Musings

Reflections on life lived by a coast

  • Home
  • Travel
  • Yoga
You are here: Home / Archives for FitBit One

FitBit One: Not Quite There

July 12, 2013 •

Moti­vated by a new Fit­Bit One activ­ity tracker, I ended my work­day yes­ter­day with a lovely walk around Mer­cer Island. It was a great time to be out walk­ing: ideal tem­per­a­ture (<70°), golden late after­noon sun­shine, bloom­ing roses and aro­matic laven­der every­where. My typ­i­cal day fea­tures a yoga prac­tice — beau­ti­ful in its own way, but lack­ing the out­door sen­sory delights of warm sun­shine and flow­ers bloom­ing.

Fitbit_One_image

A Likeable First-Gen Device

There’s a lot to like about the Fit­Bit One — that is, if your daily activ­i­ties are the kinds of things it was designed to track. It’s great for active peo­ple who walk, hike, jog, climb stairs, etc.

I like the imme­di­ate feed­back on the dis­play — you don’t have to log in to a web­site just to see daily stats. The recharge­able bat­tery lasts for sev­eral days.

It syncs wire­lessly via a USB don­gle attached to your com­puter, or via Blue­tooth to iPhones, iPads, Android devices and so on. After sync­ing your tracker, you can go online to view fit­ness sta­tis­tics dis­played on your per­sonal dash­board.

Here are some of my stats from yes­ter­day’s walk. Nice, but not what you’d see from a seri­ous ath­lete. Not too bad for some­one with a deskbound job and long work­days…

Fitbit_Dashboard

Mer­cer Island fea­tures lake views, walk­ing trails with stair­cases and lots of hills, so I earned a badge due to my hill climbs. The walk itself was less than 4 miles, so no badge… The peo­ple behind Fit­Bit sent an “attaboy” email this morn­ing, to encour­age me to be more active.

Not Designed for Yoga Practitioners

For peo­ple like me, whose well­be­ing or fit­ness régime cen­ters on a daily yoga prac­tice, the Fit­Bit One is far from ideal.

When wear­ing yoga tops and tights, there’s no safe place for a fit­ness tracker. A well-rounded yoga prac­tice is likely to involve bal­anc­ing on most of the places where you might think to attach your tracker. It would­n’t be smart to risk weight-bear­ing activ­i­ties on a pocket con­tain­ing a $99 device.

Wear­ing a tracker around your neck looks dorky. Plus, the tracker would be dis­tract­ing if it flopped against your face or neck when you’re inverted. Hide it in your shelf bra? High risk that it would fall out dur­ing down­ward fac­ing dog, head­stand or shoul­der stand…

Wear it in the wide wrist­band? Dorky. Maybe if you’re one of those guys who warms up (shows off?) with a bunch of Marine push-ups before yoga class, wear­ing the tracker on a wrist­band would be a plus. But for women decked out in Lul­ule­mon, there’s no good place to attach a fit­ness tracker.

The other day I enjoyed a 90-minute yoga class in a heated stu­dio — a very vig­or­ous prac­tice — 2 pounds lost in 90 min­utes. I chose not to wear the tracker to that class, so there was no record of my activ­ity. There­fore my Fit­Bit One logged that day as largely inac­tive… Not true, but there is no way for Fit­Bit’s dash­board to dis­play yoga prac­tice activ­i­ties.

I plan to exper­i­ment with my tracker dur­ing some home yoga prac­tices, to see if I can stand it when doing yoga. Maybe I can over­come the dork fac­tor…

There are other capa­bil­i­ties (such as track­ing sleep pat­terns or the silent alarm) that I haven’t tried.

For now, my assess­ment is that the Fit­Bit One is good at what it does, but not so good for track­ing what I do… Despite those lim­i­ta­tions wear­ing it is sur­pris­ingly addic­tive…

Update:
For amuse­ment I some­times put the Fit­Bit in the wrist­band holder and wear it while prac­tic­ing yoga at home. Despite a vig­or­ous one-hour flow prac­tice, it will mea­sure just a few steps — noth­ing that’s close to rep­re­sent­ing the energy expended dur­ing that yoga prac­tice. My con­clu­sion: next-gen track­ers may have more sophis­ti­cated motion sen­sors that work bet­ter for yoga, but the cur­rent options are lim­ited.

About This Blog

Reflec­tions on life, travel, books, and yoga. Think­ing out loud about the pur­suit of mind­ful­ness and well-being.

Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

About Me

Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

Recent Posts

  • Wet Sand, Wet Boots, Birds
  • Living with Vintage Items
  • Slowing Down
  • Reflections on My Camino
  • Going Off the Beaten Track in France

© 2020 by Christine Thompson. All rights reserved. • Log in