There have been a ton of ab tightening gimmicks that have appeared over the years and other than the rolly-wheel or whatever you call that thing, they are all full of crap. Various contraptions are meant to make situps and ab exercises easier yet will still be totally effective in the same manner that doing actual ab exercises will. For any sane human being that understands exercise in even a remedial manner, these products are obviously bogus, but advertisers are able to target the laziness in consumers and through the magic of models that almost certainly do NOT use these products, convince thousands of people to buy them.
This next piece of equipment was a "flash in the pan" and never gained much traction before they were sued and forced to give nearly $10 million in refunds.
src
Like a lot of these products, they attempt to convince people that the use of it is effortless and that you don't even have to work very hard to look like the models in their advertisements. The claims made by this particular product was particularly extreme in that they said you only needed to use it for 3 minutes per day to tighten your stomach.
Your knees would slot into these two spots that where attached to a disc or wheel and then you would simply swing your body from side to side and the fat just falls right off your body and the next thing you know you have six pack abs the likes of which are only seen on fitness models such as Jennifer Nicole Lee!
src
Let's forget about the fact that nobody has any idea who Jennifer Nicole Lee is for a minute and instead focus on how great of shape her abs are in. She managed to do that in just 3 minutes a day using her Ab Circle Pro and how do we know this? Well, because she told us she did on late night infomercials in the early 2000's!
I don't know how many people bought these things but it must have been a lot. In the advertisement they told potential customers that with just 3 minutes on this metal and plastic piece of crap that they could lose as much as 10 pounds. Does that sound too good to be true? Well it should because it isn't true.
Maybe you would lose 10 pounds if you worked out on this thing for 3 minutes a day and ALSO didn't eat anything at all for 2 weeks.
Jennifer Nicole Lee was named and charged in the class action lawsuit that was filed against the company that sold as many as 10,000 of these things for $200 to $250 and everyone who bought one was entitled to a refund. Jennifer was specifically named because she herself claimed to have lost 80 lbs, which is actually true. However, she did NOT lose that by using this piece of equipment which is what is implied in the informercial.
I am surprised this video is still on YT seeing as how it was actually an ad with a redirect to the company's now dead website
The fact that anyone was duped by this product and the claims made in the 2-minute advert is just beyond comprehension to me but just like the song says, "the world is full of stupid people." Thankfully, the company behind these claims (lies) were brought to justice so to speak.
I do find it funny that while they are trying to distract you with all the models working out on their Ab Circle Pro machines that there is text on the bottom of the screen that states that the use of Ab Circle Pro needs to be combined with a "diet and regular aerobic exercise."
Informercials are a thing of the past thankfully and even though I don't really like the fact that the government has to get involved in order for products like this to go out of business, I am happy that they paid a price for their intentional duping of the public.
There are no shortcuts folks and if you ever see a product claiming that they have discovered one and it isn't liposuction or gastric bypass surgery, it is almost certainly a lie.
I am not a personal trainer nor a fitness/nutrition expert of any sort... but i did lose 50 lbs over the course of a year and kept it off... and so can you