For a Good Workout, Try Some Channel Surfing

forecast: mostly sweaty The Weather Channel is among the choices on televisions attached to treadmills at Results, the Gym, on U Street. (By Mark Gail -- The Washington Post)
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Running 26 miles is a killer workout whether you're watching TV or not, and his body burned the same number of calories it would have if he'd been staring at a blank wall. "For most workouts you don't need to be there," Pittsley said. "Be on the French Riviera." But commercials can be a problem, he warns, because "the disassociation stops."

McCall advises harnessing the rhythms of TV to your advantage. When the commercial comes on, that's when you pick up the speed. "It's the old Chuck Woolery 'two and two,' and then you go easy for five to eight minutes," he says. "That's a good recovery interval."

Folks using a Gold's Gym Cardio Cinema have entire movies to go through, with no commercial breaks. "You can get really lost in it," says manager Cameron Child. So although people who stay for an entire two-hour film tend not to work out at a high intensity the whole way, he says the ones who come in for shorter periods usually crank it up. "We have to keep it two to three degrees cooler than the rest of the gym," he says.

Using a large screen also avoids one of the problems of combining TV and exercise: bad biomechanics. Karageorghis fears people watching television lower or raise their chin for a better view of a screen, and McCall reports seeing neck-craning -- especially when the TVs were smaller -- by exercisers who weren't wearing their glasses.

That's why Equinox, the super-high-end health club chain (with a location in Tysons Corner) avoids personal TV screens in favor of a large bank of plasmas. "We felt that was the wrong posture. You shouldn't be looking down; you should be focused straight ahead," says Chris Carnecchia, general manager of the Tysons location. Besides, adds David Harris, Equinox's national director for training, beyond the postural concerns, personal TVs disrupt what he calls the right "staging" of an exercise environment. "The energy is different. People aren't looking around and learning from other things going on."

So there are some concerns blocking television's total dominance in gyms. And even though experts believe the trend toward more screens will continue, especially using new interactive technologies to give exercisers more game-like experiences, there's one part of the gym that everyone agrees should stay TV-free: the weight room. Form is crucial when you're lifting, and it takes focus and concentration. Distraction there doesn't mask pain -- it creates it.