FITNESS TECH
Steve Dinneen recommends tracking apps and wearable tech to help you reach your goals
In 2011 a man called Jon Cousins carefully collected his beard trimmings and weighed them every day to see whether his facial hair growth correlated with his happiness. The results, based on a sample size of one, were positive: more growth tended to equal a better mood. Cousins was an early adopter of what we now know as the Quantified Self movement, which involves tracking aspects of your life and seeking meaning in the data. Fitness trackers – traditionally in the form of wristbands – and smartphones have since made this movement accessible to the masses. Want to know how many times you stirred in your sleep? How fast your heart was going at 2.30pm? How many calories you burnt watching the latest season of Better Call Saul? There’s an app for that.
Activity trackers are giving people an unprecedented insight into their fitness: the ability to monitor accurately the number of calories burnt or fluctuations in heart rate would once have been the preserve of professional athletes. Now it is big business: Apple Health, a pre-installed iPhone app allowing you to track the number of steps you take, was one of the biggest selling points of the company’s most recent iOS update.
The smartwatch is giving the sector a further boost. Compared with traditional wearables, they tend to be more powerful, more stylish and allow third-party developers to program apps. So are they about to render the humble fitness band obsolete? Not quite. While smartwatch sales are booming – growing by more than 300 per cent in the past year, with 8.1 million sold in the final quarter of 2015 – fitness trackers are growing quicker than ever, too.
The surge in smartwatches is, predictably, driven by the Apple Watch, which controls an estimated 63 per cent of the market (research company Slice Intelligence forecasts that Apple is selling about 20,000 units a day, down from a peak of 200,000 in the week after launch).
So are fitness trackers actually useful? Personal trainer Harry Thomas, who runs London-based No 1 Fitness, says they can be if used correctly. “The real benefit of this kind of technology is helping to maintain your motivation – it’s about making fitness a part of your everyday routine. If you can get into a regime where you’re inputting your food into a tracker and it helps you to stay on top of what you’re eating then that’s great. But you need to make sure you’re not mistaking spending a lot of time using the tech with spending time working out or eating better. Technology is great as a supplement to a healthy lifestyle, but it’s not going to do you any good without the hard work.”
Here is our guide to the best fitness trackers, smartwatches and apps on the market to help you reach your health goals.