Proline Fitness

Proline Fitness is a quaint little store in a noisy area. Getting here is an easy saunter in the snarly Punjagutta-Somajiguda area if you've already made it unscathed there, as it's right across the medieval Amrutha Mall in the ever-morphing Punjagutta neighbourhood.

Proline Fitness is a joint venture between the Indian marquee brand Proline and the Wisconsin-based Horizon Fitness Group. The store is purely a fitness equipment-centered one, retailing most of today's faddish fitness devices and apparatuses.

For a small place, it has an extensive collection of all of today's fitness equipment - treadmills, cardio-machines, elliptical trainers, exercise bikes, home gyms, dumbbells, weights etc. The treadmills, ranging from Rs. 45,000 to Rs. 1.45 lakh, are all manufactured by Horizon, and well-equipped with music and controls. The elliptical trainers, cardio machines and exercise bikes are priced at Rs. 45,000, which is a steal.

Then there's the quintessential Home Gym, my favorite, that's astounding with a 4-pulley system and 5-position radial arms that lets you do more than 60 exercises. And that's not all - the plastic coated, 150-pound weight stack gives you room to expand a strength training program. It's flexibility personified, with a removable seat which lets you perform floor exercises or incorporate a fitness ball into your weight training. At Rs. 1.16 lakh, it's grand larceny.

Another all-time favorite, the irrepressible dumbbells, come in two variants, rubber and chrome. Rubber ones are priced at Rs. 150 per kilo, while the cheesier chromes are at Rs. 250 per kilo. I for one would vouch for the rubbers, as they're safe and more cost-effective.

Wanting to visit a fitness store is half the battle won. Proline works hard to make the other half something to eagerly look forward to.