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In the world of premium cardio equipment, innovation often comes in incremental steps. But every so often, a technology emerges that fundamentally changes how we train. STEPR Performance's Variable Pitch Resistance (VPR) technology represents one of those rare breakthroughs—a system that delivers a training experience unlike anything else on the market.
VPR uses a compact, turbine‑style variable‑pitch rotor that changes blade angle on the fly to control how much air the machine has to “chew through” on each revolution. In engineering terms, it decouples resistance from speed alone and lets the system shape the fan’s drag curve with pitch, giving a very wide and tunable load range.
Variable Pitch Rotor: VPR replaces fixed‑blade fans or magnets with a turbine whose blade angle (pitch) actively changes, altering how much air is moved and therefore how much drag you feel at a given cadence.
Adaptive air resistance: The system scales resistance in real time with your effort and your chosen gear, giving more or less drag without motors or magnetic eddy brakes.
100+ virtual gears: Internally, VPR exposes over 100 micro‑steps of resistance, often simplified into intuitive levels on the console, so one machine can feel like everything from an easy warm‑up erg to a heavy sled.
Gen‑two air feel: Because pitch, not just speed, shapes drag, VPR smooths out harsh peaks and dead zones that older air designs can produce, improving stroke quality on rowers/skiers and cadence quality on bikes/treads.
Inside each VPR unit is a variable pitch rotor: a short, enclosed fan whose blades can rotate around their own long axis, changing the angle of attack relative to incoming air.
At low pitch the blades slice through air with less drag, so for a given angular velocity the torque required from the user is relatively small; at higher pitch the blades present more area and angle, displacing more air per revolution and demanding much higher input torque.
Because the rotor is shrouded and purpose‑designed for cardio, the airflow path is controlled to minimise turbulence where it would feel rough to the user and to keep the noise profile acceptable at higher speeds.
Internally, the system can step through more than 100 discrete pitch settings, effectively discretising the rotor’s torque–speed curve into “virtual gears” that the console can index and present as levels.
VPR blends feed‑forward (your cadence/force) with gear setting (requested pitch) so resistance is a function of both how fast you drive the rotor and what pitch band the controller holds it in.
At a fixed cadence, shifting to a higher gear instructs the mechanism to increase blade pitch; the rotor then needs more torque to maintain the same speed, which you feel as heavier handles, pedals, ski cords or tread push.
Conversely, at a given gear, increasing cadence raises aerodynamic drag in a near‑quadratic fashion, similar to a traditional air erg, but with the pitch‑controlled curve giving a different baseline and slope for each gear.
The control system is tuned so pitch transitions are smooth rather than step‑wise jolts, which helps maintain stroke rhythm on the rower/ski and cadence rhythm on the bike/tread, even when “shifting” under load.
A fixed‑blade fan has one inherent torque‑vs‑speed curve; the only way to change load significantly is to spin it faster/slower or partially choke the inlet with a damper, which shifts effective drag but can feel coarse.
VPR’s variable pitch lets STEPR design multiple torque curves in the same hardware, so a low‑pitch gear might prioritise smooth spin‑up and light inertia for technique or rehab, while high‑pitch gears stiffen the rotor dramatically for heavy power efforts.
This is why the same Rower XL or TreadSled XL can run very low drag for long aerobic sets and then jump to sled‑style loads without resorting to mechanical brakes or separate resistance systems.
From a user perspective, that manifests as a more “gearbox‑like” feel: cadence stays in a comfortable technical window while resistance shifts underneath via pitch, instead of forcing you into awkwardly low or excessively high RPM to find the right load.
On the Rower XL VPR, the rotor is coupled to the flywheel through the drive system so each stroke accelerates the variable‑pitch mass; pitch settings control how quickly the wheel slows between strokes and how much torque each pull demands.
On the TreadSled XL, the curved belt drives the rotor; in “sled” gears the pitch is set high so belt motion immediately meets large aerodynamic resistance, emulating heavy prowler pushes without needing added physical plates.
On the Cycle/Bionic Bike XL, crank motion transfers to the rotor much like an air bike; varying pitch changes the effective resistance at a given cadence so you can hold 60–80 RPM and still move from easy to brutally heavy work.
On the Ski XL, handle cords or drive shafts spin the rotor; pitch tuning is especially important here to avoid harsh end‑range spikes, so the rotor’s curve is shaped to keep tension rising smoothly through the stroke.
