Cardio riders can now be personally entertained while sweating off the calories at the Student Rec Center.

Stationary bikers, or skiers, can tune in to some 70-plus channels that are molded on top of 25 bike and elliptical trainer machines.

Complete with volume and channel control, the Sharp televisions offer the freedom of choice and sound through headphones that the old suspended televisions never did.

“They’re good, you actually don’t have to look down there and squint your eyes to see what you’re looking at,” stationary bike rider and ESPN watcher Ryan Newby said.

The squinting Newby was referring to was the big screen that stationary bike riders would glance at on the main floor of the center as they pedaled from the second.

Working the TVs into the workout is part of a three phase project said Ken Baker, director of Sports and Recreation. The first and second phase has been completed with the Sharps on the bikes and elliptical trainers and the treadmills will be next to get the makeover.

The TVs that are suspended in front of the elliptical trainers are seven years old, according to Baker, are on 18 and a half hours a day, and will be ready for replacement when they do start to give out.

“It’s planning because we knew the TVs weren’t going to last forever,” Baker said. “So what we’re doing is we’re just thinking ahead of the curb here and the next generation of entertainment is not a TV where somebody tells you what to watch, but a monitor on your piece of equipment where you can watch whatever you want.”

In fact, when any new piece of cardio equipment does come in, an entertainment monitor will already on it and any cardio equipment that the center currently has that is not equipped with a monitor is being retrofitted with brackets so that a monitor can be connected.

Baker has said the center is already preparing for fall as they have more elliptical trainers, their most popular piece, than Indiana State Illinois State, and Western Illinois University combined, have added padding to courts four and five, updated the lighting, and perhaps most importantly, are putting in a brand new security system.

“Security cameras are being put in,” Baker said. “They have them at Southern [and they] worked very well for them. If someone’s missing a Panther card, we’ll have a camera pointing right on it.”

Although Baker has said he only knows of one theft problem in his time as director it is still enough to place cameras on the boxes on the main floor of the Rec Center, the courts and the weight rooms.

“We had some people taking some things a year ago Christmas time, taking things out of these boxes, and it was a ring,” Baker said. “And they had somebody up on the bike as a lookout. When they see somebody put something in the box, he’d watch one taking it out, they’d go get it. Well, they later found that person and he was prosecuted.”