Precor workout room planner: Fitness meets Home Depot

A grid-like space planner for home workout areas and gyms unveiled by Precor could remove a consumer barrier to home fitness, according to the company. If nothing else, the planner offers a pretty fun time, moving around little drawings of everything from shelves and desks to treadmills and bikes – sort of Home Depot meets Ikea of the fitness world.

Although on the Precor website and open to all-comers at www.precor.com/spaceplanner, the online planner will be used –and already has been — by Precor retailers to help consumers figure out how much space they have and how it can be used to fit in the equipment they are looking at, the company says.

“One aspect in the pursuit of that goal is removing as many barriers to home exercise as possible,” said Kevin Flaherty, Precor marketing manager. “In interviewing consumers, one of the common hurdles to making a treadmill, elliptical, or strength system purchase is ‘Can I make this work in my home?’ More often than not, they can…. They just need an easy way to find out.”

What you get when you click into the space planner area of the site’s Fitness Tools section is a grid that is the top-view of a space. Users resize for the space to match their own situation, then go about adding architectural elements like walls and doors, as well as furniture and exercise equipment. The program, using simple drag-and-drop tools, allows users to twirl and turn all elements.

The ability to resize and add walls means everyone from consumers with the smallest of home workout areas (perhaps a living room corner even) to a gym owner can get an idea of space for better planning. Flaherty said it is now mostly targeted to consumers. Although the exercise equipment area currently only includes Precor equipment, Flaherty told SNEWS the company is considering user feedback and may add other generic icons like weight racks or benches not made by Precor.

Want to think about your designs or share them? Multiple drawings can be saved, changed and re-saved within an account that’s accessed with a personal password. Drawings can also be printed on a standard page, or sent via email as attachments. So pass on the fun, eh?

“Many of our dealers already utilize the Precor website with their customers when the customer is in the showroom,” Flaherty said. “The space planner will be another tool they can use in the process of addressing customer needs.

“The Space Planner,” he added, “also allows Precor web surfers an easy forum to try different room, furniture, and equipment arrangements in the pursuit of the solution that works best for them in their home environment.”

SNEWS View: Honestly, take a whirl at this. It’s truly fun and, frankly, motivates us to turn a section of SNEWS headquarters into a workout area. We already tried a mock 15-x-15 space and were surprised how much fit in. Now we just need all the equipment…. Hey, Precor man, does the equipment come with the planner?