Tag Archives: fitness

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Summer Test Ride: Nishiki 12-speed racer

Got my bike out of the shop 10 days ago and finally took it for a short spin. It’s a 1988 Nishiki Rally 12-speed racer. The ten minute spin was long enough yo see how it rides after the tune up, get the HR up for a bit, but to really test out mirroring the AW, via the iOS Accessibility feature,  to my phone so I can use it mounted like a pseudo-bike computer.

I had taken it for two rides up the block when I got home from the shop but the weather was too hot for the following days to ride unless I went really early in the morning or later in the evening, so I waited for an opportune time – which happened to be this evening because the temperature dipped below 80 degrees.

I mounted the phone and set the cycling workout on my watch, which mirrored to the phone perfectly. The whole idea behind the mirroring is to not have to look at my watch for any metrics while I read, as this would mean raising my hand from the bike to try and focus on the screen, instead of glancing down at the phone.

I started the workout and headed out around the neighborhood.

The bike rides well but I was disappointed that, despite riding in pavement, there was enough vibration through the bike to to turn off mirroring. I wonder how I can prevent this next time, because I’d really like to take advantage of the new cycling features when WatchOS 10 drops.

In any event, I’ll do some research in between now and the next ride to see what I can come up with as a solution. If anyone reading this has any suggestions, drop a comment below – thanks.

Be well,

Fresh!

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“It’s called The Walk, The Walk….”

Greetings all,

Welcome to September and the last quarter of 2018. Time flies, yadda, yadda, yadda.

I’m a fan and user of the Apple Watch for fitness tracking and what Apple occasional does is create various badges and awards in its Activity tracking app to help users stay motivated to exercise. I’m also an admin of Facebook’s Apple Watch Fitness Fans Group and walking is one of the many workouts I log as an exercise in the app. On ! Sept, they issued the National Parks achievement for any user that walks or runs for a total of 50 mins, minimum, and logs it as a workout. I took them up on the challenge, got up early and went for said walk at 7 am that morning.

It was a cool morning, perfect for a walk during that time of day. It included an uphill walk (don’t know of the elevation got recorded by the watch and/or phone) part of the way, as well as through two paths that joined adjacent streets. The workout data as well as the achievement award, are shown below.

As I had just started the round trip, another walker on the other side of the street approached me. We gave each other the obligatory good morning wave, and kept stepping. What I noticed is, instead of treading on a perfectly constructed sidewalk (as I was doing), he chose to walk in the street. What I *never* understood is why people do this when a sidewalk is available.

Granted, I’ve seen a group of people do this, but I only think this happens because a sidewalk is too narrow to accomodate discussion between all involved, so to spread out by the curve in the street makes it easier for all to talk and hear each other, instead of pretty much walking in single file. I can’t see applying that logic to a single person walking.

I have come to one deductive reason, which may seem cockamamie but here goes: People who do this may have grown up in rural areas where sidewalks were not prevalent, only roads, so they are forced to do so and are used to it. I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts.

Thanks for the read.
Fresh!

PS: For you fans of the band, The Time, get the blog title 😉

References:
1. Apple Pay and Apple Watch help customers celebrate America’s national parks.

NP: Birds Of A Feather|Philanthrope

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Broadening the workout horizon

Greetings all…

Earlier tonight I posted a blog about day 1 of 31 of my social media fast for the month of August. Part of the daily social media regimen is being an admin to the Facebook group, Apple Watch Fitness Fans. I usually post my daily exercise and workout results there, like many of the members there. Since I’m on sabbatical, I thought it would be the perfect time to start posting here again, like I used to.

I did a recent post that analyzed my exercise journey during the first six months of 2018. One of the things I learned from that is the types of exercises I tended to do the most (and least of). That said, I decided to create a balance, based on the results I found. Tonight (especially since it was late) I decided to do a functional workout, since I’d like to gain more core strength, It was a short one, but staying on this track consistently will help be balance the scales out.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Back soon.

::: oceans of rhythm :::

Fresh!

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My fitness journey – 01 Jan 18 to 30 June 18 – Six Months of Tracking

On July 3, 2017, I purchased my Series 1 Apple Watch from Best Buy – specifically for fitness tracking. NIce to say that one year later, it has served it’s purpose.

While I’ve worked out more on than off since my college days, the watch, through the Activity app and iOS Health app dashboard, provides a fair amount of data that can be sliced and diced in various. What I think the Apple Watch fitness ecosystem lacks is website and/or desktop integration like FitBit, Garmin and what Nike Plus used to have.

Prior to the watch, I used the Nike Fuel ecosystem to tracking my running first and then, with the addition of the Nike Training app, I tracked other forms of exercises that aligned with their app’s workouts. I specifically started using the Nike Fuel Band late in the game (August 2017) For the beginning of my journey with the NikeFuel ecosystem through now, you can read the blog posts here, here, and here

That said, looking at what the watch’s Activity app and iPone’s Health app portray as data, I decided to take a look at how and what I did for the first six months of 2018, I didn’t include the entire year I owned the watch, because it took some months to really understand how to use it as a fitness tracking device, something I know I have maximized yet.I took some very basic data points, threw them in Excel and created some simple data visualization graphics (aka charts LOL) to give me an idea of how things look since 1 Jan. The Health app provides a fair amount of ways for you to see data on what you’ve done over a specified time range, however I wanted to look at things in which the app can’t (as far as I know.) You can see them in the attached graphics.

It was pretty cool to see the data this way, because it now lets me know what changes I may want to make for the second half of the year. Feel free to let me know what you think. I’ll get around to doing a more detailed blog post with my plan forward based on what I’ve learned from the data. For now, here are a few of the ways I looked at what I accomplished. For all the following data, I created a small spreadsheet and manually entered all the data I wanted from the Activity app summaries, then created graphs

While losing weight is not a concern of mine (at the moment haha), I decided to see what kind of average calorie burns my exercise workouts netted me, and would they vary widely at all from month to month. The data in this graph clearly correlates to the following data points you’ll see below.

What were the average hours per month that I worked out? As said above, this aligns with my average calorie burns (obviously). Another reason why I want to track this statistic was to draw some correlation to how busy I may been from month to month or any other factors I can remember that would cause me not to exercise (lack of discipline and/or motivation, not enough sleep, poorly planned schedules, etc).

Another data set that correlates to the above is average exercise minutes per month. The Apple Watch has a standard, unchangeable metric of 30 minutes, of movement greater than that of an average brisk walk, needed to close the exercise ring – whether that is done doing and saving an actual workout from its list or just achieving that closure through daily movement. The 30 minutes minimum of daily exercise originates from the American Heart Associations recommendation, which Apple adopted for its baseline for the Activity app. From a ring closure standpoint, I found myself at least trying to do 30 minutes daily, HOWEVER, I also found that I did it only as my maximum when I could have done more. This, to me, is not a good thing because it places the focus on on only doing enough to achieve a metric goal and not doing a full set of exercises that would normally take more than 30 minutes. What I learned from this is just that – focus on what your exercise regimen is and make time for that average timeframe instead of doing just enough to close a ring – that is shortchanging at at best.

Here I decided to look at the total workouts done per month, regardless of what type of workout it was. It gave me an idea of just how many workouts I set out to do, which is (again) directly proportional to the time put in.

This last data set is my favorite because it shows, in a given month, how many different types of exercise workouts I did. My fitness regimen is primarily comprised of weight/strength training exercises. Over the last year, my desire was to work in exercises that would benefit me in the areas of cardio and core. I took up running in 2010, at the same time I became interested in tracking my fitness via the Nike+ iPod Sport Kit. I never cared for running and after a few years of hiatus, I finally started working it in more last year, and became a better runner than in the beginning. As for core, enter the Nike Training Club app. I LOVE this app and it’s been my go to for all the core workouts I do. It doesn’t one-for-one save it’s exercises (as it should) with the same name as the corresponding exercise in the list of Apple Watch workouts, but it gets the job done well enough. That said, it was interesting to see what exercises, in hindsight, were focused on for various reasons (known and unknown). I drew insight from this to help me plan the second half of 2018 with exercise types that will better provide the focus for what I want to achieve health/physical-wise.

The last reason I want to do this experiment was for finding out how I can slice and dice the data to show me what I want. I’m certain that there are tons of apps that can show similar (the Health app itself can show similar looking bar graphs), but it was a fun exercise to do on my own.

Well, thats about it. I was able to gain some good insight to plan for the rest of the year.

Thanks for the read.

Fresh!

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Calories to NikeFuel Points – An Experiment

Greetings readers,

In my last (longgg) post, I discussed why I have, in 2017, begun using the NikeFuel Band. In all the research I’ve done, I wanted to determine (via some crude experiments), what many have tried before – How many calories burned make up 1 NikeFuel point?

As a recap, the Nike website says this:

“The NikeFuel algorithm was developed at the Nike Digital Sport Science Lab (DSSL), a state-of-the-art performance lab located at Nike WHQ in Portland, OR. The DSSL consists of a team of exercise physiologists and biochemists who are constantly working and reworking the science behind the NikeFuel algorithm. Their goal is not only to perfect the accuracy and consistency of the metric, but also to tune NikeFuel for the performance needs of different athletes.”

About four years ago, there were net postings saying the ratio was 2.79 cals to 1 NP (calculated via experiment by a runner) and “roughly 3 cals to 1 NP” (according to Nike). Since the algorithm was worked over time (says Nike), I decided to conduct some experiments on a normal day of movement (24 Aug 17) and exercising to see what results I’d end up with.

Experiment 1 – Morning Calisthenics
Since I workout every morning by at least do a short calisthenics set, I decided to note the NikeFuel points tracked vs the calories burned with the band and compare them to what the Apple Watch recorded. The following resulted in the amount of calories burned for each NikeFuel point:

Roughly, a 4-to-1 ratio.

Experiment 2 – Normal Daily Moves and Exercise
This time, I decided to take the same approach and apply it to a normal day of activity. Once again, note the results.

Finally, Experiment #3 – Core Training
It takes 30 minutes of exercise in Workout mode to close the exercise ring on the Apple Watch. Since the NikeFuel Band offers a capability called Sessions, I decided to start a session simultaneously with the Apple Watch and record the results as follows:

In all three experiments, with the exception of the outlier of 3.42 cals/NikeFuel point, the results consistently show roughly 4 cals to every one NikeFuel point, or a 4-to-1 ratio.

Crude experiments, yes…but consistent. It’s just something I was curious about, but honestly didn’t expect pretty stable results across the board.

Thanks again for the read….

Best,
Fresh!

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Why the Nike FuelBand SE in 2017 – “Band on the run”

So, I’ve found the Apple Watch fitness capabilities a welcome and useful way to track my general fitness activities AND found the entire process it uses to motivate me, especially in the area of consistency. The apps that I use integrate perfectly with the Health app, I’ve had no issue with sharing my Activity data with others, and even with the current Watch OS 3.12, operating everything I need from the watch is a breeze (there a few things I’d like to see changed in future updates but they’re not fitness-related).

That said, it seems like it’s an all-in-one solution for my needs, as I stared using wearable technology to track my fitness data five years before the Apple Watch came along. Why, then, have I developed this fascination for using another unit that once had it’s heyday as a wearable fitness tracker, but met an untimely (some what say timely) death three years ago, one that many lambasted as inaccurate, lacking features that units in co-existence had at the time? Well, it’s simple, it offers and does a few things that the AW ecosystem doesn’t. This fitness tracker is the Nike Fuel Band. I’m going to talk about my personal likes about it and why I enjoy using it in concert with the AW, vice discussing it’s technical drawbacks as a unit and in comparison to where fitness tracking technology has evolved to.

I’m certain that all of you reading this blog post have, at least, heard of the Nike Fuel Band, and probably have an idea what Nike Fuel and the band is.

For those of you that don’t, the Nike website describes the concept of Nike Fuel as follows:

“Nike Fuel is whole integer number that represents your daily activity by calculating your calories burned along with your steps taken, while simultaneously factoring in your age, gender, weight and height. In short order, Nike Fuel is a calculation that allows everyone and anyone to compete regardless of their sex, age and any physical predispositions. Nike worked with some of the world’s top experts in science and sports to engineer NikeFuel algorithms based on oxygen kinetics. Unlike calorie counts — which vary based on someone’s gender and body type — NikeFuel is a normalized score that awards all participants equal scoring for the same activity regardless of their physical makeup. A user can also choose to also receive a calorie count to understand how many calories are burned versus how much NikeFuel is earned. The Nike+ FuelBand SE and first generation FuelBand track activity-based caloric burn (not resting metabolic caloric burn) using an algorithm (a series of mathematical models that link movement patterns to known energy requirements) based on the energy you expend when you move.

The NikeFuel algorithm was developed at the Nike Digital Sport Science Lab (DSSL), a state-of-the-art performance lab located at Nike WHQ in Portland, OR. The DSSL consists of a team of exercise physiologists and biochemists who are constantly working and reworking the science behind the NikeFuel algorithm. Their goal is not only to perfect the accuracy and consistency of the metric, but also to tune NikeFuel for the performance needs of different athletes (Nike says “If you have a body, you’re an athlete”). Our NikeFuel science team has an extensive amount of athlete V02 tests, each consisting of a series of 42 activities that include both lifestyle and traditional sport movements. Our data set grows exponentially every year, and our algorithms get short and more accurate every month.

In addition to the work we do in-house, the DSSL works directly with experts from across the academic and research industries to further perfect the algorithms.”

Popular Mechanics published a 2012 story regarding an inside look of the Nike DSSL, read it here.

The steps and calories are not an exact science but it is a pretty good gauge of how active you have been during the day. It takes into account the amount of movement in a given period of time so assigns a higher “point” value. It also does not take into account heart rate at all. What I like about the Fuel Band is it constitutes itself a motivational tool – you can compare your Fuel score with some celebrity athlete, or to everyday people in your age range, even you know they are more active or less active than you are.

Like many dedicated fitness trackers and mobile phones, motion is key to tracking fitness via use of accelerometers and other motion sensing technologies. Nike+ Fuelband is at its core an accelerometer; it counts the number of steps and calculates the estimated calories consumed. The FuelBand contains a timer, and by taking into account both distance and time, i.e. how vigorous is your motion, the NikeFuel score provides a measure of the aerobic and cardiovascular workout. In addition, Nike Fuel points do not depend on weight as a metric factor (unlike calculating calories burned) and so, again, the score can be directly compared between individuals.

A blog post from Quantified Health states “…Taken together, the Nike Fuel score probably correlates closely with the number of calories burned but it also contains a component that is orthogonal (distinct) to this count relating to the briskness of the exercise. It would be helpful if Nike could provide more information about its Fuel score and how it is calculated to enable a more accurate physiological interpretation.” That said, Nike’s formula for calculating Nike Fuel points is “proprietary”. I’ve read two web references where a runner conducted some experiments to determine that one Nike Fuel point is equal to 2.79 calories burned. You can read the entire post here. Another reference aligns with this in that a user contacted Nike and their reply was the ratio of of calories to Fuel points is “roughly 3-to-1” Yet another user compiled a month’s worth of data to try and determine this, you can read about that here. I’ve started conducting some experiments to see if my findings show. A reader commented to the Quantified Health blog post by saying: “What SHOULD have been used, both by Nike and here in your article discussing it, is how there Nike Fuel points are related to METs which are the universal measurement of activity and caloric expenditure. I suspect Nike Fuel is either based on or directly correlated to METs in some way.” Again, many have been interested in trying to crack the code of Nike’s proprietary formula.

Back to why I use the Fuel Band in a few short reasons:

1. Where Nike Fuel really works for me is as a personal motivation tool. At any point during the day, I can push the button on the band to see where I am in relation to my goal. I don’t need to pull out my cell phone to bring up the app (which obviously has much more functionality in a number of ways), because, for one, mobile phones are prohibited where I work, but the like the Apple Watch (also prohibited), the band is connect via Bluetooth to my phone, so as soon as it reconnects, I can see all the extra data via the app, data which is essentially synced to my Nike+ fitness account online. I’ve never been one to enjoy having a phone strapped to be to measure my physical activity when exercising or otherwise.

My first introduction to trophies (or achievements, as the Apple Watch world calls them), came via the use of Nike Fuel. For a list of all the trophies, go here. For a list of Nike and Nike + Fuel badges, you can view those here. I’ve gotten a number of achievements via use of the Apple Watch fitness tracking, but the Nike Fuel ones seem more…..exciting…for lack of a better word.

2) There’s a certain “cool/wow factor” with this band – the LED lights, the progression of color (red to green) as I reach my goal. it’s definitely an attention-getter if seen in public today. I like that, it’s simple and to the point. While the Apple Watch gives data (currently) on 58 types of exercise activity, Nike designed the band to track 88 different types. A lot, but not near the 200+ types the Polar fitness trackers are designed to measure.

3) It’s any inconspicuous wearable that gives me a different metric of my physical activity.

4) Nike, being the juggernaut of the company it is, got every aspect of advertising and social media dead on for me, everything about it is still attractive (even though the band itself and it’s social media activity is dead and discontinued)

In short, it’s convenient (no phone needed), simple (though the Fuel points concept is unlike most common fitness data tracking methods), it’s cool looking, provides the motivation I need, and they just got me with everything they put in to this now dead platform.

Yes, I have the NRC app on my phone and watch, as well as the NTC app on my phone – both generated Nike Fuel points when used to the Nike Fuel app, but for some odd (I guess) reasons, I like the physical and tactile aspect of wearing the band.

Nike did end up settling a lawsuit regarding misleading advertising about the accuracy of the fitness tracking of the band, resulting in refunding users $15 USD or a Nike gift card, if they purchased the band within a certain time period. They also eventually released their API to the public so developers could integrate the software into other applications.

Why did Nike can the development of the Fuel Band? In short, the company decided it eventually did not want to invest resources in a dedicated fitness tracker, but otherwise license and integrate that technology into mobile devices. At that time, the FitBits and Garmins of the world exceeded the features that the Fuel Band offered.

Well, there you have it. I did an Instragram hashtag search on #nikefuelband and was surprised to see how many people are still using it in 2017. I think that, in itself piqued my interest more, aside from the reasons given above.

Thanks for the read…

Peace…
Fresh!

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Fitness Goals – Powered by The Apple Watch

Greetings all….

It’s been quite some time since I’ve posted to this section of my blog, but the reason for doing so is to sing (and bring) the praises of the Apple Watch.

Since it’s inception, and as of a month ago (specifically), I was determined NOT to purchase one, strictly because of it’s price point. I come from the world of Pebble, and have been using that watch (still do) for the past two years of so. Interestingly enough, FitBit in December 2016, purchased the intellectually property of Pebble. Many called it the death of Pebble, however that proved not to be so. My concern is after December 2017, FitBit will no longer maintain the Pebble servers. What that means, in actuality, is that the voice-to-text and native weather features will cease to function. The Pebble community has risen the call to keep Pebble alive, via a group of developers called Rebvle.io . They (at the moment) will continue to develop software on the Android platform to sustain the Pebble ecosystem. That is good news except there has been no such movement on the iOS side – which means that as iOS version upgrades evolve, incompatible with Pebble’s ecosystem will occur. There as already been some small incompatibility hiccups since iOS 10, but nothing major (seems iOS 11 beta is even working fine).

That said, being an Apple fanboy since the late 90s, I started actually using the Nike+ Fitness app on an iPod Touch to track my running. Between 2010 (my first real interested in running) through 2013 or so, it worked well enough to allow me to get a good view of progress over the years. Since then, it has evolved both into the Nike Run Club and Nike Training Club apps. As for the Apple Watch, I knew that tight integration between Watch OS and iOS would never be an issue. This, in itself, caused me to make the purchase decision (in addition to having a zero balance on my Best Buy card LOL). I decided on purchasing the 38 mm Series 1 after a great deal of research. It had everything I needed at the price point I wanted (I take my phone with me everywhere and don’t swim to the point where I need to track swim metrics, so I didn’t need onboard GPS or waterpoof capabilities). I knew very little about the fitness features via the Activity app when I purchased it, but seeing that I’ve been more on the fitness bandwagon than off, throughout life, the fitness features immediately began to appeal to me, the more that I learned about them. The motivation to “close those rings” is a very real thing to many, self included, however I’ve learned that this motivation means different things to different people. For me, I’ve learned that this ring closure concept, along with how the Activity app is integrated with the Health app, has given me a new and greater understanding on how regular and consistent fitness is extremely important. The rings themselves has strangely strengthened my desire to make fitness a routine and part of my daily regimen and that is definitely a good thing.

I will say that I’ve learned a great deal about AW’s main competitor, FitBit. Though I’ve never been part of the community, I’ve learned that there are major differences between that of AW and FB. While I won’t get into that comparison here, I will say that for me, AW (and even the community as it currently is), is right for me in all aspects. Anyway, you slice it, the bottom line is what works best for you as an individual, and in the end, it all boils down to keeping fitness as a routine in your daily life.

Thanks for the reading, I know it was a bit longwinded as a introduction. Subsequent posts will be focused on companion apps I use along the Activity app, the community as it grows and changes, feature improvements, and the like – but generally how I find it useful as a fitness tool. I participate a great deal in the Facebook group Apple Watch Fitness Fans, so if you’re an Apple Watch owner interested in fitness, consider checking it out, it’s a great group and very helpful

Get fit, stay fit.

Thanks,
Doug

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Life happens while your making plans (fitness/exercise/training/goals)

What’s up everyone. Hope all is well. It’s Wednesday evening about 7:02pm and I’m just wrapping up work for today. Had to jet out for 90 mins to pick up my car from the auto body shop and get the rental returned, hence the late hours here. I was just thinkinig how well my runs and workouts (bodybuilding/strength building) have been consistently going. I ran my fastest mile last Friday and detailed my strength training workout program…but that’s just it. It was my last day in the gym.

This is a common thing that happens to many of us, no matter what we’re involved in. One day off can turn into two, two into…well, you get the picture. Add to that other projects and interests and you can see how conflicts can make themselves apparent. While it’s easy to let discouragement set in (as it has in the past), I’m looking for ways to maintain the motivation….and will find them. Maybe I’ll post the list when I compile it (for all those interested, raise your right hand 🙂 )

Interestingly enough, I was looking for a graphic for the intro to this post (the one above) and ironically, a great article was attached to it 10 Excuses for Not Exercising, and Why They Won’t Fly. While all don’t personally apply to me, the first one I can be guilty of. If you’re trying to stay on your program, I hope this article is useful. If you’re about to start, hope it is equally as useful.

Ok, I’m gone. Take care.

::: oceans of rhythm :::

Fresh!

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Fitness Tech Phenomenon 2012 – Nike+ and the rest: My Experiences

Greetings all,

I hope this blogpost finds you well. For many of you following me on Facebook and Twitter, you’ve seen my various status updates and tweets about my health and fitness training, especially in the areas of running and weight workouts. You also know, being the techie that I am, the ability to use technology to track my performance metrics against goals, is of great interest to me, and frankly makes exercising that much more fun. You also probably know that I am a fan of the Nike+ fitness tracking system. Well, this post is not about waving the Nike+ banner, but more about my experiences and knowledge gained about the whole fitness tracking phenomenon and how I see it with respect to exercising/training the old fashioned way – basically paper and pen at best!

I’ll start by conveying my experience with the Nike+ system, my likes about it, and convey a little about the dislikes of others about it (in comparison to the competition). I discovered Nike+, not via one of the many YouTube videos or a TV commercial, but by reading an article in Wired Magazine entitled “Living By Numbers”. While the article featured the work of Apple and Nike in developing the Nike+ system, it was also comprised of other articles and examples of websites and apps regarding performance metrics tracking. You can read the article here.

I’ve pretty much worked out -prettttttttttty- regularly since late HS, through college, etc (though I won’t state how many times I fell off the horse and got back on – thank goodness for muscle memory). Finding out about idea of using tech to track my performance was immediately golden to me and obviously, as said above, appealed to my tech side. What I liked (and still do) about the sports and fitness giant we know as Nike, is their entire approach – marketing, advertising, etc to sports and fitness. The appeal to THIS consumer and fan is great. Another company that does the same for me is Apple (as I type away on this sleek black Macbook).

So, Nike has developed this whole system called Nike Plus, or more overall Nike Active. The whole premise (if you didn’t read the article above) is the combination of an iPod nano or iPhone, coupled with a sensor that goes in specialized Nike running shoes, and a sensor receiver that goes into your iPod (which is how it was originally designed). It was first geared towards tracking your run stats. Since then, the iPod nano 6G (v1.2 software update) and iPhone 4/4S with iOS 5.0 do away with the need for the iPod sensor receiver that comes with the Nike+ Sports Kit. Here’s a video (not the newest, but my favorite) about the basics of Nike+

Since 2006, various Nike+ products have come into existence – the sports band, the Nike+ GPS watch. Here’s a comparison chart

For me, the best product is the iPod nano. I’m not at a point where I want to track my routes, nor do I need the instantaneity of posting to the Nike+ site via GPS. I also own an iPhone 4 that I make reference to later in this post.

Nike has upped the bar and added yet another fitness tracking item: The Nike Fuel Band

A really interesting, yet pricey, fitness tracking device that is designed to motivate you to stay active. I like everything about it (sans the price), except it isn’t waterproof and if you like working out to music, you’re out of luck. It’s slated to hit the US market on Feb 22nd. Here’s a good article on it.

Nike+ is great to me, however there are some definite naysayers and disatisfied users of the system. If you are on FB and search on the keywords “Nike Plus”, you’ll find their page. 98% of the comments currently there (they revamped the page over the last two years) center around the following areas”

  • Inability to connect to the website
  • Run data not posting to the site via iTunes or GPS
  • Run data not crossposting to Facebook

    • It appears to me that a good deal of the problem points to the fact that it’s a Flash based site, when many, if not all of the other ones are not. Frankly I like the site, and in the almost two years of running and using it, I’ve never suffered the myriad of problems these people are griping about. Nike did admit, and posted a formal letter, to the issues the site was having. I think that was admirable of them. Not having experienced the issues others have, it’s hard for me to share a sympathetic ear, but I hope that the site issues become minimal.

    One of the major capabilities in fitness tracking tech is the use of GPS, especially in running. As widely known, you can track your routes and via GPS upload them to your favorite fitness track website via the accompanying smartphone app. Garmin, of course, is in the game and many fitness sites, along with Nike, like Map My Fitness, GainFitness, Dailyburn, Dailymile, and so on. As you can see from iPhone screenshot, I’ve downloaded a number of fitness tracking apps that, aside from Nike+, have tried yet. Since I workout with weights as well, I’m looking for one that will allow me to success track performance there as well. There are eight so far that need investigation. Assessing each will be a project in itself. Currently, in addition to the Nike+ sites, I am using the online site, Dailymile. It was recommended by a friend of mine who’s done a thorough assessment of the site and what I’ve seen so far, I like. It not only allows me to track my runs, but other types of fitness workouts as well. It crossposts to Twitter nicely, allows for the upload of pics and video, has the ability to import my run data from Nike+. From what I understand, it has great capability for analytics as well. Many of these sites allow for import of data from Nike+ and other sites as well.

    Many of the sites mirror the same capabilities so, as said above, the best thing to do is compare and maybe use multiple sites, if necessary, to meet the needs you have for tracking your metrics. This leads me to an obvious aspect of performance tracking – accuracy. Just how accurate is all of this? To quote a friend. “If it’s tracking faulty stats it’s futile”. True indeed. One can, depending on what they want to get out of tracking performance, get VERY hung up on how accurate one device is against another in an apples-to-apples comparison. Then there are those like a weightlifter, whose comment I saw in a forum that was attached to an article about this aspect. He basically said he didn’t care much about tight accuracy because he’s just a weightlifter, but wanted to have SOMETHING to gauge his run performance, something simple he could use as a tool to track improvements. The article by Daily Burn CEO Andy Smith is entitled “DailyBurn CEO: Fitness-Tracking Devices Aren’t Gimmicks, but They’re Close”. The article can be read here. Personally, I think one, especially someone who is highly data driven, can get too caught in the phenomena, losing sight to why they started the fitness journey to begin with.

    In summary, I look forward to continuing in the leverage of fitness tech to allow me the added enjoyment of keeping fit. I’m settled and happy with the physical tools (iPod nano and Nike Sports Kit) that I have…I can see a bluetooth transmitter for the nano and an accompanying lightweight set of bluetooth headphones, but other than that, I’m good. As for the apps and websites, research and trial awaits. I’m looking forward to that as well, but in the mean time…it’s all about breaking that 10 min mile and training for my first 5K this year. Hopefully I can find an interesting app to aid in my bodybuilding, or should I say weight workouts. Time will tell. In closing, for all the excitement there is in gaining and maintaining good fitness, I try to keep this thought first and foremost.

    Here are a number of popular online fitness tracking sites:

  • DailyBurn
  • DailyMile
  • Gain Fitness
  • Map My Fitness

    • Thanks for reading….

    peace…
    Fresh!

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    Health and Wellness Week: July 25 – 29: 8 Surprising Benefits of Drinking Water

    Greetings…

    On this next to the last day of Health and Wellness Week, I decided to post about another physical aspect of well being and that is the benefits of water. All you physicians check me on this, but from what I know, the brain is 78% water and the body itself is composed of 98% of this stuff called dihydrogen oxide. I try to drink as much water as I can. It’s my favorite overall beverage (with Sobe Elixirs a close second…haha). In any event, with the plethora of sports drinks out, I always reach for water for replenishment and thirst when I can. I ended up finding a pretty good article earlier this week entitled

    As the week winds down, I wanted to also share another friend in my Twitter stream, Dr. Melodie, a health and wellness practicioner and practicing chiropractor. She has a great health and wellness blog that I suggest you check out. I like it a lot. If I get a chance to do a final post tomorrow, I’ll reflect on what I enjoy about it. Check out my friend’s posts this week at

    Peace,
    Fresh!