When Burn Goes Bust : Mind games may help you lose the boredom and pump up your interest in that idel home gym.

Just about every inch of Susan Jacobs’ Burbank bedroom is functional. There’s the floral comforter (for warmth), the oak desk (for writing), the long dresser (for storing clothes) and that darn NordicTrack (for decoration).

“I begged my husband for a NordicTrack for my birthday last year,” the 37-year-old nurse says. “He told me, ‘It’ll become a clothes hanger.’ ”

Susan Jacobs disagreed.

Mark Jacobs gave in.

She used it three times a week . . . for a month and a half.

Now, it’s resting comfortably at the foot of their bed. Meanwhile, under the bed of a 49-year-old Los Angeles woman is an aerobic slide that is slowly becoming one big dust ball.

“I used it for about two and a half months, twice a week,” she says. “I thought it would be easy. I saw those ads on television, you know, with those women in elastic bike shorts who don’t sweat.”

Finally, she grew tired of setting up the slide each time. Under the bed it went. Under the bed it has stayed.

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Every day in Southern California, countless pieces of exercise equipment are laid to rest by once-well-intentioned owners. At first, these exercisers embraced this equipment like a new neighborhood Starbucks. Then something happened: Boredom.

The result: Exercise equipment cemeteries started to pop up--ranging from tiny bedroom shrines with a stationary bike tucked in a corner; to larger memorials in basement closets, filled to the clothes’ rack with Thighmasters, barbells and jump ropes; to the Forest Lawn of exercise equipment: the thrift shop.

“We do collect quite a lot of exercise equipment,” says Dave Morris, fleet manager for Goodwill Industries in Los Angeles. “Anything from old but usable exercise bikes to fairly elaborate machines such as home gyms, and everything in between”--including steppers, stairclimbers and treadmills. A recent bonanza: a home gym that “took up half the truck,” Morris says.

How did it come to pass that the Lifecycle you vowed to be faithful to is making Dave Morris a happy man? Is there a way to put the fire back in your workout?

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The showroom of the Busybody store on Central Avenue in Glendale is wall-to-wall with home fitness equipment and an aura of promise. On display near the front door is a home weight-training station. Treadmills line one wall. In between are cross-country ski machines, stairclimbers, rowers and exercise bikes.

On this particular Saturday afternoon, store manager Ted Gorzny is closing a sale with James Petrie of West Covina. Petrie balances his toddler daughter on one hip and grins contentedly as his wife, Carmela, browses nearby with their toddler son.

“There’s always a fight about who’s going to the gym (and who’s staying home to watch the kids),” Petrie says. But those little spats will soon be history. In a matter of days, the home gym they have just purchased--$1,400, including accessories--will be delivered and set up in their garage.

Will it end up catching dust? Or building muscle?

Muscle, says Petrie, who is part of a growing group of exercisers who have opted to work out in the privacy of their homes. Retail sales of exercise equipment in 1992 topped $2 billion, according to the National Sporting Goods Assn.

But while sales of exercise equipment are booming, the percentage of adult Americans engaged in regular exercise (20 minutes, three times a week), has remained fairly stable at about 20% over the past several years, says Rod Dishman, an exercise scientist at the University of Georgia, Athens.

What Dishman and other exercise experts are trying to figure out is, with all these home exercise options, why can’t most people stick with it? Probably two-thirds drop out, estimates Larry Gettman, an exercise physiologist and vice president for research and development at National Health Enhancement Systems in Phoenix. (The drop-out rate at health clubs is about the same, he says.)

There’s no simple answer. Among the possible reasons the exercise attention span is so short:

* Not everyone is cut out to be a successful home exerciser. (The Los Angeles woman who slid her slide under the bed returned to her gym.)

* Some people are suited to home workouts but choose the wrong equipment.

* Others don’t know how to stay motivated.

* Others have unrealistic expectations--they do too much too fast and end up sore and discouraged. (It’s always best to consult a doctor before beginning or resuming an exercise program.)

Madison Avenue also deserves some of the blame, in Dishman’s view.

“Exercise equipment is marketed as many other products are,” he says. “The image sold is one of changing the physique. Not just changing it a little bit but changing it a lot, in a short period of time. The reality is, biology doesn’t change that quickly.”

In advertisements, equipment manufacturers tend to show the fit--not the fat--working out, Dishman says, which makes the situation worse. No one stops to think that these models, besides being genetically blessed, probably work out two hours a day, six days a week--a schedule few people can maintain.

“If you start out with this image, you are doomed,” Dishman says.

Ditto if you start out with the wrong equipment.

“Step on this treadmill, go ahead,” coaxes Mike Cirillo, co-owner of the Fitness Store in Granada Hills. The treadmill in question, he explains, is a nationally advertised but, in his opinion, substandard model. He keeps it for demonstration purposes, he says, to persuade consumers to test machines for how they feel and perform rather than to buy strictly based on name recognition and price.

For example, if you want to watch TV while working out on an exercise bike, you should make sure that the bike isn’t too loud. Otherwise, this could lead to another bike taking up space in an exercise equipment “graveyard” such as the Fitness Store’s secondhand outlet, which buys from burned-out exercisers and customers wanting to upgrade.

Another obstacle to home exercise is the lack of social reinforcement, found in health clubs and at running tracks and walking paths. But if you can’t get to that smelly gym, Dishman suggests that you re-create that environment by asking loved ones to prod and encourage you--or even join you.

Then there is the “I’ll get my money’s worth” mind-set. Because many machines are expensive, says Gettman, of National Health Enhancement Systems, exercisers figure that hey should work out exclusively and continuously. Wrong approach, he says.

“Don’t buy a stepper and say, ‘I’m going to do this every day for the next 12 months.” You won’t.

Instead, design a seasonal program planned around the home equipment and other activities. For instance, he says, he uses the stepper in the winter but abandons it each summer for walking and other outdoor exercise.

Even motivated home exercisers can become slugs.

“Boredom is the result of a person feeling they could do more, but there is not an opportunity in the environment for other skills to be put to use,” says Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a University of Chicago psychology professor and an expert on boredom who has abandoned his cross-country ski machine in favor of walks and hikes.

The feeling some people get while riding a stationary bike at home, he says, is similar to the restlessness that can strike while waiting in line or traveling by bus. “You begin to feel anxious and you want out of the situation.”

Getting a new piece of high-tech equipment might help: Life Fitness Exertainment System teams a Lifecycle with Super Nintendo and lets exercisers play as they pedal. To be unveiled in June, it’s expected to cost less than $1,000.

On the lower end, there’s the $129 Computer Athlete, which connects an arcade-style computer game to an exercise bike or other piece of equipment. One software program allows exercisers to compete with other joggers, says CEO Dwight Eberhart.

Another solution, Csikszentmihalyi says, “is to do something in your mind different than just entertaining yourself. That could include planning work, a party, vacation. It takes practice, because usually we do these things on paper.”

“I’m a disassociator,” Gettman says. “I can’t think about the exercise; it’s too painful.” So when walking or stepping, he problem-solves and thinks about other things.

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Then there are secrets from that exclusive club of successful home exercisers who have learned through trial and error how to make themselves stay faithful.

Ernie Delatorre, 39, works 50 hours a week as a Beverly Hills physical therapist and lives in Studio City.

“I don’t have time for the gym,” he says. Instead, he works out in a corner of the living room where a Universal gym is set up. He bench presses and does pull-downs and leg extensions. He’s kept it up at least twice a week for four years, supplementing it with workouts on a stationary bike and outside cycling when he can.

Christina McMillan has four kids and, one would presume, little time to exercise. But nearly every day, the 28-year-old Canyon Country resident heads for her garage, where she keeps a weight-training station that uses rubber-band resistance.

“I do a little each day, and then put in 40-minute sessions twice a week,” she says. In between sets, she tends to the laundry.

Peggy Einnehmer is strict with herself: No chocolate unless she works out. When the 34-year-old Sherman Oaks television executive gets home, one of the first things she sees is her exercise equipment: A $7 Rubbermaid stool (in lieu of the more expensive exercise step, which can cost $50 and up), two exercise videotapes, a variety of dumbbells and ankle weights. She works out at least every other day for a full hour. “I know every word she’s going to say (on the tape).” But she persists. The urge for chocolate is that strong.

Even home exercisers who have pooped out don’t always give up hope, their guilt tempered by possibility and the dawn of a new day.

Does Jacobs, the NordicTrack owner from Burbank, feel guilty?

“Terribly,” says Jacobs, who stopped working out because of an illness in her family.

Does she plan to get back on the program?

“Of course.”

When?

“Tomorrow.”

After all, she says, “Shorts season is coming.”