Out-sourcing your responsibility with Gadgets
The Geek
I am a self program fitness gadget geek, I love anything that I can tinker with so that I can improve my understanding of performance development.
I rely on gadgets mainly because it is useful and can help track performance while improving my understand of how I can improve my training program and planning.
Currently I have many gadgets that I use and will not stop investing in them. Yes, it is an investment if you know how to use the gadgets to your advantage.
The Gadgets
The current array of gadgets that I use is as follows -
- BodyMedia Gowearfit/Bodybugg
- Casio Mudman digital wrist watch
- Gymboss Interval timer
- Sansa Clip+ MP3 player
These are relatively inexpensive gadgets to use to track your performance and allowing you to outsource your responsibility with regards to time keeping and focusing more on training itself.
My next investment will be on a GPS watch by Garmin which will record my distance and pace for any distance related activity.
Technological Edge
Why I use gadgets is because I train alone most of the time, I do not have a training buddy and also I have the freedom to train anytime I want and still able to analyze data that I can record.
Lets break down the gadgets and see what they do -
Bodymedia Gowearfit -
Have you ever wondered how many calories you burn while playing with your kids? Or how active you really are over the course of a week? Now you’ll know – with BodyMedia® FIT, the clinically proven system that turns your body’s everyday information into a tool to help you manage a healthy lifestyle.
Simply wear the BodyMedia Armband during the course of your day, then log onto your personalized BodyMedia FIT Activity Manager. You’ll get accurate, easy-to-digest information about the calories you’ve burned, plus a calorie consumption calculator and tips for how to best reach your fitness and lifestyle goals.
The BodyMedia FIT System also measures sleep duration and efficiency – so that you can begin to understand the influence your bedtime has on your overall health.
The bodymedia Gowearfit is a very useful device to track caloric expenditure and how your daily activity measures up to, it is a very valuable insight into your everyday life and how each exercise activity burns calories.
As such, I won’t say that it is a needed tool but a very useful one if you’re interested to invest to look into “what you believe to be the best exercise for fat loss” to be. Also it allows you to see if you’re consuming enough calories for bulking stage and if you’re NEAT (non exercise activity thermogenics) is eroding your daily caloric intake to meet your goals.
It also gives me a chance via the display to see how many steps I have to take in order to meet my daily activity rate so that I know roughly how much I have to move to get a certain amount of calories burnt a day.
It gives me consistency though it is not 100% accurate but at least something to fall back on and adjust from there.
Casio G-shock Mudman Wrist Watch
Casio makes very good watches, well engineered and very robust against abuse.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve knocked my watch against the wall or the amount of sweat that has been poured on to the watch.
So far I’ve been using this watch for the past 3 years and it hasn’t even broken down nor has the rubber strap disintegrated yet – this is notwithstanding that I’ve not changed the battery yet.
That said, this is a very useful tool for me as it has a dual stop watch and a count down timer. The one thing I like about the watch is the count down timer feature which beeps 1/2 way of your time – i.e 1 minute into your 2 minutes count down, and the next feature that is cool is that it has the count down beep at the last 10 seconds.
Very useful for doing intervals or when you want pace yourself doing distance runs/swims.
So far one of the best investments to date.
Gymboss
The Gym boss is an interval timer which helps you count up and count down interval set.
It is cheap and extremely easy to use – once you get past the setup part, just press start it’ll automatically count down your intervals.
Although many watches have this feature, it is very troublesome to press the small buttons on your watch plus try to fiddle around with it on your wrist while doing an activity.
Simply press start and start your activity and then tune yourself to the beeps or vibrates or both.
This is the extremely useful feature, the beeping and vibration. Tactile cues is good for people like me who listen to music to focus on the task at hand, this allows the user to focus 100% without the need to keep checking the display.
Sansa Clip+ MP3 Player
The clip+ is an extremely durable and small foot print player with extremely good sound.
Used by audio enthusiast and exercise crowd, it is a great tool to store music and listen to on the go, be it at the gym or on a run.
Simple just clip the Clip+ on to your shorts and start your activity.
Why you need to outsource
The whole point of delegating your responsibility is to free up unnecessary distraction that can be filtered out.
We are bad multi-taskers, and it is not a good thing when you want to do the best you can with your physical limit.
Ever tried brushing your teeth, wearing your pants and replying an email?
Well we don’t need to do it to find out the answers because it just won’t end well.
Multi-tasking is only done when you have no choice, so don’t do it when you’re trying to achieve a goal.
Other than just visual and audible cues which we are so useful, tactile cues allow us to open up more “bandwidth” to process information.
We live in a technological age now, and mass production makes this kinda “tweaks” to your training life cheap and inexpensive to use.
It is an investment, and can be one that brings your training to the very next level. Also apart from that, you can record data to analyze what is bringing you down towards your progress.
Tags: bodybugg, bodymedia, casio mudman, clip mp3, gadget geek, gadgets, interval timer, performance development, technological edge, track performance, wrist watch
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