There are many fitness wearable options to choose from if you are looking to analyze your workout data. These devices all share similar technology and track various elements, depending on what type of workout you’re doing. To get a meaningful outlook of your progress, let’s make sense of all this fitness wearable data.
Why Wear a Fitness Device?
When starting a fitness program or developing an exercise routine, you should build it around a specific goal you are trying to accomplish. Your goal should also be measurable so you can track your progress.
One of the best ways to track your progress is by recording your workouts. Fitness wearables make this incredibly easy. Not only do they record when you are working out, they also record data that measures intensity. Certain metrics will be more relevant to you, depending on what you are trying to accomplish. Let’s look into some of the types of data that are common with fitness wearable tracking.
Heart Rate Tracker
One of the most popular and useful pieces of fitness wearable data is your heart rate. Heart rate is a measurement of how many times your heart beats in a minute. This measurement can be a good indication of your overall cardiovascular health. It will accelerate through periods of high exertion and slow down during periods of rest.
A normal resting heart rate is in the range of 50-100 beats per minute (BPM). Every body is different, so your normal resting heart rate will likely differ from someone of a different age, weight, or fitness level. Over time, as you consistently exercise, you may notice your resting heart rate slow down. This means your heart is becoming more efficient at pumping blood and doesn’t need to work as hard.
Elite Sports Clubs offers Myzone Heart Rate monitors to its members. These devices connect to your phone and transmit to monitors in select areas of the club so you can view your heart rate live. Read more here on how to get started.
Active Calories
If you see “Active Calories” among your fitness wearable data, this is an estimation of how much energy you burned over the course of your workout. At rest, your body burns calories to maintain normal function. However, you burn additional energy when you exercise. This is simply that additional energy above your resting energy.
Accelerometer
The accelerometer in your fitness wearable measures how fast you go. Let’s say you’re training for a race and you want to complete it as quickly as possible. Understanding your pace in training will help you maximize your stamina. You don’t want to over-exert yourself early on, only to become super fatigued by the end and hurt your final completion time.
However, you don’t have to be an athlete for this to be relevant. If you consistently partake in the same form of cardio exercise such as walking, biking, or running, you may notice an improvement in your speed as your body naturally gets stronger. You can continue to push yourself to move faster as your fitness level and cardiovascular health improve, and your body becomes more capable.
Altimeter
The altimeter measures changes in altitude by analyzing barometric pressure. In other words, it determines how high you climbed. You’ll likely see measurements in flights climbed. A flight of stairs is approximately 10 feet of elevation gained. Even if you’re climbing a mountain, you might still see the metric as flights of stairs climbed, so simply multiply that number by 10 to determine how many feet of elevation you climbed.
Pedometer
One of the most basic pieces of fitness wearable data is the number of steps you take in a day, measured by your device’s pedometer. This is usually measured by tracking your arm motion using the built-in accelerometer. Walking is an easy form of exercise and can be done by any fitness level. It’s a great place to start if you don’t have a lot of time or just starting out/getting back into fitness after a long break. Steps are easily comparable with others, so you can make a game out of walking by competing against your friends and family that also have fitness wearables.
No matter what your goal is, it’s important to track your progress over time. With so much data at your fingertips, fitness wearables make it much easier to do so. It’s up to you to determine which data is relevant and how to make sense of it all. Consult your personal trainer if you feel a fitness wearable would be beneficial to accomplish your fitness goals.
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