Fitness Tracker – What You Need to Know?

Fitness tracking has become quite popular now. Everyone likes to catalogue their movements and activities nowadays. It’s actually a good thing. In fact, by tracking your activity you can progress in your physical exercise and keep a good track of your health. You can buy them for yourself or for gifting someone. But while choosing one of these gadgets for you, you should know how to choose just the right one. Here are some tips given by experts about how to choose the correct fitness tracker and make the most of it.

Considering Form and Function of the Device

How to consider form? It depends upon many factors like where and how you want to wear it. If you wish to wear the tracker at work, get something more discreet. If something light is what you need, don’t go for a gadget that fastens your chest. There is a variety in forms too. They come in the form of bracelets, clip-on devices and watches. You have to think upon which form you will prefer the most. About watches and bracelets, a good point is they are difficult to lose. But they are difficult to manage while you are doing something like working on a computer or washing dishes. Another factor is, they are not particularly attractive accessories going with all your outfits, lol!

Clip-on devices, on the other hand, are small-sized and can be worn secretly on a belt loop or clung to an undergarment. They don’t at all come in your way and are very compact, even to such an extent that people almost forget that they have worn them and clothes are sent to laundry along with the trackers. Plus they are small in size. Both these factors make them more susceptible to get lost.

When you want to choose the best tracker, you should first know what your regular activities are and what you wish to track. Experts say that there are limitations to the monitor’s tracking abilities depending upon where you wear it. For example, if the monitor is worn on hips, it may miss physical activities like pushups and cycling. If you prefer weight lifting exercises more than long-distance cardio, particular gadgets will work better for you. If you consider heart rate the most important, you need to ensure that your tracking device measures it, because not every tracker does that.

Try a Watch or Smartphone App to Start With

Majority of the activity trackers of today are designed for the super-active fitness lovers. These super-active people are eager to have more information about the quantity and quality of their activities. It is not enough just to know how many miles you ran, but it is also important to know what the break of heart-rate per minute was. In such a scenario if you want just to become active and begin exercising, you can take a look at the categories in your smart watch or smartphone. These apps are aimed towards making people motivated and active, and give feedback. Smartphone apps that teach you the correct way to different forms of workout are best if you are a beginner.

Tracker is Equal to Lifestyle Change

You have to keep this fact in mind. In fact it is the most important thing to keep in mind before you choose an activity tracker. Firstly, you should take into consideration that it will be useful only if you will use it on a regular basis. If you go on jogging for one day and take all measurements and consider them standard for a month or two or three, it is not good and it will not even help. Start noticing the trends with your exercise patterns over time. If you do heavy exercise for a day, that doesn’t mean that and is not an excuse for resting for next two days. Only if you keep consistency in your efforts you can use the data effectively. And also, you have to keep in mind that you need not go harder always. If on a particular day, you start doing something heavy and find your heart rate increased and all other things difficult, that means you still need to keep with your former amount of exercise and after some days you can achieve the higher level and so on. Thus that tracker is also helpful in telling you when to back off a bit, along with being your tool of motivation.

Measuring Activities or Steps

Most tracking devices are designed as smart pedometers. This means that they are very good for counting the steps you take daily, whether you are working in your garden or jogging. Some of them even track your sleep. But they are not the perfect devices for data collection during your sports activities like cycling, jogging or swimming.

If you want your tracker to count your sports activities, you should choose sports watches. These are usually more expensive and have GPS tracking system and other types of sensors that monitor things like cadence and pace. This type of data collection is quite complicated compared to just using an accelerometer having three axes to count the steps you take.

Another major difference is sports watch can be used only during your activity and can be left if not running on other times. Most of them include smart batteries which enable you to wear the gadget as a watch and keep the battery-draining components shut. However, you also have to consider that sports watches thus don’t track your every activity all through the day, which activity trackers do.