Ten... fitness gadgets
Kit and apps to help you get in trim
Product Round-up OK, so it's that time of year again, and every newspaper, website, daytime television show and franchised gymnasium is bombarding you with Xmas-excess guilt. But if you have decided to get fit in 2011, you might find some of these gadgets useful in your quest to attract the opposite sex... er, sorry... improve your health.
Adidas miCoach Pacer
The miCoach Pacer combines a pacer, heart-rate monitor and stride sensor to provide an excellent all-round system for smartphone-less runners. Communicating with the sensors using the ANT+ protocol, the Pacer provides real-time audible feedback and guidance based on predetermined goals. Data can also be synced via USB and PC or Mac to the miCoach website to track progress. Fortunately, you don't need to upload after every run, as the Pacer holds around 32 hours of data. miCoach's only downside is that it can take that long to read the manual and get to grips with the system and running programs.
Reg Rating 75%
Price £120
More info Adidas
GymGoal
Still the best gym companion, GymGoal is part training encyclopedia, part scheduler and part training record. With 250 resistance and 24 cardio exercises - each consisting of full text instructions, images and animations - the GymGoal app - it runs on iOS - virtually obviates the need for expensive personal trainers. The Routines feature is excellent for setting varied workouts, split over days to ensure individual muscles aren't over trained. And the Body Map facilitates selection of specific muscle groups, so you can really concentrate on those guns. But the best feature has to be History, which can track a lifetime's worth of workouts, chronicling every weight, rep and set ever completed.
Reg Rating 80%
Price £1.79
More info Smaltek
Next page: Kettler ErgoRace / World Tours 1.0
COMMENTS
Fitness - I has it.
All the above products in this article are complete bollocks.
Nobody needs any of this crap and none of them will make it any easier to get to your desired fitness & weight levels.
They categorically won't make you fit, ESPECIALLY the Kinect and Wii fit crap, they should be removed under the trade descriptions act, because they are soooooooo misleading.
If you want to get fit and lose weight, you need to do PROPER exercise like jogging, swimming or using a good quality cross trainer (not some £50 job from Argos), combined with press-ups & situps. The only "device" you need is appropriate footwear for jogging and a clock to look at during your session so you know you've been doing exercise for at least 40 minutes, three times a week. Getting fit from a state of complete un-fitness is not easy, it's rewarding hard work!
Also, eat less food, don't snack after your evening meal and watch the weight drop off.
Sports-tracker for symbian..
sports-tracker (sports-tracker.com) is a free symbian app which is better than track my run and endemondo etc and has worked great for me for the past couple of years... Always use my old nokia for running instead of my iphone for this app...
Amazed...
...that you did not include a GPS running device such as a Garmin or similar but did manage to include a foot massager and a puzzle. My Garmin has a heart rate monitor and a cadence sensor so is really useful for both running and cycling, a free website to upload all of my exercise as well as a standard export format which many other running and fitness websites accept.
The GPS is also accurate and there are a variety of options such as virtual training partner, courses (with route map), auto-lapping, auto-multisport, pace and heart rate zones and the 400 series have heartrate-based calorie calculation.
I have used one for a year now and wouldn't be without it for a long run or race.
Good post apart from the mention of Situps
Good post. The only way to lose weight and get fit is via my famous diet called "eat less and do more".
You don't need any fancy diets, toys, tech, gadgets, just eat less and do more.
A healthy balanced diet with reduced calorie intake and burning more calories than you ingest and you will lose weight.
My only criticism of your post is you mention situps. They are dreadful for you and only really exercise the main trunk flexor, the iliopsoas muscle and don't work on the abs. Crunches are better but a lot of people now say that full body workouts are better, ie squats, lunges and deadlifts as they all use core stabilisation and work the whole body therefore reducing fat and this is the only way to get your abs to show.
Never heard about SportsTracker?
SportsTracker busts Runkeeper Pro even without trying it.
http://www.sports-tracker.com/#/download
