Through clever engineering the ROM machine enables even totally out of shape people and seniors to get significant aerobic benefits from an 8 minute workout, because the ROM engages 44% of all your muscle cells in work performance. Those 44% muscle cells are 12 times as many as the 3.75% in walking or jogging. Even if those 44% are untrained cells of 90 year old or totally out of shape people, they will far exceed the oxygen consumption they could otherwise reach.
In fact the ROM will automatically adjust the workload every second during the 4 minute workout, exactly matching the user's ability at every moment during the workout. Its 85 pound flywheel has a centrifugal brake that applies more resistance to the flywheel the faster the flywheel spins. The exercises done on the ROM make the flywheel spin, but elderly and unconditioned people cannot make the flywheel spin very fast before they meet the braking force that matches their low level of work capacity. Highly trained athletes have enough strength to spin the flywheel very much faster before they also meet the braking force that matches their own ability to perform physical work. When the highly trained athlete runs out of steam he will no longer have the strength to overcome the resistance of the centrifugal brake at high revolutions and the braking action will automatically slow him down to lower revolutions at which the centrifugal brake will reduce the resistance to exactly match the diminished strength of the then drained athlete so he can finish the 4 minutes as well.
Weak people can finish the 4 minutes with much more ease than highly trained individuals but they get a much lower performance score at the end of the 4 minutes. The Rom gives you a score at the end of the 4 minutes based on the average RPM (revolutions per minute) of the flywheel during the 4 minutes. That score will gradually increase over time and the increase in the score reflects the improvement in your total physical condition. The score reflects the improvement of the condition of the combination of your cardio system, your muscle strength and your flexibility. When your total conditioning improves, the ROM workout never gets easier. It actually gets harder the more your total condition improves, but because you will be stronger and able to spin the flywheel faster, the centrifugal brake makes you work against higher resistance. This is how the progression (an important element of strength training) is naturally built into the ROM.
Highly trained athletes can of course spin the flywheel extremely fast and therefore in 8 minutes will get cardio, flexibility, and strength benefits that far exceed those of conventional workout routines (except sprinters and competitive short distance runners who will get very high cardio benefit from their high intensity short distance activities). Trained athletes will get a much higher performance score on the ROM and they will be more exhausted than totally out of shape people who get a low performance score. The better shape people are in, the harder the 8 minute ROM workout is for them and the higher their performance score is at the end of 8 minutes.
The ROM machine gives a performance score at the end of each 4 minute upper or lower body workout and that score is a composite evaluation of the total work performed and therefore is a reflection of the average VO2 measurement over the 4 minute period. When the ROM score increases, it is evidence that the combination of the 6 cardio-vascular performance components listed above plus muscle strength and flexibility have improved. You can see the gradual improvement of your health reflected in the gradual improvement of the ROM scores.
The merits of short duration and high intensity training and high oxygen consuming exercise are being more and more recognized by trainers of sports teams everywhere. Scientific studies have been conducted with our ROM machines at the Department of Exercise Sciences at USC (University of Southern California). USC was amazed at the unique capabilities of the ROM.