Time warp 2005: News on HealthRider fitness benefits?

We were forwarded a result from a Google email alert on “fitness equipment” recently that shook up the reader — and made us sit up and furrow our brows too.

It was a story out of the United Kingdom from a service called “Medical News Today” with the headline, “Treadmills burn more calories than aerobic riders.”

Wait, we thought HealthRiders — and other knock-off aerobic riders — are relegated to garage sales these days after they hit the big time in about the mid- to late ’90s.

Wrote our reader: “I’m sitting here scratching my head over this…. I looked at it and felt like I must have either been on drugs or been transported back six years or so.”

Try nearly a decade! We found the story and noted this one was indeed dated 2005 and summarized a study by the American Council on Exercise that compared the fitness benefits of aerobic riders with the treadmill. Sounded vaguely familiar but also vaguely…musty. Maybe this was a time warp.

We talked with ACE to find out if the group, which commissions regular comparative studies on current fitness topics, had decided to run some “best of” feature or something similar.

“Actually, this information is from our April/March issue of 1996,” said spokeswoman Kristie Spalding. “I have no idea how this article got into circulation after all this time. There’s nothing recent on this topic.”

Wanna prove to yourself we aren’t on drugs either? Click here to go to the bulletin from the folks in the United Kingdom. And click here to go to the original ACE study done in late 1995 and first released in January 1996!

SNEWS® View: What kind of drugs are those folks at Medical News on in the United Kingdom? Reminds not to take lightly anything you publish since it may come back to haunt.