FUN AND GAMES

Gamify Your Cardio With This Surprisingly Fun Treadmill

If you’re already a runner, keep on moving; this treadmill is for people who never thought they’d own a treadmill.

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If you’re a devoted runner, move along; there are probably better treadmills for you. But if you need to trick, bribe, and otherwise confuse yourself into getting your sweat on, the Aviron Victory treadmill offers novel methods for getting you to push your workout longer.

First, the basics. The Aviron Victory treadmill is a moderately sized treadmill. The deck sits low to the ground, just four inches at its tallest, which I found to mimic walking or running outside really nicely. In addition to touchscreen controls, there are physical tabs right next to where your hands fall on the railing to bump speed and incline up or down, which is great for mid-workout adjustments (and vital for some of the games—yes, games—we’ll get into that in a second). You can incline up to 12 percent and increase speed to 12.5 mph (12 mph is equivalent to a five-minute mile, so for most people, this is fine).

The 22-inch touchscreen monitor is where things start to get fun. Yes, it’s almost harder to find a bike, elliptical, or treadmill that doesn’t have a large screen nowadays. But in addition to the standard time-wasting streamers like Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu, Aviron levels up with the apps that really suck you in. Think Kindle, so you can get your daily workout in without interrupting your latest un-put-downable romantasy (just me?). Think TikTok, so you can confidently scroll past that annoying video that tells you you’ve spent too much time watching pointless videos (just me?). Plus, you can natively stream music from Spotify or Apple Music.

And if combo-packing your worst phone habits into your workouts still isn’t getting you to your daily steps, Aviron has the final boss of time-wasters built right in: brightly colored, embarrassingly pointless, oddly addictive games.

30 minutes evaporated as I used my speed and incline to point a fire hose at an endless row of burning buildings. Increasing the pace also increased the water pressure (putting fires out faster), while incline could be used to aim at the various levels of the building. Doing laps around a track? Boring.

Doing laps as a flying car around an illustrated lava lake collecting points by using incline to fly through Sonic-style rings? Let’s go. I tend to neglect the incline on treadmills to the detriment of my total burned calories. So, in addition to working out longer, I got a more effective workout with the Aviron Victory treadmill.

Aviron

$2600

Aviron Victory Treadmill

From interactive games and TikTok scrolling to on-demand classes, this clinician-approved treadmill is packed with features that make workouts fly by.

See At Aviron

You can make unique profiles for the members of your household and compete for high scores. If you have friends with Avirons (or are comfy working out with strangers), you can host real-time competitions. If you’re feeling extra confident, you can compete to earn a high spot on the global leaderboards. You can even compete against your own past runs.

Need more external motivation? Trainer-led classes help you push your limits. Want to zone out? Walk through scenic locations like twilight in the winding streets of Ribeauvillé, France, or among the sweeping mountains of Oregon’s Lewis and Clark National Park. The videos include peaceful ambient sounds, and the video speeds up to match your pace–it’s really actually lovely. Truly, there are options for every kind of reluctant runner.

Ultimately, there are so many treadmills out there that promise to help you run further, faster, and with better form. That Aviron has decided to create a treadmill focused instead on making a workout fun is kind of amazing.

I can’t say that the Aviron has made me look forward to jogging (I think the heat death of the universe will come first), but where it does succeed is in distracting me while I’m working out. Turns out, if you’re not looking at the clock every 15 seconds, time does pass faster. And if I just so happen to make the monthly leaderboard in... flying car ring aiming, all the better. Coming for you, MamaPilates!

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