Floating Gym Just Won't Hold Water

A proposal for new "floating gyms" place around the city, on the Hudson and East Rivers, has met no approval despite its 2005 introduction

By James R. Lindamood

You might just remember the River Gym concept, first brought to our attention in 2005, by Drs. Mitchell and Douglas Joachim. The premise behind the creation was, “transforming wasted human mechanical energy into a useful kinetic gymnasium.” This green gym concept would capture the energy expended by New Yorkers during their normal workouts, and would use it to power floating gyms, which would traverse the Hudson and East Rivers.

While the floating gym concept was sunk here in NY, they have been developing the concept abroad. Hong Kong has a floating gym, and the Swiss are starting to develop interest, as well. “One person,” according to the club-owner in Hong Kong, “has the ability of producing 50 watts of electricity per hour when exercising at a moderate page. If a person spends one hour per day running on the machine, he or she could generate 18.2 kilowatts of electricity and prevent 4,380 liters of CO2 released per year.”

While the environment ideal behind the club is laudable, in practice, a city like New York may not be the best choice for such a club. The proposed routes across the Hudson and East Rivers are very heavily travelled already, by very, very, very large boats. Ferries and scows, barges, and the occasional 250 foot-long yacht would make short work of a slow-moving, bulbous, container full of people in jogging pants and tank tops. Until a better traffic management system could be developed to control the flow of traffic on the rivers, I'm afraid this jogger might just be stuck on dry land.