Smart shorts to up your game
Wearable technology is a tough business. The first wave of fitness trackers just didn’t cut it as users questioned the accuracy of the wrist devices. As well as that, the form factor didn’t suit many people and users discarded them after a few months.
The future of wearable is clothing and we’ll be wearing tech rather than putting it on as an afterthought. We’ve already seen fashionistas sporting prototype Twitter dresses but, for health and fitness tracking, the tech is already here.
Athos is a California-based company trying to bring professionalstandard analysis to amateur athletes. They make leggings for women, shorts for men and compression tops for both sexes.
Unpacking the Athos shorts, I discovered what looked like an ordinary pair of black cycling shorts without the padding. The package contained a small device, called the ‘core’ and a charger.
The core is the electronic brain of the shorts and, after I’d charged it, I clipped it in to its receptacle on the side of the shorts. Then I downloaded the free app from the iOS app store to connect the shorts, via a simple pairing process, to my phone.
The shorts – which come in the usual sizes and contour to the body with a nice compression feel – feel like regular athletic shorts and are made of 76% nylon and 24% Lycra.
Where they differ is in having dozens of sensors built into the material. You can’t feel them but there are dozens there to monitor your muscles as you exercise. This technology measures bio-signals and it does it in real time.
I opened up the app and first tried some squats. The app records your workout but I watched as I exercised and the real-time feedback was remarkable. I could see a generic body image on my phone with my muscle groups indicated in different colours, based on the intensity of the exercise.
You’ll discover if you’re off balance or favouring one muscle group or side of the body over the other, so you can correct your technique. The colours that highlight intensity are also useful, and I found myself wanting to push on harder and get in to the peak zone. Athos gear also measures calorie burn, active time versus rest time and heart rate. The shorts track the major lowerbody muscle groups, inner-quad, outer-quad, hamstrings and glutes. If you’re working on arms and abs, you could add the Athos top for upper body analysis. Battery life was good and it got a few sessions before running low. The app, though, gives plenty of notice on remaining charge.
Athos is not cheap workout gear – but then it is not standard workout gear.
It doesn’t just replace a fitness tracker, instead it gives you a holistic analysis of your workouts. I wore the gear as I ran and discovered that I had a bad habit of dragging a leg and, therefore, working one side of my body far less. The feedback from the app and analysis of muscle activity prompted me to change a bad habit that I’d probably had for years.
Caring for the clothing is easy. Just remove the core, fit the gear into its little washbag and put it in the washing machine.
This type of gear has been available to professional athletes for years, at a high cost. Athos has given amateur athletes access to remarkable technology that allows analysis but, more importantly, instant feedback, and the chance of going further and faster.