The i-B6

Entrance to Grünwälderstraße

As my faithful readers may remember: Twice a week, Red Baron tries hard to keep his aching muscles alive at Kieser Training by displacing weights on machines. Kieser's gym is located on Grünwälderstraße, just three houses away from the historical Harmonie building that had played an essential role in the Baden Revolution of 1848/49.

The i-Beast

The other day when I entered the Kieser premises, a new machine labeled i-B6 struck my eyes. My first ideas were: Does Kieser now work with Apple, or does the "i" rather stand for iron and the "B" for Beast?

The roped-off Beast just stood there motionless in the middle of the foyer. I learned that i-B6 means infimetrische Beinpresse (infimetric leg press), i.e., the user will no longer train his muscles with weights, but as I translated from German, "Do your workouts with an especially thrilling partner: Yourself." No fooling around; the i-Beast will come to life this morning, on April 1 (sic!).

Following a purely casual observation of the arm-curling training machine, the late American inventor Arthur Jones developed the push and pull principles. While one arm is bent up, the other is drawn down. Jones noticed that if the two movements are synchronized, the usual stack of weights does not move and is no longer needed. In the case of the i-Beast, not your arms but your legs are infimetrically trained.

Here is a photo of my Freiburg Kieser Training team posing for the recent open-day event. They are proudly grouped around the i-Beast.

©Kieser Training

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