Nordic Device of Torture

I'm sure you've seen them in infomercials, at used sports equipment stores, or perhaps in the basement or garage of every third house in every suburban neighborhood. I speak of this device, created by the NordicTrack company -- the ski machine.

Now my beloved mother can hardly find her car in a parking lot without falling into an imaginary hole. She once tried to jog around the quarter mile block surrounding my parent's house and ended up with the type of abrasions normly reserved for someone recently dragged behind a moving vehicle. Yet for years, I watched her use this machine with the greatest of ease while watching whatever she had recently taped off of HBO, a channel to which they did not subscribe, hence the snowy picture and lack of what we in the industry call "vertical hold," but that's another blog (I'm still not entirely convinced of her purpose in using the ski machine. She's never looked anything other than "skinny" my whole life.)

So when my parents relegated their precious ski machine to the garage, Erin and I adopted it (as we're prone to doing these days), and it has been going to no use in a corner of our dining room ever since. So last night I missed my workout on the way home and decided to give the NordicTrack a whirl. Now the construction of the machine is simple. You stand on a pair of skiis roughly five or six inches off the floor -- just high enough to twist the devil out of an ankle if you slip off. Approximately waist high, depending on your height, is a brace which pushes into your midsection while you "ski." With your hands, you hold a jumprope looped through a tension wheel at the top, just to make sure no part of you has the ability to generate balance while using this thing.

I hopped on without any hesitation and tried to start skiing. I quickly realized that the tension on the skiis was too tight for a first timer, but Erin, my Biblical helpmate, unfortunately noticed this first. Without warning she dropped the tension lever to zero.

Now I'm sure my father, using a napkin over some Mexican food, could give a much more accurate drawn representation of what happened next, but I'll do my best. You see, in physics there's this whole equal and opposite reaction business. Basically the tension wheel is working against the skiis which are working against my feet and legs. If you remove the tension, the skiis are free to do as they wish, which is not provide a reaction against my feet.

The geekless version of this is that the skiis immediately shot out behind me sending me, more or less, horizontal. I didn't completely hit the floor though, as my face first slammed into the waist high brace which gave me enough to time to yell something starting with F or S before catching myself. After explaining to Erin that you can't just release ALL the tension at once, I regained my composure and repositioned myself on the machine. (She didn't hear my explanation through her tears of laughter.)

I began slowly trying to ski on the machine. I've skiied a lot in my life, and this felt like no skiing I've ever tried. I LIKE skiing, but this...this I didn't like. Erin's approach to using the machine is to reduce the tension to zero and sort of run on it. My approach was to set the tension at the midpoint and try to really ski on it. I eventually got to where I could stay upright, and I even eventually was able to get my arms into the act.

A couple of things I discovered during my half hour workout. First off, the machine forces your back to stay ever so slightly hunched, leaving you with incredible lower back spasms after the fact. I could hardly walk when I was finished. Second, if you try to stand upright a little bit to reduce the throbbing in your back, for whatever reason, the skiing motion just naturally stops. You find yourself suddenly standing there trying to catch your balance, all the while trying to figure out why the blamed thing stopped skiing. And finally, the brace that presses on your midsection really just pushes on your digestive system enough to create incredible gas throughout your workout. I had an ice cream treat at McDonalds prior to the workout (don't ask how this fits into the diet...it just does), and the combination of dairy and the waist brace made the lower section of our house pretty much uninhabitable by the end of the workout.

All in all, the experience made me realize that this is only an emergency option for missed workouts. I'd be better off to go out and run around the block or something. This ordeal also gave me a new respect for my mother. I'm sure she has absolutely no idea as to how or why she can use this device successfully, but such dumb luck is frequently on her side, so good for her. As punishment for Erin laughing so hard at me, I listened to the new White Stripes album at high volume throughout my workout. That'll teach her...