Elliptical Resistance for Dummy Exercise

Elliptical Machine Magnet Location

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is one of the top priorities here at the Antisocial Network, so management recently upgraded the office gym by buying a NordicTrack® elliptical machine for the staffers to use. For the record, it's the Elite 13.1 (model 24055.0), which they admit they bought at Sears. Besides weighing enough that the boss had to bribe a couple of weightlifters to move the box into place, the darned thing's resistance came from the factory set at "NINJA"! In hopes of getting help, we contacted NordicTrack customer support, which appears to have been farmed out to Comcast. The next step was to google the problem, which is where we found eHowian Beth Rifkin stinking up the web with "How to Adjust the Magnet on an Elliptical Machine" at AZCentral.com (content supplied by Demand Media).

The nice people at NordicTrack have published a white paper they call "Understanding Magnetic Resistance," which even includes a rudimentary discussion of adjusting the resistance (author's note: "rudimentary" is overly kind – it's darned near skeletal). According to the maker, you have to adjust the jam nuts. How you get at the nuts or even identify them, however, is left to the imagination.

Even that half-assed support, however, is better than what readers get from Rifkin. Beth managed (somehow) to get the principle behind a magnetic resistance trainer right:

"Elliptical trainers use a magnetic bracket that works with the flywheel to determine the resistance level while the wheel is spinning. The stronger the magnetic field, or the closer the magnet is to the flywheel, the more challenging it is to move the foot pedals..."

...but she blew it in the very next sentence: "The display monitor provides the means for regulating the resistance level on most elliptical trainers, though some older or inexpensive models may require a manual adjustment." Umm, yeah: according to Rifkin, all you need to do to adjust the magnet is "Push the 'Up' arrow to increase the resistance and the 'Down' arrow to make the workout easier." If you're unlucky enough to have a manual model, Beth instructs you to

"Find the lever on your elliptical trainer that is used to adjust the resistance level... Move the lever to the level of resistance that you desire."

Ummm, yeah, you blithering idiot; that's what people who want to know "how to adjust the magnet" need to read: generic instructions on how to change the resistance while you're exercising!

We submit that Rifkin, who claims to be a widely published author of fitness articles, blew this one big-time – most likely because she has never owned an exercise machine of her own and had no idea that the magnet could possibly be out of adjustment. If that happened, she probably just switched machines at her gym... no, Beth's ignorance means that she was no help; a classic Dumbass of the Day move.

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