but no crunches or leg raises. There are slow push-ups interspersed with planks for shoulder, chest and tricep strength. Note: There is no opposite exercise for the biceps. I nitpick about drills I'd like to see the game recommend because over the months you'll want to cross train or your body will fall into a rut. The good news is that you won't get bored too fast: to unlock all the basic exercises takes a good number of hours, and I'd gather impossible to do within a week unless you're very fit already. But the available exercises are good basics and were challenging at the controlled slow pace that the game has you perform them at. I did some drills with dumbells to make things more challenging at times, and would probably work a medicine ball and some outdoor activities into the mix for variety.

Me Before: Run five miles for a warmup before training. Like a gazelle.
Me Now: Hate running. Get tired being pulled along by a 10-pound dog. Haven't thrown a real punch with any heat on it in years.
Me With Wii Fit: Running in place around my living room is pathetic. At least I'm sweating. If my friends from the boxing gym could see my now they'd laugh and cry. At least I'm in my own home, blinds down.

Aerobic workouts were definitely capable of making me sweat. I enjoyed jogging through a virtual park; the step class was not challenging; the hula hoop games are the most fun. But the most intense drill happened to be the advanced six-minute boxing drill. (The foot and hand combinations get complicated, requiring me to think while trying to react quickly, and the end-of-round bonus punching free-for-all added a nice bit of exhaustion to the workout.)

Me Before: Stand on one leg for as long as I'd like.
Me Now: No matter how much I use it or walk on it, the left leg is shaky from it being broken and pinned together a degree pigeon-toed.
Me With Wii Fit: Doing one-legged drills on my left is making my balance a lot better, very quickly.

Balance games are parlor games that encourage you to develop dynamic control in shifting your body weight. One game had me smashing soccer balls with my head while dodging cleats (hated it) but the best were the ski jumps, slalom and snowboarding emulators. (I could play those all day.)

While Wii Fit supports profiles for you and your friends and family, there is no versus mode. To challenge each other in ski jumping, for example, you either had to log Wii Fit credits on each other's accounts or back out to the main menu and reload your profile. That's a waste, because some of the best workouts I've had with Wii Fit were my matches with buddies.

After a Week
I used Wii Fit to track my fitness and focused on longer workouts of +40 minutes, with days off in between. My Wii fit age, largely by improvements in balance, improved to 31. While I don't think I burned much fat off (Ice Cream Wins Every Time) a week really isn't long enough to show real results in this regard. That said, I'm not sure you're going to stay sane doing 30 minutes of cardio in your living room, but people do such a thing on gym StairMaster machines all the time, so what the hell do I know. I also feel stronger from doing the sit-ups, squats and push-ups. Not necessarily strong, but taut.

90 Minutes of Wii Fit at 30x Speed

(An excuse to make a video using Joe Esposito's excellent track, You're the Best, from the Karate Kid.)

Me Before: Eat two hamburgers, run five miles right after, gain no weight.
Me Now: Eat at a hamburger while doing a blog post in five minutes, gain weight.
Me with Wii Fit: Eat at a hamburger, do a week of Wii Fit, don't gain weight.

Long-term Motivation: Habit Forming by Shame
I'd never been a fan of the gym commute's inefficiency. Making an hour's worth of travel, parking and changing just to do an hour of solitary weightlifting seems like a waste of time. Using the Wii Fit for a few minutes at home is a lot easier, and because of that and the way it would graph my efforts, I found the barrier to exercising much lower and the motivation to do even a little bit of activity much greater. In other words, Wii Fit brings video game addiction to my exercise regimen, and my body is the bloated scoreboard.

Every day, I'd check my body age and weight, and every day, I'd become more and more aware of my fitness. Did I gain a few pounds? Wii Fit made me admit if it was from night snacking on Haagen Daz or overeating (Answer: Both.) Did I miss a day of training? Wii Fit reminded me. And every day, the Fit never neglected to reinforce that I was currently "overweight" and weaker than I should be, while encouraging me with cheers of "good job" during exercises. It was very effective, like having a personal trainer. Except, not really.

Me Before: Couldn't take a day off from exercising without feeling guilty.
Me Now: Eats lots of ice cream when stressed at work. Can't take a day off from work without feeling guilty. Don't generally give a shit about exercise.
Me With Wii Fit: I feel guilty skipping exercise or eating crap both, but feel good when the Wii Fit says I'm strong or am doing a good job.

See, Wii Fit asks you to set goals of gaining weight (presumably muscle) or losing weight (presumably fat) but unlike a trainer, never ever goes as far as to customize your workouts to achieve this goal. I'd tend towards working out very hard on one day (1+ hour) and then taking a day off in between to build strength and power. The game offers no such advice. Another gripe: along with the lack of recommended training regimens, there's no way to have the game automatically step you through a circuit of exercises. Consequently, screwing with menus makes it so that a 45-minute workout includes 30 minutes of fiddling to choosing exercises, etc. That's a waste of time. A trainer would also differentiate between me being overweight or simply muscular.

What It Isn't
I suppose the first step in appreciating it is to treat it like a healthy video game, not a replacement for the gym. Not a personal trainer. Not a set of free weights. Not a bicycle. You won't make it to six-minute mile shape. Or 12 rounds of boxing shape. You won't be able to even run swiftly or jump high or swim far or do pull-ups, let alone build skills in an actual sport any more than Wii Baseball teaches you how to hit home runs. And why shouldn't you get in shape while learning a skill and coordination, too? No one is ever going to get past basic fitness by only playing Wii Fit alone.

If you need a little help getting into shape for the first time or back to your former glory, Wii Fit is the coolest, most interactive and kind way to ease your bloated body back into activity. And for serious athletes, it's a fun supplemental tool for measuring weight over time, and for improving balance on your days off. It's real exercise, but mild compared to what you'd get with free weights or running or swimming.

Let's put it this way: While I exercised a total of seven hours in a week with Wii Fit, I probably burned about a combined 1000 calories. Even though my muscles feel significantly tighter, even in just seven days, I easily wiped that weigh-loss potential away with the single pint of ice cream I ate watching Lost.

So what's it good for? In fitness, no machine can ever replace the drive to be healthy. Not Bowflex, not Thighmaster, and not Wii Fit. The real difference here is that Wii Fit builds fitness consciousness, reminding us of our body's state of being, chiding us for bad habits while encouraging the good. And this is while building up the basic fitness necessary to start doing high intensity workouts or sports. It makes exercise feel like a video game, and we all know we can have fun playing those for hours.

P. S. Nintendo, thank you for the grippy Wii Fit socks.

UPDATE: OK, 16 minutes in, I'm tired and my back is spasming a little. The balance exercises have rendered the bottoms of my feet useless. The board's quality is very high, although you're not supposed to jump on it. And the sensors are accurate. I'm not sure what I think of it. Give me a few days to get used to having Fit around.

Sure, it is Earth-friendly and it could come in handy during a power outage, but the product site is also billing the device as a great upper and lower body workout. And let's face it, there is nothing more satisfying than turning on your MP3 player and knowing that each song was powered by your own sweat and tears. Available for around $141. [Rakuten via TFTS]

We're not talking about 20-minute stints here, we're talking about replacing your desk with exercise equipment. There's no leaning back in your desk chair with this Trek Desk, people. It's balls-out commitment.

And while I don't doubt for a second that you'd lose weight if you did light exercise for eight straight hours every day, who the hell wants to do that? Why don't you just, you know, go to the gym for 45 minutes after work so you aren't disgusting and sweaty during meetings. You don't want to get a reputation for that stinky, out of breath guy who doesn't know the meaning of the word "moderation," after all. [Product Page via Boing Boing Gadgets]

What's even better for people who live in cold places or don't like to run outside (me) is that there are sensors for talking to exercise machines to fetch data. The only downside? Nike's slow-ass development cycle means you're not going to see this for another year or two. Seriously. Some of these leaked Nike products back from January 2007 still haven't been released. [iPodNN]

According to their findings, the miCoach is easy to use and the features would definitely be a useful tool for fitness-minded individuals. Even the phone itself was impressive with features that include a 2-megapixel camera, 1GB MP3 player, microSD card slot, Bluetooth 2.0, and quad-band connectivity. However, the major problem is that users cannot take advantage of this software on any other Samsung phone—and the company claims that there are no plans to remedy that anytime in the near future. Still, it seems like a fitness tool with some potential—and customers looking to shed a few pounds can get their hands on one starting this April. Pricing information has not been made available. Hit the link for the full review. [Pocket-lint and miCoach]

With three modes for walking, jogging and aerobics, the device also accepts audio input from an MP3 player so you can jog along to your favorite tunes, or a recording of your most inspiring jody if you actually are a military type. Available in April for around $53. [Tech.co.uk and Dvice]

Let's say you walk a mile and a half to work every morning, and then the same distance back home in the evening. The U-Mate device will convert your three city miles into three coastline miles, starting from the closest part of the coast to your real location. As you walk, little factoids will pop up on the screen about local sights, history and produce.
With over 11,000 miles of coastline, the makers of the U-Mate reckon it would take around 30 years for a virtual circumnavigation of the country if your daily commute was one mile. [Kilian-Nakamura]

The best part about the technology is that the user is free to wallk, jog, or run with a full-range of motion in both the upper and lower body. And the design of the enclosure is such that the user feels very little of the force needed to hold their weight. It will probably cost a fortune, but a device like this should find a home in plenty of medical facilities and gyms (hopefully) in the near future. Naturally, the Alter-G has the potential to be an invaluable tool for injured patients and the elderly, but it would be an exceptional tool to get those who are just plain fat and out of shape up and moving. [Alter-G via MedGadget]

He says that the Wii Fit's purpose isn't to make you fit, but to make you aware of your body. It's the same thing you could accomplish with a bathroom scale and an Excel document, but it's much more fun when you do it as a family and get to play little minigames with it. Plus, there's yoga. Either way, we still believe the Wii Fit is worth its fairly reasonable price tag if your family's not really health conscious—which describes most readers here. [Nintendo via CVG via Kotaku]

In addition to my duties as a writer for Giz, I am also a certified personal trainer. So I know what its like to work out hard and sit in front of a computer all day. While I always encourage clients to try and work in fitness whenever possible, I have to wonder how practical a device like this would be. Is it really possible to concentrate on your work while furiously stepping on the GZ PC-Sport? Can the stepper get the average person's heart rate elevated enough to really see results? Is using the device going to result in more than just trim calves? Hopefully a hands-on with the device will help to clear things up. [Product Page via Crave]