Sunday, February 10, 2013

Using Technology to Track and Improve Fitness

At times we can feel overwhelmed with all the options that we have with different gadgets and technology that are aimed at trying help us improve our diet, exercise, sleep etc. Here is a sample of how using technology can in fact track not only your health and fitness levels but improve your health as well.

A typical day for me starts with monitoring my previous days workout before I even get out of bed. I do this by using a great product called Restwise. It measures my SpO2 (oxygen saturation level) and my resting heat rate. I enter this data into an app on my iPhone along with a few questions and it gives me a rating of how well I've recovered from the previous days workout. From this I know if I'm going to work hard or maybe back-off a bit because I still need more time to recover from my previous workout.

Next, I attach my Fitbit to track my daily steps (it can also look at how well I'm sleeping (I also have used the Sleep Cycle app). Yesterday for example, showed that I walked just under 10,000 steps or about 5 miles (which is my daily goal). It was cool to see that I took 6,000 steps and walked 3.05 miles while clearing snow from my driveway/patio/deck. This can be a great incentive to keep people moving more each day knowing that they need to check in or that "big brother" is watching.

The best use of all this technology, however, comes when I actually exercise. I head to the Koko FitClub for my workout where I typically perform an interval-based cardio session followed by a circuit-based strength session in 45 minutes. Before I start my session I step onto the Koko FitCheck to determine my lean muscle level and eBMI. This gets uploaded to mykokofitclub.com where I have data on everything I done for the last 8 years including Strength gain, Q-score, LML, eBMI and more. I also use Koko Fuel to help me with the nutritional side of things.

With my workout at Koko during the week and my activity on the weekends (this weekend I'm doing some snow-shoeing) - I typically use a Polar heart rate monitor to check my heart rate level.

The best thing about all this technology however is that it can keep you on track to exercise more consistently due to something called the Hawthorne effect. Read more about it here and here.

It's now time to get out and do some snow shoeing and track my progress!

4 comments:

maigrir à tout prix said...

Merci Michael

what is physical therapy said...

It’s really a gainful workout. We can get fitness with the help of this effective and enjoyable workout. I will try it.

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