When I’m in the mood
for killing a few minutes with some mindless television, I don’t go for soap
operas or “reality” TV – I turn to ads for exercise equipment and fitness
programs.
I don’t know what it
is about these ads, but they catch my attention and hold it in a way that
similar ads for air-fryers or non-stick frying pans just can’t. Whenever I
flick onto one of the ads-that-go-on-forever channels (i.e. home shopping
whatnots), I’m always disappointed when someone is blowing a crepe out of a
frying pan instead of showing Chuck Norris.
I love Total Gym ads.
I also love Bowflex ads – although I preferred the old machine that had the
whole “bow” thing happening; the glorified elliptical trainer they have at the
moment is boring in comparison. Oh, and TapouT XT ads are a hoot, but they don’t
have a patch on the ads for the Brazilian Butt Lift. I was always incredibly
happy whenever I came across the BBL ads on the home shopping networks – but
mostly because the way they referred to one’s derrière as a “boom-boom” was
hilarious.
I’ve never actually
bought any of these products, I just love the ads. I will confess that I did actually
buy some DVDs for Tae-Bo.... but this was many, many years after Tae-Bo was a
thing, and I bought them because I found them in a shop for a really cheap
price. I wanted to see if I was the kind of person who would actually use an
exercise program on DVD (you know, just encase I decided to go for the BBL DVDs).
Turns out I’m not.
Glad I didn’t buy them
at the height of their fame for 4 easy monthly payments of whatever it was back
then.
The thing that struck
me recently (when I saw a Bowflex ad straight after a Total Gym ad) is the fact
that they all try to market their machines/programs as time savers. “Achieve
results in less than 10 minutes a day!”
For some reason, they
have decided that time is the biggest
reason behind people not exercising. They seem to think that, if people can
spend less time doing that pesky workout thingy, they might be more willing to
buy the workout thingy.
But the fact is, we’re
not not exercising because we don’t
have time. Of course we’ve got time. We’ve got oodles of time. I just spent 20
minutes watching an ad for Total Gym.
If I’d just grabbed a
skipping rope and skipped for the entire time the ad was running, and maybe
threw in some plank exercises during the Bowflex ad, I’d see some pretty
impressive results if I kept that up for a few weeks – and all for the low cost
of one monthly payment of $3 to get the skipping rope from KMart. But wait!
If you order now, we’ll also throw in the floor of your own house (normally
valued at nothing) for free!
No, the main reason I
don’t exercise much is I’m too lazy to get changed. I don’t want to get hot and
sweaty in the clothes I’m wearing, but I really can’t be bothered changing into
suitable clothing. And if I did make the effort to get changed, after I
finished exercising I’d have to get changed again – or sit around in uncomfortably
sweaty underwear for the rest of the evening. I’m certainly not going to do
that for “less than 10 minutes a day!” – what would be the point of that?
Total Gym, if you come
up with clothes and underwear that I can exercise in, and then just loll about
in for the rest of the night without feeling sweaty and stinky, you’ll have my
full attention.
