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Now you can use your iPad (with Bluetooth) to connect to the new Octane Elliptical for workouts, videos and more! See how Octane has incorporated this technology into their Elliptical.
Watch Craig & Hut’s video review:
Hut: This is Hut Allred from New Wave Fitness here with Craig Lewin from Busy Body and Fitness Headquarters. We are here in Highland Park, America…
Craig: Yeah, Highland Park has become a state. That’s how amazing it is down here.
Hut: The Dallas location is further south from all of our other Busy Bodies. Tell me about this location. How long have you had this particular location?
Craig: This store has been here a long time. We’ve been here since the ‘90s and it’s a phenomenal location. It’s our number one store in the entire company. It’s really, really cool. We definitely baby this store. We love it.
A lot of that has to do with the area is amazing, the customers we get are phenomenal, and the people who run the store, Sam and David, are phenomenal as well. That just makes a huge difference. The ambiance here is just really phenomenal.
Hut: It’s great and customer service across the company is amazing, but really good job, really good job here.
Craig: It is, it’s great. The fact that the store is twice the size of all of our other stores, it allows us to really show off a lot of product and there’s even an upstairs. It’s pretty cool. You come in here and you can literally see every single possible thing that’s on the floor.
Hut: That’s great. So, we’ve done a video on our Octane Elliptical, but there’s been updates. There’s been improvements. So why don’t you tell us about those improvements and updates with the Octane Elliptical.
Craig: Octane has come out with a completely new redesigned machine, which has been really, really cool. The biggest updates that they’ve done have been into the console and the technology of that. One of the things that they’ve done now, they’ve integrated the iPad into their machine. It’s all done through Bluetooth so you don’t have to worry about, “Do I have a 9-pin connector, a 16-pin connector?”
It all just connects automatically, which is really, really amazing. The technology behind it is phenomenal. For us, we always think about ways to keep people engaged in the workout. That’s what’s so great about this iPad because it’s got videos built into it that tell you exactly what to do when you’re on the machine.
Hut: That is great.
Craig: Great feedback on the machine. You can store everything that you’ve done on the machine or on your iPad. It just holds you more accountable. It’s pretty cool. The really cool thing about this console is that I was talking earlier about how it keeps you engaged. That’s what it does; it really keeps you entertained. Right now, what’s on here is it’s literally a video that can pop up during your workout to tell you what to do.
One thing Octane really does an amazing job of is what we call “workout boosters.” While you’re on the machine, you hit a “workout booster” on there and all of a sudden, it cranks up and tells you, “Okay, now I want you to do your arms.” The resistance goes up with the upper body and it forces you to pull and push. Before, you would just hit “arm blaster” on their old models.
Now, when you hit “arm blaster,” not only does this whole thing light up blue because that’s what it says here, “arm blaster” in blue, but also it shows up here what to do. It tells you, “Push, pull the arms.” It’s a lot more interactive.
Hut: Which is great. The videos of all the exercises and demonstrations are just through the roof.
Craig: Yeah, because what they want you to do is they want you to do your cardio and your muscle strengthening at the same time. So, they literally have you get on the machine and you choose your cardio time.
Let’s say you said, “Okay, I’ll cardio for two minutes and then strength for one minute.” When it prompts you to get off the machine after your cardio, it’s going to show you a video. It’ll show you a video of a person doing push-ups, sit-ups, bicep curls.
One thing they’ve done, which is amazing, is they’ve integrated these stretch tubes with an anchor down on the bottom, so you can literally get off the machine and you can be doing bicep curls for that 60 seconds, 30 seconds—whatever it is.
If the video pops up on the screen (this is where they get really genius), if the video pops up there and you see an exercise that you feel like you can’t handle, you can actually skip the exercise.
You can hit that button and say, “Skip exercise.” It will go to the next video and you’ll go, “Oh yeah, I can do that one. Cool.” Then you get down and hit it. So, really just cool how they’ve interacted all of that.
Hut: They’re trying to get rid of us. That’s what they’re trying to do.
Craig: I know—no personal trainers.
Hut: People still need the accountability.
Craig: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, they’ve got to have you banging on their door, still. But that’s something that’s really cool—a lot of cool feedback. The other thing is, too, we all use our iPads every day.
I think that was one of the things that Octane said is, “What is the thing that we use the most when we’re working out and we’re taking entertainment?” That is the iPad. So they said, “Why don’t we just make that the console.”
You can even just minimize all the information here. Let’s say you wanted to just surf the Web still, check your emails, listen to music—you can do that and the program will still run in the background.
Hut: Exactly. If you don’t have an iPad, you can still use the interface.
Craig: Absolutely. That’s the other thing about the machine itself. The machine doesn’t actually need an iPad. It was just one of the cool features that they did. Besides the iPad upgrade, they actually did upgrade this a lot, too.
One of the biggest things they did, you notice how this is red through here? Well that right there is actually an activity meter. When you are on the machine and you start to go harder, that red gets more and more intense.
That tells you what you’re doing. The other thing they’ve used it for, too, is heart rate interaction. When you’ve got a chest strap on and you’re doing heart rate control, it’s kind of cool. If it’s blue, basically, you’re dead. If it’s green, you’re in your zone. If it’s red, you’re heart rate is too high. That’s something cool, too. They’ve integrated some really neat features on this console.
Even without the iPad, it’s been a huge upgrade. On top of the fact, they’ve done things for safety. MOM mode—you hit that button, the resistance cranks all the way to the top and it keeps it to where your kids can’t get on it and go flying off, which is great. They focused on the safety aspects of it. They’ve really focused on keeping us engaged, which is awesome.
Hut: Also, what’s really cool is you can add time while you’re in a workout, which normally, you’d have to shut the workout down to do that.
Craig: Right. Most machines don’t do that so they can do that as well, which is really, really cool.
Hut: And I do love the 30-30 and that’s high intensity intervals. If you want to get a quick workout that gets the most leverage post-workout with an after burn, that’s the workout to do.
Craig: Yeah, the 30-30 was integrated into their programming before. I mean, you could access it, but you’d have to go through a lot of things. Now you just push a quick button. You go, “Look, 30-30,” and that’s why they did that.
Hut: It was only like eight minutes. I mean, you could do 30-30 for as long as you want, which is awesome.
Craig: It’s a really, really, really cool program. Finally, they added some padding in the feet, which is really cool, too. So they’ve made it really, really comfortable. A lot of nice upgrades with these guys. We love Octane as a company, too, so we love supporting them.
Hut: Which is great. And it’s one of those machines that’s been around for a long time. It’s going to be around forever.
Craig: Yeah. Octane has really penetrated the industry and they’ve done an amazing job. These guys started in ’01, ’02 and said, “We’re going to be in clubs all over the world.” Everyone said, “Okay,” and then they are doing it. They’re doing phenomenal. It’s great. Glad to have it.
Hut: That is the updated Octane Elliptical. If you want to come check it out here in Highland Park you can do that or any of the other Busy Body locations in the Dallas- Fort Worth Metroplex. I hope you had a great Fourth of July and we look forward to talking to you guys next month.
Craig: Sounds great.
Hut: All right, Big Dog.