A heart rate sensor is a pretty cool and useful feature for a watch to have. Combined with the famously rugged build of a G-Shock watch and its suite of further practical tech and sensors, we’re talking about a watch that’s perfect for a range of outdoor and physical activities. That’s exactly what the new G-Shock GBD-H1000 offers.
Rather than going full touchscreen-smartwatch, G-Shock has maintained its offerings that build upon its famous digital tech. It’s continued to add features including GPS, step counting, a Bluetooth connection for integration with a smartphone app and others. These features can be used together to provide a range of health and fitness-related info and metrics.
Fitbit has announced the latest member of its fitness tracker lineup, the Fitbit Charge 4, alongside new fitness-minded features and new content for Fitbit Premium.
The new device’s standout feature is onboard GPS to enable features like an exercise heat map, which helps users review where in a running or biking route they were working the hardest.
News 5 Cleveland, Derek Forrest and Camryn Justice from
WHOOP, a fitness band worn by both professional athletes and everyday people to track health and fitness levels, may be able to provide an early indicator of COVID-19 symptoms and have partnered with the Cleveland Clinic to test the theory.
One of the apparent underlying symptoms of the novel coronavirus is an elevation in respiratory rate, a measurement the WHOOP bands provide to its wearers.
“We are really pumped to have them as partners in this collaboration to better understand COVID-19,” said Will Ahmed, WHOOP CEO. “And you know, broadly speaking, it’s what everyone should be doing is trying to see what they can do to help understand this thing.”
… This is a bit of an about-turn. About a year and a half ago, the tech giant ditched the step count in favour of Move Minutes and Heart Points. This was to reflect the American Heart Association and World Health Organization recommendations for weekly physical activity.
But now Google is saying that it makes more sense to put the focus back on steps instead of Move Minutes. The metric is easier to understand for the average person, especially someone new to the world of fitness tracking. The debate on whether a step goal really is the best gauge of your physical activity has been going on for years, and there’s no simple answer.
… 2) What goes into producing Firstbeat’s heart rate analytics?
Our analytics are research led and tested in the lab to ensure they are showing what we claim! The background calculations use a combination of HRV, neural network models, and individual scaling to create a digital picture of an individual’s unique physiology.
3) Firstbeat prides itself on bringing laboratory accurate results to the field. How is this possible and why is it useful for athletes and coaches?
It’s possible thanks to the advanced analytics we use. As mentioned above, the neural network modelling opens up a whole new world of possibilities in terms of what we can calculate. To achieve lab accuracy, you’re normally testing under controlled conditions in a laboratory. This can be both time consuming and expensive, as well as somewhat detached from the actual sport (depending on the specific event). By making this information field accessible, we’re giving coaches and athletes data that is trustworthy and reliable.
If I had to pick two companies to work together on this, it would be Apple and Google.
They essentially have the entire phone platform market with Android and iOS. Apple is considered better on personal data privacy but I figure that if Google goes along, Apple wouldn’t let such an effort devolve into a data-mining scheme for targeted ads. Put another way: I can’t think of any other large technology companies with the reach of Apple and Google that people trust with personal health data in some capacity.
There are numerous things to dislike about going to the doctor: Paying a copay, sitting in the waiting room, out-of-date magazines, sick people coughing without covering their mouths. For many, though, the worst thing about a doctor’s visit is getting stuck with a needle. Blood tests are a tried-and-true way of evaluating what is going on with your body, but the discomfort is unavoidable. Or maybe not, say Caltech scientists.
In a new paper published in Nature Biotechnology, researchers led by Wei Gao, assistant professor of medical engineering, describe a mass-producible wearable sensor that can monitor levels of metabolites and nutrients in a person’s blood by analyzing their sweat. Previously developed sweat sensors mostly target compounds that appear in high concentrations, such as electrolytes, glucose, and lactate. Gao’s sweat sensor is more sensitive than current devices and can detect sweat compounds of much lower concentrations, in addition to being easier to manufacture, the researchers say.
The development of such sensors would allow doctors to continuously monitor the condition of patients with illnesses like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or kidney disease, all of which result in abnormal levels of nutrients or metabolites in the bloodstream. Patients would benefit from having their physician better informed of their condition, while also avoiding invasive and painful encounters with hypodermic needles.
Altra tries a new way to support runners’ feet with its latest update to the popular Provision running shoe. We tested the Provision’s ‘dynamic arch support’ system through a dozen runs on the way to this early review.
We caught up with all the biggest winter sports brands at ISPO 2020 to sneak a peek at some of the most innovative new ski products for 2020/21. Some of these are really game-changing, from electric skis to sustainable ski clothing! Take a look for yourself…
Among coffee aficionados, the AeroPress is a revelation. A small, $30 plastic device that resembles a plunger makes what many consider to be the best cup of coffee in the world. Proponents of the device claim that drinks made with the AeroPress are more delicious than those made with thousand-dollar machines. Perhaps best of all, the AeroPress seems to magically clean itself during the extraction process.
There’s really nothing bad to say about the device other than the fact that it’s a funny-looking plastic thingy. Then again, its inventor, Stanford professor Alan Adler, is a world renowned inventor of funny-looking plastic thingies; while Adler’s Palo Alto based company Aerobie is best known today for its coffee makers, the firm rose to prominence in the 1980s for its world-record-setting flying discs.
This is the story of how Adler and Aerobie dispelled the notion of industry-specific limitations and found immense success in two disparate industries: toys and coffee.
… Street-leaning labels like BAPE, visvim, Nike and Supreme picked up on GORE-TEX’s extreme versatility, American heritage and bold-faced branding. Driven by the membrane’s reliable functionality, a wide array of fashion-focused brands eventually joined the outdoors labels in licensing GORE-TEX for outerwear, trousers, footwear and accessories alike, giving the GORE-TEX name itself appeal as diverse as the companies that W.L. Gore works with.
Watch HYPEBEAST’s Behind the Hype breakdown of GORE-TEX above and revisit recent GORE-TEX lined goods from the likes of BAPE, New Era and Carhartt WIP. [video, 4:28]
An impulse to unfetter all personal potential, while feeling confidently at ease at all times thanks to technical Sensitive Fabrics by Eurojersey which innovatively combine technology and performance, making them perfect for training, muscle toning and dynamic sports.
Sensitive Fabrics facilitate the body and its movements in any situation, they sculpt the silhouette, provide adequate support and offer breathability, lightness and calibrated compression. They ensure perfect shape retention even after frequent washing and use, as well as being quick to dry.
Recently, a group of researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) came up with SprayableTech, a system that lets users create room-sized interactive surfaces with sensors and displays. The system, which uses airbrushing of functional inks, enables various displays, like interactive sofas with embedded sensors to control your television, and sensors for adjusting lighting and temperature through your walls.
It was one of sport’s great question marks: Is it humanly possible to run 26.2 miles in under two hours? Then Eliud Kipchoge did it. What followed was international fame—and plenty of controversy. So we flew to Kipchoge’s ultra-rarefied Kenyan training ground to meet the man who pulled off the impossible.
Work and life overload. Injury or illness. Seemingly endless bad weather. Physical and mental fatigue after reaching a big goal. There are all sorts of reasons for us to go cold turkey under normal circumstances. And on top of all, we are now in the midst of a global pandemic, and coronavirus (COVID-19) is forcing us to stay inside as much as we possible. The fact is: we might not be able to train to our full potential right now.
In these situations, it’s natural to wonder: How long will it take to lose my fitness?
A partial answer is that your heart starts to show significant signs of detraining after just a few weeks of little to no exercise. That’s the key takeaway from a 2018 study on marathoners published in the Journal of Applied Physiology.
Background/objectives Cycling has well-established positive relationships with health. Evidence suggests that large-scale infrastructure and built-environment initiatives to promote cycling are likely to be necessary but not sufficient to maximise cycling participation. Smaller-scale initiatives that can be implemented by organisations (eg, employers) and groups (eg, community groups) are therefore also important, but the full range of feasible activities to promote cycling is not known. We aimed to scope the literature and map organisational, social and individual level activities to increase cycling.
Methods Design: Scoping review following an established five-stage process.
Eligibility criteria: Studies or publicly available reports describing cycling promotion initiatives deemed feasible for organisations or groups to implement.
Sources of evidence and selection: (i) online databases (Ovid (Medline), Ovid (Embase), SportDISCUS (Ebscohost), ProQuest, Web of Science), (ii) existing systematic reviews, (iii) expert stakeholder consultation.
Results We extracted data from 129 studies and reports, from 20 different countries, identifying 145 cycling promotion initiatives. From these initiatives we identified 484 actions within 93 action types within 33 action categories under the nine intervention functions described by Michie et al. Environmental restructuring (micro-level), enablement, education and persuasion were the functions with the most action types, while coercion, modelling and restriction had the fewest action types.
Conclusion This is the first comprehensive map to summarise the broad range of action types feasible for implementation within organisation/group-based cycling promotion initiatives. The map will be a critical tool for communities, employers, practitioners and researchers in designing interventions to increase cycling.
GPS bike computers have revolutionised the way many of us navigate and record our rides but they have their downsides and pitfalls. Here are some of the issues we’ve experienced and heard about.
Increasing the longitudinal bending stiffness of running shoes decreases energy cost until a low point is reached, suggesting an optimal shoe stiffness. Previous research found optimal stiffness varies among individuals, however, none has determined the causes of variation both between individuals and running speeds. The primary purpose of this study was to understand how optimal shoe stiffness is affected by running speed. A secondary purpose examined the anatomical and biomechanical characteristics associated with optimal stiffness variation. Six shoe stiffness conditions were manufactured with a carbon fibre plate between the midsole and outsole of a standard running shoe. Twenty-one male runners (mass = 67.1 ± 5.0 kg, height = 178.9 cm ± 4.0 cm, age = 26.4 ± 8.4 years) completed testing at 2.98 m/s and 4.47 m/s in all shoe conditions, measuring metabolic cost, and several biomechanical and anatomical variables. Data were separated by foot strike. At the fast speed, average optimal stiffness was 19.29 ± 5.62 N/mm with a metabolic benefit of 3.02 ± 2.62%. Slow speed average optimal stiffness was 17.04 ± 6.09 N/mm with a metabolic benefit of 1.93 ± 1.82%. Only rearfoot strikers demonstrated a significant increase in optimal stiffness (p = .04) across speeds. There were no correlations between any of the measured anatomical or biomechanical variables and optimal stiffness. Optimal stiffness varied between subjects but was not correlated to any of our measured characteristics. Rearfoot striking runners may benefit from a higher stiffness shoe at faster speeds to enable optimal performance.
Running is an activity with a consistently high injury rate. Running footwear design that mimics barefoot running has been proposed to reduce injury rate by increasing the strength of foot structures. However, there is little evidence to support this. The purpose of the current study is to use shear wave ultrasound elastography to examine material properties (shear modulus) of intrinsic foot structures in experienced minimally and traditionally shod runners. It is hypothesized that minimalist runners will exhibit increased stiffness compared to controls demonstrating the strengthening of these structures. Eighteen healthy runners (8 minimalist and 10 traditionalist), running a minimum of 10 mi · wk−1, participated. Elastography scans were performed on the left foot of each participant. There is no apparent stiffening of foot structures associated with wearing minimalist shoes. Only the FHB tendon is different between shoe types and, contrary to the hypothesis, was stiffer in traditionalist compared to minimalist runners (257.26 ± 51.64 kPa vs 160.88 ± 27.79 kPa, respectively). A moderate positive (r = 0.7) relationship between training load and tendon stiffness suggests strengthening of tendon when running in traditional shoes. If running in minimalist shoes increases loading on these structures without resulting in stronger tissues, it is possible that minimalist footwear may increase injury risk.
Scientific Reports; Jennifer R. Yong, Christopher L. Dembia, Amy Silder, Rachel W. Jackson, Michael Fredericson and Scott L. Delp from
Running is thought to be an efficient gait due, in part, to the behavior of the plantar flexor muscles and elastic energy storage in the Achilles tendon. Although plantar flexor muscle mechanics and Achilles tendon energy storage have been explored during rearfoot striking, they have not been fully characterized during forefoot striking. This study examined how plantar flexor muscle-tendon mechanics during running differs between rearfoot and forefoot striking. We used musculoskeletal simulations, driven by joint angles and electromyography recorded from runners using both rearfoot and forefoot striking running patterns, to characterize plantar flexor muscle-tendon mechanics. The simulations revealed that foot strike pattern affected the soleus and gastrocnemius differently. For the soleus, forefoot striking decreased tendon energy storage and fiber work done while the muscle fibers were shortening compared to rearfoot striking. For the gastrocnemius, forefoot striking increased muscle activation and fiber work done while the muscle fibers were lengthening compared to rearfoot striking. These changes in gastrocnemius mechanics suggest that runners planning to convert to forefoot striking might benefit from a progressive eccentric gastrocnemius strengthening program to avoid injury. [full text]
… I always try to remind athletes (and myself) that chasing potential is about something way bigger and more daunting than any race or training block. In just two sentences, the legendary book Once A Runner summarized the answer that all athletes, pianists, and magicians learn when seeking those outer limits:
“What was the secret, they wanted to know; in a thousand different ways they wanted to know The Secret. And not one of them was prepared, truly prepared to believe that it had not so much to do with chemicals and zippy mental tricks as with that most unprofound and sometimes heart-rending process of removing, molecule by molecule, the very tough rubber that comprised the bottoms of his training shoes.”
The Trial of Miles is not necessarily about big running weeks. It’s about a long-term focus that mixes the hard work with rest, big dreams with small actions, deep faith with searing doubts. It’s life. And that process can be so freaking cool no matter where it leads.