Episode 2 – The Symposium Series By TRUE Learning Collective – Palisade, Alpine, And Spectrum.

Welcome, everyone. I’m Frank Truelaske, CEO of TRUE. Today we’ve got a fantastic webinar for you on a TRUE Cardio Line that was going to be at IHRSA, and we hope you enjoy the show. It’s from episode 2 – The Symposium Series and it’s going to be on the Palisade, Alpine, and Spectrum machines. We welcome everybody from around the world, all our distribution and customers in the United States. Thank you for joining us today.

Overview

Hello and welcome, I’m Randy, TRUE’s training and education manager. I’m excited to present to you some of the showcase cardio pieces that we have. As Frank mentioned, we’re going to talk about the Palisade Climber, the Alpine Runner Incline Trainer, and our Spectrum Adjustable Stride Elliptical.

Palisade Climber

First is our Palisade Climber. What inspired the design of it is, we talked to gym owners, gym operators, service techs, users. And we came up with a design to make sure that safety, durability, and serviceability were a priority.

Safety

As you walk up to our Palisade, you’ll notice that we have two safety steps, and what’s nice is we integrated the steps into the whole design of the machine.

We’ve got a very nice clean premium look. I mean, there are some sentinels out there or climbers that don’t even have the safety step. So we have two of them on our machine. Now the lower ones are typically there to help you get on the machine. But I really like the top ones that help a user. When they need to pause during exercise or in case of an emergency of some sort, they could simply get off the moving step and step up on the top step.

I like it before I HIIT train, do a really hard interval on it. You can hop off and recover during your HIIT circuit, or your HIIT exercise. Another thing I want to mention as you walk up to the climber, we have a really deep step. We have over 11 inches of depth. Why is that important? Well, because as a user, you can get your whole foot onto the step. What that allows you to do is to get a true glute workout when you’re on a machine.

Durability

Not only is it a step deep, but it’s also the strongest step in the industry. We’ve tested the strongest competitor step out there. And we found through testing that our step is 10 times stronger. What does that mean for you as a gym owner or operator?

Well, the step won’t bend or bow in the middle, therefore will cause any inward bending or stress on the step bearings in the side. So that means you don’t have to whip out your out-of-order sign. Something that members of gyms just love to see when they walk up to a piece of machine. That speaks to our durability. Another thing that we do is in our R&D department, we’ve got engineers that created this crazy apparatus that simulated a 500-pound user.

And we were able to run that simulated activity on the step mill for, I don’t know how long it was, but 24 million steps were accomplished before any issue came up. So durability, rip up that out-of-order sign, don’t need it. Some of the things I want to mention, we have this red button up here. We have three stop buttons, but this is our emergency stop button.

This is good for a couple of reasons. Number one, it’s good for a user, if they need to perform an emergency stop for whatever reason. It’s also in an area where they can have that last-ditch effort of stopping the machine before they bail. The other reason for the location is for someone that’s off the machine that can pretty much hit the button if they needed to in the event that they see that a member is struggling on the machine. So there’s that for another safety of the item.

Serviceability

Moving on, we wanted to talk about the serviceability of the machine. We designed our Palisades so that we have all the service parts, serviceable parts behind this front panel. There are seven screws on this panel. All you have to do is take those screws out, remove the panel. And you’ll see that we have our control board, our nucleus board, all our wirings, the motor is right there as well. And so are the chain and the belt. What’s great for you service techs is the view, everything you have, everything you need to get to, is right here.

We have no components mounted underneath the step. So what does that mean? Well, you can come out of the facility. If you work on this nice and clean without any grease all over your clothes, everything is right there. A nice feature for both the gym operator, owner and service guy.

Another thing I wanna mention regarding serviceability. Our unit rests on four leveling feet. If you shorten those feet, it’ll rest on four wheels. Typically, these units are side by side, really close to each other. So if you need to work on it and give yourself a little bit more space, shorten the leveling feet, and you can simply pull the unit out. Piece of cake.

One thing I do want to mention is that we can have up to 400-pound use on our machine. But on the flip side, the startup weight for our machine is 70 pounds. This is huge for anyone in a university setting because I can tell you that when I’ve done staff trainings at universities, and the student workers and staff were there, some of them I know we’re not over a hundred pounds, and a lot of startup weights for our competitors are up to 110 pounds. So we have a 70-pound startup weight, which is really, really nice.

Alpine Runner

Our next machine to showcase here is our Alpine Runner. It’s our treadmill that can go from a negative 3% grade to a 30% grade, an incline trainer.

Appearance

Some of the things that you’ll notice right away with ours are, first of all, just the appearance. We’ve got nice contoured lines throughout the machine. We have large oval tubing on the uprights there just to give it a nice clean, modern, sleek look to your facility. As with all our treadmills, we have aluminum side straddles. One benefit of that is no more creaky plastic side straddles that can crack over time. Ours are nice and solid anodized aluminum which gives you that nice premium look.

My foot is up here on this step up. This is an optional step for our machine. So what does that mean for you guys? Well, if you need a step or two for added convenience and safety for your members, then we can add this option. Otherwise, it is an option. If you look at this Alpine over here, imagine if you remove this step, we have a standard treadmill right next to it. This allows our incline trainer to be the shortest incline trainer out on the market.

If you have space concerns or want to give you the appearance of your space to open it up a little bit, then don’t opt for the step. And you’ve got a nice short footprint for the incline trainer.

Unique Design

Some other things are worth mentioning. Remember that on incline trainers, the deck moves, and the pedestal and the console stay in the same position. The reason, and that kind of inspired the reason why we developed our handlebars in a way they’re developed, for the way they’re designed. Our heart rate monitors are up top. This is of course an incline trainer so, why not have your heart rate monitors and sensors right here?

Now of course as a trainer, I always tell people not to hold on when they’re up on the incline, but if they need to for balance or they want to check their heart rate, they can grab up top here, also on these handlebars, as you have your speed and incline quick touch keys. And one thing also to notice is how the belt is locked down.

Emergency Brake System

So we have five patents on this Alpine. One of the patents that we have that’s relevant for you guys is our emergency brake system.

If there is a power outage or a cord trip, or if you pull the emergency tab, if your incline is above 13%, it will lock the belt completely. And it will stay locked until you hit the reset button, or the power is restored. Or so what’ll happen is it’ll lock you down and they’ll have to worry about your members sliding off the back of it, or having the speeds, you know the belts, you don’t want them to face plant on the belt. No Bueno.

Inclined Motor

The other end worth mentioning is our incline motor mount design. So, without getting too technical, what this allows our treadmill to do or not do or have is a lot of stress on the incline motor, the way it’s designed, the way it’s mounted underneath there’s virtually insignificantly amount, a significant amount of less stress on motor compared to competitive units. What does that mean for you guys? No out-of-order sign. Rip it up. Don’t need it.

Spectrum Elliptical

Our Spectrum is our adjustable stride elliptical trainer. It’s able to adjust from a 13-inch stride length, all the way up to a 30-inch stride length.

Variety of Motion

You’ve got three pieces in one right here, you’ve got a stepper or climber motion, you’ve got your standard elliptical motion, and you have your striding motion. The major difference between our adjustable stride elliptical and compared the other variable stride ellipticals, it’s a fixed motion. What does that mean? Well, when we looked at designing this thing, we observed people in the gym using the variable stride ellipticals, and we watched the people who were striding out, who wanted to have that wide stride.

What we noticed is when they started to fatigue, their stride shortened, or if their attention got diverted, then their stride would shorten. Now that’s not going to hurt anyone, but if you’re intent, the intention is to stride for your workout. On ours, you can set it and forget it. It’ll stay at that particular Stride.

It’s also really good for different users who are of different heights and have different inseams and leg lengths. You can just find a comfortable position by simply hitting a button on the left handle and adjusting the stride length. A cool feature. The other thing that is a standard feature of our Spectrum and our other ellipticals as well, is you’re able to do upper body only movement. Reason for that. We have side straddles here. It’s going to allow you to just use your upper body.

Cardio 360

In addition to that, we also have a program standard called Cardio 360. It’s basically a virtual trainer, that’s in the console, a program that’s in a console, included in all our consoles. And it gives you instructions either verbally or depending on the console, even video to instruct you how to move your feet, whether it’s forward or backward. How to move your arms. If you want to use both arms, your right arm only, left arm, emphasizing the push, emphasizing the pull.

I’ll have Steven come around here and do a quick capture of the Cardio 360 program in progress. On this particular screen on our Envision, we have video. All this between the side straddles and the adjustable stride is all possible because of our patented core drive system. We use a center drive system for our elliptical motion. So our ellipse mechanism is directly under your feet. It’s going to give you a lot more natural feel and it’s going to also allow us to step in a motion that’s more natural to like walking per se.

Comfort

One cool feature that I really like on our Spectrum and our other elliptical is we have soft step cushioning pads on our foot scape. What does that mean for you guys? Well, it’s more for the user. A lot of users tend to get foot numbness and tingling when they’re on the elliptical for an extended period.

This soft step, which is kind of like, pretty much feels like an anti-fatigue mat material underneath your feet. It’s going to prevent or significantly reduce that foot numbness and tingling. Really cool. Our center drive feature also allows us to have a side straddle for the safety of your members so they can approach the unit from the back, step on straddles to get their balance.

You don’t have to step laterally or on the side of the machine and worry about the pedals being unbalanced right? And it also allows us to put the units a little bit closer together to maximize space in your facility. The core drive system also allows us to have a shorter footprint.

This unit here is still shorter than your standard rear-drive elliptical and shorter than most variable stride ellipticals out there. One more feature before I end. Talking about this cool piece, I’ll show you the strides, so you can get an idea of what the different stride lengths look like.

We also have quick touch keys so that we can get to different stride motions a lot quicker. So I don’t have to press a button 17 times or 13 times. This is our stepping motion or stair climbing motion. That’s the 13 inch. Push a button on our screen, it says ellipse. I’m going to go toward our standard 21-inch length elliptical stride. And finally, I’ll press the run icon. And it’s going to let me stride out to 30 inches. That, my friends, is our Spectrum Adjustable Stride Elliptical.

Question From Customers

“What Are The Maximum Steps Per Minute On The Palisade?”

The Palisade maximum steps are 162 steps per minute.

“What Is The Step-Up Height On The Alpine Runner?”

The Alpine Runner without the options, step is 13.2 inches.

“Are There Multiple Console Options For The Palisade, Alpine, And Spectrum?”

We have up to five different options currently. Four or five different options currently for each. All of our cardio pieces meet your price point and the needs of your members.

“Is Cardio 360 Available On Any Of The Other Machines?”

Cardio 360 is available on the Spectrum, the elliptical, and our Traverse lateral trainer.

“Can The Colors Be Customized?”

Yes. The colors on all 3 machines can be customized.

Next Up

Continue on in the third installment of our Symposium Series, where we will talk about a brand new product that we’re launching. It’s a treadmill. It is our Stryker Slat Treadmill. We’re really excited. There are some really clever design features on this piece. And we’re looking forward to sharing it with you two weeks from today.