Every where you look these days there is a new form of tech making its way into the fitness world with fancy looking displays and different ways measuring your workout, generally with a high price tag. So, we are here today to help you decide which one may work for you. Now most of the new tech coming to the fitness world comes in the form of wearable trackers these are things like an Apple watch, Garmin watches or a Fitbit. These can be great tools to help measure some of your weekly routines to help you guide future decisions. Often, we start make changes in our lifestyle choices in an effort to be healthier without really understanding if we need to do that or not, I call this the all or nothing method - trying to change every unhealthy thing you do straight away, trying to get the fastest result possible.
This is where one of these wearable fitness trackers can come in handy, giving you some information and specific daily targets you can aim for to get you on your way. A great one I like to use with a lot of my Clients is a daily step goal, if your short on time and struggle to get a lot of regular workouts in, this is a great way to make sure you’re maintaining a regular output of energy throughout your day. Now before you ask there is no one perfect number of steps for everyone to be clocking up per day, it is completely individual and often heavily tied to your type of job or what you spend most of your day doing, the best way to find out what is right for you is to just wear your device for a week then review it at the end to see what your normal routine looks like, then you’re in a great position to make a realistic goal based off what changes you can make in your routine.
Another great way to implement these devices into your training is to keep track on your heart rate during cardio sessions and during rest periods also, often when completing a cardio-based workout, we are quick to say oh this is hard or this is easy without really measuring what is hard or easy for us just using how we happen to feel that day. Using your heart rate as a gauge for output is a much more accurate way to understand how hard you’re working and if you’re recovering correctly or not so keep an eye on this as you go through your workouts and start getting an understanding of your own levels of work and recovery.
A lot of the time I see people attempt to use these devices as their main form of change for weight loss and it’s not a bad start but over time other life factors do need to be looked at such as food! As a rule of thumb on how to best implement this long term into your fitness plans. Use your diet to change your body composition and use your training to drive adaptations like speed, power, endurance and muscle building.
