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Fitness Tracking: What’s Right for You?

October 15, 2014 •

Fitbit_One_image.jpgA while ago I blogged about early impres­sions of the Fit­bit One, the fit­ness tracker that I’ve used since early 2013. I noted that it was promis­ing, but lim­ited in its use­ful­ness because the Fit­bit One is unable to report accu­rate data on some of my favorite activ­i­ties: yoga, kayak­ing and cycling.

Since then I’ve con­tin­ued using the Fit­bit every­day but remain annoyed at its lim­i­ta­tions. That said, I’ve per­suaded my hus­band and half a dozen fam­ily mem­bers and friends to buy their own fit­ness track­ing devices. My hus­band lost his device, but most of my friends still use theirs daily. He has­n’t replaced his device, which is in itself a com­ment on the fact that it does­n’t work for his pre­ferred activ­i­ties.

Your Conscience in Your Pocket

My friends, sis­ters and I all use our track­ers for sim­i­lar rea­sons: they’re a handy moti­va­tor to be more active, climb more stairs, go for longer walks; or get bet­ter sleep.

For me it’s like hav­ing a fit­ness con­science in my pocket — a daily reminder that my desk-bound daily work is not healthy for long peri­ods of time. Fit­bit One has been a good start, but its days are num­bered.

Change Is in the Offing

It’s clear that the fit­ness device indus­try is on the verge of a big tran­si­tion point, trig­gered by Apple. This is a make-or-break moment for smaller play­ers like Fit­bit.

Apple Watch imageIf you fol­low this arena at all, you know that Apple is about to dis­rupt the health and fit­ness mar­ket with its IOS Health app, the improved motion track­ing capa­bil­i­ties of the new iPhone, the new Apple Watch and its strat­egy for HealthKit.

You can expect a whole ecosys­tem of health and well­ness apps to be built around the Apple Watch, IOS devices and the HealthKit ecosys­tem. Major play­ers are already work­ing on them behind the scenes.

As a sig­nal of upcom­ing change for today’s fit­ness incum­bents, online pun­dits are now writ­ing that Apple plans to remove devices (like Fit­bit) from the Apple Store if they remain incom­pat­i­ble with HealthKit. Typ­i­cal Apple: “You either play by our rules, or you don’t get to play the game with us in our global mar­ket­place.”

If you’ve fol­lowed the iTunes and iTunes Store play­book, this is a defin­ing moment for devices that choose to remain incom­pat­i­ble with Apple’s strate­gic software/ecosystem moves…

As a high tech indus­try mem­ber I pre­dict that we’ll see lots of interim con­fu­sion and con­sumer frag­men­ta­tion until the ecosys­tem shakes out. Most likely Apple and Google will con­tend for the lead posi­tion as the cor­ner­stone for health and fit­ness man­age­ment via con­sumer devices. In the mean­time con­sumers will buy today’s devices, not real­iz­ing they should really be think­ing about whose ecosys­tem they feel most com­fort­able join­ing. Many will unknow­ingly choose a device, only to learn that it’s incom­pat­i­ble with their Apple or Google ecosys­tems.

What’s the Right Fit for the Next Gen Tracking Device?

Every time the tech indus­try goes through one of these upheavals, you see com­pe­ti­tion between two dif­fer­ent philoso­phies: the “all in one” (we do every­thing) approach ver­sus the spe­cial­ized devices opti­mized to do one or a few things excep­tion­ally well.

I find myself won­der­ing which alter­na­tive will win out, and which will be best for me.

The Apple Watch and IOS 8 devices like the new iPhone 6 are con­tend­ing for the lead “all in one role” — at least for widely prac­ticed, main­stream fit­ness activ­i­ties that are easy to mea­sure.

I have no infor­ma­tion that would lead me to believe that the new Apple devices, ver­sion 1.0, will be designed to sup­port yoga or kayak­ing. Cycling is more main­stream so it’s more likely to be sup­ported early on. So that leads me to sus­pect I’ll be rel­e­gated to buy­ing assorted spe­cialty devices, the ones that inte­grate with HealthKit and my iPhone 6.

Given my pre­ferred phys­i­cal activ­i­ties and the dif­fer­ences among them, I’m likely to pre­fer a small unob­tru­sive device that inte­grates with HealthKit and sends data to my iPhone. That said, the device would need much more motion-related smarts than is avail­able with my cur­rent Fit­bit One.

Here are some of the require­ments for my ideal tracker:

  • It would be small and easy to wear (or hide) for yoga classes at my local stu­dio.
  • It would be savvy about yoga poses and their rel­a­tive effort or energy expended.
  • It would make more intel­li­gent guesses about the dis­tance cov­ered when cycling and the rel­a­tive effort expended to cover that dis­tance (speed, hills climbed, etc.)
  • It would be water­proof or come with a water­proof pack­ag­ing option, for peace of mind while kayak­ing.
  • If I were younger, I’d want a device that knows the dif­fer­ence between walk­ing, hik­ing, run­ning or jog­ging.

Yoga Is Special

Woman in Yoga Tree PoseMy cur­rent options are far from meet­ing these require­ments, espe­cially for yoga prac­tice. The Fit­bit One has proven to be use­less for yoga.

The ideal device would be capa­ble of detect­ing and mea­sur­ing dif­fer­ent kinds of move­ment and posi­tions in space while doing yoga poses. Upright or inverted, for starters… Surely a head­stand or shoul­der stand, even though motion­less, should count as more dif­fi­cult, con­sum­ing more calo­ries, then stand­ing upright in Moun­tain Pose. After all it takes more energy to bal­ance upside down on one’s head and hands than it takes to stand upright in a more nor­mal pos­ture.

Even though my iPhone 6 has decent built-in track­ing capa­bil­i­ties, bring­ing a mobile phone into a pub­lic yoga stu­dio is a huge no-no. If the Apple Watch makes noises for incom­ing phone calls, it too is likely to be banned from stu­dios.

Plus, there’s no good way to wear a big phone while wear­ing yoga gear and prac­tic­ing yoga. You can’t read­ily strap the phone to your wrist or upper arm because it could eas­ily get in the way of spe­cial­ized poses or inver­sions. It could smack you in the face dur­ing Down­ward Fac­ing Dog if you hung your phone around your neck. It could eas­ily fall from a pouch onto the floor, and pos­si­bly break from the impact.

The Apple Watch looks like it’s going to be too big to wear to a yoga stu­dio. Plus, it’s too flashy, too eye-catch­ing, designed to call atten­tion to itself — anti­thet­i­cal to yogic prin­ci­ples of non-attach­ment. That’s why some­thing small that could be stowed inside a tank top would be a bet­ter option for yogi­nis who want to track yoga for fit­ness rea­sons with­out call­ing atten­tion to what they’re doing.

Is Yoga That Difficult?

It’s hard to under­stand why there are no yoga-savvy track­ing devices today. Surely, this is an easy prob­lem to solve, given the right math and physics.

There’s a lim­ited “vocab­u­lary” of com­mon yoga poses, and each one is very well under­stood. Many resources have been pub­lished on the sub­ject.

I would think it would be easy to teach the yoga motion vocab­u­lary to a track­ing sen­sor, includ­ing pose vari­a­tions across the schools of yoga…

Something Different Is Coming, Someday

All I can pre­dict at this moment is that some­thing, rea­son­ably soon, is going to dis­lodge my Fit­bit One from my fit­ness wardrobe…

If Lul­ule­mon weren’t so pre­oc­cu­pied with its ongo­ing qual­ity and inven­tory man­age­ment issues, I might have expected a Lulu-branded device for yoga fans. Or maybe Man­duka.

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.

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