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Sam Penrod ReportingSome BYU students have come up with what they believe may be the future in exercise equipment.
Specifically the students tried to come up with new concepts for exercise equipment for older athletes.
Meghan Saunders is one of several BYU industrial designs students, trying to create new ideas for exercise equipment, designed especially for those who are 50 years of age and older.
"Meghan Saunders, BYU Student: "To really focus on our user, to get a product that they want. Not what we want. Because it's very different from what we want as opposed to what a mature adult would enjoy and would need."
The students' research comes at a time when there is a growing market for fitness equipment for seniors who, in most cases, have to use equipment designed for health clubs.
Bryan Howell, BYU Professor: "They still want to be fit, they are very active people but their needs are very different from a 20 or 30-year-old's needs."
The students created models of their concepts and today presented them to the President of PCE Fitness, an exercise equipment company based in Park City, who had a very positive assessment of their work.
They're finding older adults have different motives for exercise than twenty and thirty-somethings.
Peter Schenk, President PCE Fitness: "It's a matter of health, it's not a matter of looks or appearance or some of those other things. They know for their own longevity, for level of activity, they are going to be better off if they are active."
The students hope their ideas will catch the eye of fitness equipment companies.
Brynn MacLennan, BYU Student: "That when they see it, 'Yeah, I can use that element and make my equipment better; because that is the point, to make it better for the consumer, not just make it look different."
They're ideas that could soon benefit those in their golden years with help from a younger generation.
