THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 3, 1997 TAG: 9702010278
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY LINDA MCNATT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SUFFOLK LENGTH: 141 lines
Weight lifting has never been confused with rocket science. Until now.
That's what a sign in the lobby of what once was Atlantic Film Studios declares.
The building, off Virginia Route 10, originally was constructed with the idea of bringing Hollywood to Suffolk - Hollywood East.
A new production started recently on the sound stage - extraordinary exercise equipment.
Ted R. Ehrenfried, the producer, calls it the recumbent vertical climber. He calls the technology isodynamics. Others involved in the fitness and exercise world are calling it revolutionary.
``It's the only piece of equipment on the market that allows you to do cardiovascular and strength training simultaneously,'' said J. Trenton Bishop, practice administrator of Physical Therapy Works in Suffolk. ``You are able to adjust the resistance from 1 to 375 pounds, in 1-pound increments.''
Bishop is waiting for one of the first machines off the assembly line. Two others have been ordered locally, and there are discussions about 100 units for a national fitness business.
On a normal ``stepper,'' Bishop said, the most resistance the user can get from the machine equals his body weight. With the RVC, said Walter Carter, CEO and president of Ehrenfried Technologies, Inc., ``you get out of it whatever you're willing to put into it.''
Bishop said, ``There is nothing else like it. We can use this for everything from our geriatric stroke patients to our big football players.''
An athletic therapist at the Suffolk company, a former Olympics contender, calls the RVC ``phenomenal,'' Bishop said.
The machine, with adjustable, stirrup-like pedals, looks like a bicycle in a horizontal position and performs like a sit-down stair climber.
The pedals and the seat, which can be adjusted to put the exercise emphasis on different parts of the legs and back, are attached to a large, aluminum chamber with inner mechanical workings that keep track of heart rate and speed in feet per minute.
Digital displays also note heart rate, the intensity or resistance in pounds, calories being burned and - for the medical rehabilitation market - metabolic rate.
It works through a computerized electro-mechanical device that uses an electric motor and special springs to provide variable resistance. The RVC automatically responds to a user's increasing or decreasing force or strength.
``It's different from any other piece of equipment that's out there because it duplicates real world activity - like actually climbing stairs, but there is no joint stress because the user is in the sitting down position,'' Carter said.
``Arnold Schwarzenegger can get on here and get a full workout,'' he said. ``His mother could get on and get a full workout. Whatever you put out, it matches.''
When 20 Navy SEAL volunteers tested the equipment for 12 weeks recently, they, too, thought as much.
The results of the testing, entitled ``Effects of isodynamic training on muscular strength and cardiovascular fitness in U.S. Navy SEAL Team volunteers,'' are to be released next spring as two doctors involved in the study make a presentation to the American College of Sports Medicine's annual convention in Denver.
But Ehrenfried isn't waiting for the big announcement before he gets on the road with the news.
Beginning Feb. 10, in Raleigh, the RVC - in its specially designed mobile van - will start a 22-city tour geared toward selling to universities, health spas, rehabilitation centers, hospitals and fitness clubs on the benefits of isodynamics.
The van, set up for demonstration and with ``Isodyne'' emblazoned on the side, is carpeted and equipped with lighting and electricity to power the machine.
``It can pull right up into the parking lot of a hospital or fitness club and start demonstrating the equipment,'' Carter said.
Ehrenfried says he knew he had something out of the ordinary when he got a long distance call from a paraplegic soon after he started marketing a muscle-stretching machine he had originally invented to help his ice-hockey-playing sons build leg strength.
The young man, a former football player, told Ehrenfried that the machine was helping him build muscles in his useless, atrophied legs.
``He wanted me to build one for him, with a few revisions,'' Ehrenfried said. ``I told him no at first, but he kept calling. . . .''
Ehrenfried eventually added that machine, designed for rehabilitation, to the original muscle-stretching line. By that time, he had quit his job as marketing director of a heavy equipment manufacturing company and put all of his resources into designing and building exercise equipment.
And last week, in the seldom-used film studio, Ehrenfried started manufacturing the RVC on the former sound stage.
The mechanical device that builds cardiovascular, as well as muscle, strength takes advantage of the technology Ehrenfried learned in heavy equipment manufacturing.
The manufacturing plant initially will employ seven people capable of turning out about 200 machines a month, Carter said.
The project has been financed by a group of enthusiastic investors, mostly physicians, who recognize Ehrenfried's technology as something totally new and different.
``It is a resistance technology that allows variable resistance through a range of motion,'' said Dr. Anthony J. DiStasio II, a Chesapeake/Suffolk orthopedic surgeon and an investor. ``It's totally user-friendly; sets itself to the user. It's a machine friendly to people who might be limited - the elderly patient, the patient with other medical problems.''
DiStasio, who uses the equipment regularly, said he got involved with the company because, as a 37-year-old physician, there was nothing else in Hampton Roads he could believe in, invest in and watch develop from the ground up.
``To see the technology come along, to see it tested by the Navy and now to see it assembled on a production line is really exciting for me,'' DiStasio said.
The company, trading as ``Isodyne,'' is also producing a line of strength-building machines, all of them directed toward commercial enterprise. The RVC sells for $5,995; individual pieces of strength equipment sell for $8,995.
Ehrenfried, who said he sold his home and lived like a ``church mouse'' during most of the time he was perfecting his technology, has managed to get financial backing from a number of Hampton Roads residents, mostly physicians.
Before he joined the company, Carter was an investor. Eventually, the company plans to go public.
Ehrenfried said he is excited about results of the SEALS test, but he's just as excited about the progress of his 81-year-old mother.
She was using a walker until she entered a kind of exercise contest using the equipment with her great-grandchildren, ages 11, 8 and 6. Since then, she's gotten her heart rate up to 110 beats a minute and averages 100 pounds of resistance during a 15-minute workout.
And he still thinks about the young paraplegic in Florida.
``He told me, `Your machine has brought my muscles back,' '' Ehrenfried recalled. ``That was the motivator.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by John H. Sheally II/The Virginian-Pilot
Gary Lavelle, training coordinator for Ehrenfried Technologies,
right, demonstrates the recumbent vertical climber for Walter E.
Carter, president and CEO. The company will take the device on a
22-city tour with the van in the background.
Color cover photo
On the cover: Co-designers of the device, Ted R. Ehrenfried, left,
and his son, Scott A. Ehrenfried.
KEYWORDS: EXERCISE EQUIPMENT BUSINESS