NordicTrack A.C.T. Features

I am feeling quite sore today after yesterday’s 6:35 minute workout. My legs feel OK, but the muscles in between my shoulder blades are very sore. I haven’t made up my mind as to whether I’ll take today off or not. I might get on and just hold onto the side railings. I think it was the wider arm poles that did my arms in. We’ll see. I’m itching to get back on it though.

As promised, here are a few pictures of some of the features I love about my new elliptical.

Nice looking machine all set up and ready to go. Note the piece of paper hanging on the wall. It’s got mileage information on it so I know how many revolutions is equal to a certain distance. I wrote it in 1/10 mile increments. Good thing too, as I only did .2 of a mile yesterday.

Big logo on the side. Not too “in your face”.

Love the console on the machine. The display color is blue (was very happy about that), and it displays how long you’ve been on (upper left), revolutions (upper right), calories burned (lower left), wattage output (low middle, not sure what it means), and RPMs (revolutions per minute).

On the lower portion of the console is a speaker. You see that black cord hanging down on the left side?

That’s a power cord you plug into your mp3 player or cd player. Pretty nice! I tried it out with my iPod, and the sound quality is excellent. I’ll be using that for sure whenever I’m on it. No more ear buds falling out midway through my workout.

At the very top of the console is the fan. I totally forgot to turn it on during my workout, but I’ll remember next time. I got so used to getting on the elliptical and not turning on the fan, I just spaced it. The fan has two speeds, high and low. There’s a third fan option called “auto fan”, where the fan increases or decreases depending on how fast you’re pedaling. I don’t think I’ll fool around with that, I plan to have it on high the entire time.

In the middle of the console there’s an ifit thing. I’ve never played around with ifit (it was on my old elliptical also), so I’m not sure how it works. I think you need an ifit card of some sort, and you plug that card into the slot and pick a workout that you can download from their website. Not positive, so I may be completely wrong.

Also in the middle of the console, you’ll see the start button (it turns on the screen if it’s been idle for 5 minutes, or you can move the pedals to turn it on), the display button (you can pick and choose what you want to see. I plan on showing everything all the time. Time, calories, RPMs, etc.), workouts button (the machine comes with some pre-set workouts), and the enter button with arrows (not sure what they do yet, but I think the left and right arrows are for scrolling through the pre-set programs and the enter button selects a workout).

On either side of the console, there are numbers. On the left you’ll see 1-10 and on the right you’ll see 11-20. Those are the resistance levels. Push a numbered button and after a few seconds, it will change the resistance. Twenty levels of resistance! My old machine only had 10 levels, and I only got up to level 4 when I used the resistance.

I didn’t get a good picture of them, but on the very bottom of the console are the hand grips you hold onto to get your heart rate.

Think that pretty much covers the console.

These are the foot pedals. Nice and narrow stance. No more awkward wide legged stance. I’m hoping that the narrower stance will make it easier to use my Vibram Five Fingers. I think the wide stance of the old machine caused my ankle issue a year ago. We’ll have to see. I might get less blisters too. I need to pay attention when I get on next time to see if I’m pushing with my whole foot now or if I’m still pushing with the insides on my feet.

This is the water bottle holder. I don’t think I’ll use it, because I need to stop and get off entirely to get a drink. I don’t have the balance to take one hand off the pole and grab a bottle and drink. My husband will probably use it though.

The bottle holder is one thing I was sort of worried about. On my other machine my knees kept hitting the water bottle holder, so we had to take it off. I do not hit this one at all, don’t even come close to it.

    

This is the stride adjuster thing-a-ma-bob. You pull out the knob and move it up or down to the stride you want. You can pick 18’’, 20’’ or 22’’. I like the 20’’ the best. I haven’t tried using the knob myself, but my husband says he needs to grease it because it feels “gummy” when he moves it.

    

This was a complete surprise to me. What is this you ask? It’s a wall adapter! No more batteries for me! The console runs off of electricity. I was not expecting this at all. I don’t remember the specifications on the Sears site saying anything about this. I am very happy. One of my major complaints with my old machine was the fact that the display screen flickered on and off no matter if it had new batteries or not. The coils in the battery compartment got squished and I basically just gave up on it.

So this was a very unexpected and nice surprise. When it first came, I actually skimmed through the owner’s manual to see what kind of batteries I needed. Didn’t see anything in the book. There was a small box included with all the parts, and it was the wall adapter. Cool beans man (that was for you Monique)!

 

And finally, this is my mileage chart. I have revolutions from .1 mile all the way to 2 miles (in .1 increments) for all three stride lengths. And the black thing in front of it is one of the arm poles. I couldn’t get a clear shot without getting it in there.

There you have it. The features of my new elliptical. So far, I love it. I can’t think of anything I don’t like about it. I’ve only been on it once, but I am very happy with it.

We’ll see how long it will take me to get up to a mile again. Hopefully it won’t take me too long.

Have a good day and a great weekend!