Having fallen victim more than once to those late-night infomercials about too-good-to-be-true exercise machines that supposedly firm your butt and thighs, I dismissively chuckled (or maybe I guffawed) when I saw Saresha's post about OSIM's iGallop earlier this year. At that time, it was still only available in Asia, so it was at a safe distance from my impressionable mind.

But, uh oh, then I saw it at Brookstone the other day, and of course, I had to try it. I stayed on the thing for about 4 minutes (the maximum amount of time I'm willing to embarrass myself in public), and, believe it or not, when I got off, I felt a definite burn through my glutes and thigh muscles. Though this may say more about how out of shape I am than about the effectiveness of the machine, I was very impressed. My lazy side (which dominates over my not lazy side), likes that it's sort of a passive exercise. Basically, you just react to the movements of the machine while assuming a proper equestrian posture, so you can do it watching tv or with your eyes closed. My feeling is that $599 is not a bad price for something that does most of the work for you.

So which muscles are you working out as you breeze through imaginary green pastures on your headless iGallop? It's zero-impact "tri-axial action," working at three levels of intensity, works out your abs, back, seat, hips and legs.

Lots of silly videos on YouTube of people trying it out.

Hmm, as long as I'm considering the iGallop, maybe I should take another look at OSIM's slimming belt.