Last week, a video of a woman dancing on a treadmill at a Planet Fitness in El Paso, TX, went viral. The woman, Nicole Harris, has gotten a lot of interest from the media since the video was posted. She started treadmill dancing after a martial arts injury to her knee. She had heard that walking sideways on the treadmill could help, accidentally did a spin and the idea was born.
Being the worry wart that I am, my first thought upon viewing this video was, “Oh, my! How dangerous. I hope this woman does not injure herself and sue the club.”
So I decided to see how popular treadmill dancing had become. I could not find any statistics on it, but there are several videos of people dancing on treadmills.
In fact, one of the first videos that came up was of the group OK Go dancing on treadmills in one of its videos.
And I found this Motus USA video of women doing a choreographed dance on treadmills at a trade show.
Then, I found this video of celebrity trainer Tracy Anderson promoting her treadmill dancing video. This video was lambasted by at least one fitness writer for being unsafe.
I found plenty of videos of people dancing on their home treadmills. (Sorry, too many of those to link to. Just go to YouTube and plug in "treadmill dancing.")
Even someone as unlikely as actor Jason Alexander (of TV show “Seinfield” fame and recent Jenny Craig spokesperson) purports to dancing on a treadmill. (Sorry, no actual footage of him dancing on a treadmill.)
If everyone was as skilled at this as some of these people seem to be, then I'd say more power to this trend, but I doubt that the majority of your club members would get far on your treadmills before they had an accident. In this litigious age, I wonder how safe it is for club operators to allow someone to do this in their clubs.
What do you think of this treadmill dancing trend? Do you have people in your club who do this? Would you stop someone from doing this in your club?
Bonus: In my pursuit of treadmill dancing videos, I came across this little gem that involves kittens on treadmills! (I can't resist videos of cute kittens.) Here, Mario and Luigi “dance” on a treadmill. I feared they would fall and get their paws or tails caught between the belt and the side, but no need to worry. Both survived this treadmill “dance” unscathed.
I hope any members doing some treadmill dancing at your club will be able to say the same.