Healthcare Technology Featured Article

February 12, 2020

Great Reasons To Use A Fitness Tracker




Fitness trackers are the latest in digital tools and gadgets that monitor your progress to help you attain your health and fitness goals.

Whether you’re trying to lose weight, develop your muscle strength, or training for a sports competition, you need a fitness tracker to get your body where it needs to be.

Below are the great reasons why you should use a fitness tracker:

Increase the Likelihood of Training Success

Using a reliable fitness tracker helps ensure that you're tracking your progress correctly.

Using its different tracking features, you’re able to accurately get a big picture view of your workout routine.

Often presented in easy-to-understand graphs, you can quickly identify which areas of your fitness routine you’re great at and which ones can be improved.

A fitness tracker has amazing features to help you with your training, such as the following:

  • Heart Rate Monitor: Fitness trackers help monitor your heart rate daily. It gives you an idea of how many calories your body is burning every day, most especially during exercise. It also shows your maximum cardiovascular endurance or target heart rate zone you need to reach in order to maintain intensity.
  • GPS: With this feature, you can determine the distance you've traveled, including your pacing. It's a great fitness tracker feature for cyclists and runners.
  • Exercise Recognition: Activity sensors detect the things you're doing, including walking, running, cycling, performing an aerobic exercise, or if you're engaged in a sport. This feature automatically logs your workout within an app that your device uses.
  • Movement Reminders: It sends a notification through an app or creates a vibration from your device whenever it detects that you've been sitting still in your office or lying in your bed for a long time.

Get Free Workout Tips

While you can always hire a fitness trainer, it may not be the most budget-friendly solution. Especially if you simply want to maintain your current fitness condition instead of getting intense training.

Luckily, most fitness trackers can analyze your data and offer tailor fit workout ideas based on your pace and needs.

Some fitness trackers also offer a wide range of trainer profiles, allowing you to train according to your workout intensity level.

Better Sleep

You can use a fitness tracker to improve your sleep by collecting sleep-related information such as movement, biometrics, and your schedule.

Here are the details of each sleep metric and how a fitness tracker can help you get better sleep:

  • Accelerometer to Track Movement
    • Fitness trackers can track movement velocity. It can detect whether you’re awake or asleep based on your movement data. With this fitness tracking capability, you'll know how much time your body is resting or sleeping every night.
  • Biometrics
    • Sophisticated fitness trackers detect heart rate, oxygen levels, and breathing patterns. Some can also measure the skin's electrical current conductivity as well as the sound that corresponds with snoring.
  • Schedule
    • You can enter information in your fitness tracker about your wake time, naps, and bedtime to track your sleep patterns. These collected information, or more commonly known as sleep logs, help determine if you have or are prone to circadian rhythm disorders.

Promote a Healthy Lifestyle

Wearable technology has greatly evolved. Each year, fitness trackers get more sophisticated features to help people achieve and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

One of the major benefits of these high tech features in fitness trackers is its ability to help you create and stick to your fitness routine.

Fitness trackers help you develop healthy habits by managing your fitness activities, which allows you to live a healthier lifestyle.

By being aware of how your body responds, moves, or rest, you can make the necessary changes in your daily activities to develop healthier habits.

Here are some cool features of fitness trackers to help you live a healthy lifestyle:

  • Smartphone Integration
    • You can receive notifications via your smartphone so that you can view your workout or activity log. Some fitness trackers also allow you to control your music, respond to messages, and make calls.
  • Swimming Support
    • Waterproof fitness trackers are now available to log your swimming workouts, such as the number of laps you've completed and the number of lengths you perform in each lap.
  • Coaching
    • This feature helps you get real-time workout feedback from your fitness tracker to help improve your fitness.

Prevent Heart Disease

According to a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of mortality for both men and women in the United States.

Every year, there are about 647,000 American adults who die from heart disease - or one death every 37 seconds.

Here's how fitness trackers can help prevent heart disease:

  • App Real-time Monitoring
    • Fitness trackers and smartphone apps help the elderly and their caregivers monitor their heart rates. Family members can also track their sick family members and grandparents.
  • Passive Monitoring
    • The smart sensors of fitness trackers can passively monitor all major activities of your senior family members, sending alerts or notifications if an abnormality is detected.

Peace of Mind

Even though you don’t want to miss your daily workout or training, the reality is it’s really hard to stick to a daily workout regimen.

That’s why wearing a fitness tracker is a good way to assure yourself that you’re doing the things you have to do to accomplish your health and fitness goals.

Whether you want to shed some pounds or train for a triathlon, a fitness tracker gives you peace of mind that you’re adhering to your workout schedule.

Also, it helps you watch your diet by tracking your caloric intake every day. This way, you’ll be able to adjust your workouts and diet accordingly to keep it in line with your fitness goals.

Conclusion

A fitness tracker is an indispensable fitness tool that helps monitor your progress during workout or even when you're at rest or sleeping.

It helps a person develop healthy habits by being constantly reminded to move and avoid prolonged sitting or not doing anything.

Also, it keeps you motivated to complete your daily workout regimen so you can achieve your health and fitness goals.



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