Proform 505 Treadmill Review

For me personally, I really enjoy spending time on a spinning bike during the winter.  A treadmill is still one of the most vital pieces of home gym equipment Mainly because of the many health benefits of general walking.

Walking on a treadmill, however, has added benefits such as toning the muscles in your legs and butt, helping prevent age-related bone loss, maintaining the health of your muscles, bones, ligaments, joints, and tendons, boosting cardiovascular health to fend off heart disease, and its use in weight management systems.

Bottom line: if you are not in the habit of walking daily, you may want to start.

The Proform 505 CST Treadmill can help you do that. It has all the bells and whistles you could want in a piece of home equipment, including the capability of storage.

We will review the benefits, features, where to buy it at the best price and if it is right for you below. Let's Jump into the feature list below and get started.

Proform 505 Treadmill Features

ProShox Cushioning

Running is a very high impact motion and can become uncomfortable for your knees and ankles. The ProShox Cushioning system provides three cushioning disks between the belt and the foundation of the machine to add extra shock absorption to your strides. This takes a lot of the impact off of your joints and makes running (or walking) easier on your body.

This will also speed up the time it takes to grow used to running if it is a new area of fitness for you. The ProShox cushions will decrease the risk of shin splints and allow you to train more effectively and increase your stamina in less time.

However, this is not an excuse to leave out stretching. Stretching is vitally important to your everyday health, but is needed especially in both the preparation and recovery processes.

Quick Incline and Speed Controls

The incline of the Proform 505 CST ranges from 0% to 10%. In order to go from 0% to 1% you would have to key through 0.1%, 0.2%, 0.3%, etc. The quick incline feature allows you to go straight from 0% to 1% with one push of a button.

Likewise, the quick speed control allows you to go from 1 mile-per-hour to 2 miles-per-hour with one touch instead of needing to key through all the increments.

This is an especially handy feature because running takes a lot of arm movement to perform correctly. It can be difficult, or at least annoying, to key through 10 incline or speed increments just to get to the next whole number when your arm wants to swing back and forth. However, the increments are there for you so that you can increase your incline or speed by exactly the amount you need.

EKG Handlebar Sensors 

Many treadmills and other exercise machines have a finger clip or require a chest, wrist, or armband to track your heart rate during exercise. The Proform 505 CST, however, has EKG sensing handgrips that track your heart rate and displays it on the monitor in real time.

Knowing your target heart rate (for health, weight loss, athletic training, etc.) can help you hit your fitness goals faster. Staying within that target heart rate will ensure that you are either burning fat or cranking up the heart rate to increase heart health.

iPod Compatible

It really would not be a slamming workout session without some jamming tunes. Listening to music while you work out focuses your attention to effectively bring you into "the zone", it increases the effort you are able to put in to your workout, it can help you keep a steady pace, music elevates your mood and makes you want to move, and creating your own playlists to match whatever activity you are doing is better than relying on whatever they are playing at the gym or what Pandora randomly puts on for you.

Set up a playlist for whether you are walking or running and then plug your iPod or other MP3 player into the Interplay music port and your treadmill becomes a boombox. Your MP3 player can then rest comfortably on the console shelf for easy reach during your workout.

Monitor 

The Proform 505 CST has a 6" wide monitor that is backlit and has a very wide viewing range, so no matter how tall or short you are you can still see all of the readings.

It comes programmed with 15 workouts created by professional personal trainers and you can even have Jillian Michaels walk you through your training session. You can choose workouts to burn calories, focus on intensity or speed, do an incline-based workout, or set your own.

You can also set the display to lock on calories, time, or distance.

Axial Fan

This treadmill has an interior fan that works to cool down the motor and the drive system while reducing noise and effectively prolongs the life of the motor.

Storage

One very cool feature of the Proform 505 CST is that the tread belt folds vertically to decrease the real estate taken up by this machine. It allows you extra room on the floor to stretch and easier storage capability.

The only downside is that this machine does not seem to have wheels, so you will find yourself scooting 200 pounds of machine over to whichever corner or closet you intend to store it in.

Dimensions and Weight

The Proform 505 CST is 70"x 34"x 59.5" fully assembled. When folded into its more compact state, it is 34"x 39". The tread belt is 55" long x 20" wide.

The machine itself weighs 186 pounds and can accommodate up to 300 pounds.

Pros and Cons

One pro is a cool add-on that you can purchase for the 505 CST, which is the iFit module. This allows you to track your workouts, automatically upload the stats to the iFit website (which you pay a membership fee for), and can then share the results with your social media platform of choice.

If you don't want to spend the extra money, a FitBit or other fitness tracker will be sufficient if you already own and use one.

Many consumers rave about the ProShox cushioning system. They say it is very comfortable to walk and run on and is noticeably different from walking on pavement or other treadmills.

Consumers also love the warranty, which covers the motor for 25 years and the frame for the lifetime of the machine.

The biggest and most common drawback is the assembly. Consumers complain that all of the hardware comes in one bag and it is difficult to tell the difference between the pieces plus the machine itself weighs almost 200 pounds and the parts are quite unwieldy. Definitely enlist a buddy to help assemble this machine and allot about three hours from unpacking to completely assembled. Apparently customer service is just so-so as well.

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In Short

My favorite part about this machine is that it folds. Treadmills take up a lot of space by necessity, and to have the option to make it smaller is a great pro.

So if you are looking for an indoor machine that is easy on the body, customizable to your skill level, and can go incognito when company is coming over, then this is the treadmill for you where you can purchase here on amazon.