Electronic fitness

After a playing a game of football recently (in real life; not Fifa 09 or Pro Evolution Soccer on the Xbox); I realised as to just how unfit I am. It got me wondering as to how I could use technology to become fitter and I’ve found that ‘gadgetised’ fitness has become the ‘in thing’ in recent times with devices out on the market that track one’s level of fitness.

Of course, there’s the Wii exercise board and the Wii Fit. But for the more serious fitness enthusiast out there; Nike, in particular, has produced a device that tracks your levels of fitness quite well.

‘Nike +’ is a sensor system that can sync with one’s iPod to the Nike+ Web site. The result is that one gets a visual representation of one’s run or jog with a single green line. The length of the green line shows how far one has gone, with peaks and valleys reflecting one’s speed.

In essence, it shows the progression of one’s training and this tech illustrates how one can use data technology to better one’s health. It’s a concept that has become quite popular because Nike has attracted the largest community of runners ever assembled—more than 1.2 million runners who have collectively tracked more than 130 million miles and burned more than 13 billion calories. Nike has even gone on to develop a ‘Powersong’ feature that provides one with musical motivation on one’s iPod.

According to Wired Magazine, this is the gist of how Nike’s sensor system works. Basically, you have a shoe sensor accelerometer that measures the amount of time a runner’s foot is on the ground. The amount of time that a runner’s foot is on the ground is then inversely proportional to speed. The sensor transmits at 2.4 GHz and sends data to a receiver that is either attached to one’s iPod nano or built into the second-generation iPod touch.

After your workout, your iPod is then synced to a computer running iTunes, which sends data such as the start time, duration and distance to the Nike + servers in the form of an XML file. The idea is that you track your progress online and compare it with others to see how you stack up.

This tech has been around for a while now; hence its large uptake. But this is something that I would seriously consider using again to get myself fighting fit again. It would be interesting to see if the accelerometer that could take the hardcore impact of our relatively informal football gatherings. Something to definitely test out for our magazine’s hot kit review soon.

Gareth Van Zyl is the deputy editor of Windows Middle East English.

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