If you talk to the average health club-goer – or even the personal trainers – about what fitness equipment they or their clients use, you’ll get the standard answer of the treadmill, stationary bikes, free weight or machines. Some of them will talk about the classes they attend like yoga or zumba or the products that use your body weight for resistance training.
However, very few will have heard of interactive light walls – such as the tWall or CardioWall – and even fewer will have used these products as part of their training. What these people don’t know is that interactive light walls offer a tremendous variety of training applications for fitness, therapy, and sports performance and there is also research done on how these products can help with rehabilitation programs for traumatic brain injury patients or those with special needs.
To get an idea of the basics of this product, think of the Wack-A-Mole from your video arcade going days. But instead of trying to hit the different “moles” when they pop up, you are reacting to lighted sensors. And just like in Wack-A-Mole, these products keep score to create a gaming element and allowing for personal bests and a top scorer board. However the reactionary bopping game is the product at its most basic level. There are countless variations for how these fitness tools can be used.
Fitness Training & Sports Performance
Interactive light walls focus on reaction and speed training as the faster you react to a sensor lighting up, the higher your score in an allotted amount of time. However, as seen in this video, by simply adding a weighted sandbell or doing different callisthenic moves between each hit, you can add strength and cardio to the routine, perfect for any personal fitness session or sports performance training.
Therapy With Interactive Light Walls
With the many different adaptations for using these products, physical and occupational therapists can use them to help their patients through their rehabilitation processes. It’s great for stroke patients working on regaining use of a side of their body, people working on extending their range of motion, and helping improve balance.
So if your fitness routine doesn’t include interactive light walls, maybe it’s time to rethink how you do fitness.