Technology That Caters to Walkers

There are tools that can help you with your walking program. Some of these tools can track your steps to help you reach your goals. One of the most popular tools for walkers is a Fitbit.

This is a pedometer that takes advantage of the newest technology available to help you stay fit and healthy. It’s a wonderful gadget that can be used to improve many areas of your life.

Wearable technology comes in many formats and style and has made tracking the number of steps you take easier than ever. This can be a great motivator to use with a walking program.

One of the most popular gadgets for walkers is the Fitbit Flex Wireless Activity and Sleep Wristband. All you have to do is snap the device on your wrist like you would a watch then go about your normal activities.

Fitbit will count each step you take throughout the day whether you’re walking, jogging, dancing, cleaning the house or working around the office. The device has the ability to track the distances that you’ve walked and how many calories you’ve burned with your activities.

The gadget keeps a record of how often you’re active and will log your daily statistics. If you have a goal set that you want to meet with the number of steps that you take, the Fitbit can let you know if you’re on track to reach your day’s step goal.

It also has the ability to send you a wakeup alarm to help you get up and get started moving.  Fitbit gives users several tools that can help you stay motivated. Using the Fitbit website, you can create an account that lets you monitor your health and fitness levels.

You can log into the site, which will let you set up a personalized account. Using this personalized account, you can set goals. Remember to set ones that are reasonable for you.

Once you’ve set up your goal, you’ll be able to see if you’re reaching it by glancing at your Fitbit. This wearable pedometer has five lights. The first one lights up when you reach 20% of your goal.

The next one will light up when you’ve reached 40% of your goal then 60% and 80%. When the fifth light has lit, you’ll know that you’ve reached your goal for the day.

Another great feature of the Fitbit is that you can sync wirelessly with your favorite Android or iOS device. This means that you can access your Fitbit account on your iPad, Samsung Galaxy, or iPhone.

The Fitbit app is free and works well with other fitness apps like SparkPeople and MyFitnessPal. The Fitbit is waterproof and this can be helpful if you plan on wearing it all day.

You can use your Fitbit in the shower or while swimming and not have to worry about damaging it by getting it waterlogged. You can also use your FitBit account to monitor your weight, log the foods you eat, and share your goals with your friends and family.

This is a great feature because sharing your walking goals with your online community can actually help motivate you to stick to your walking program.  When you reach an important milestone - like meeting your daily walking goal - Fitbit will reward you with a badge. These badges offer visual proof of your success and seeing them can drive you to accomplish your walking goals.

If you’d rather not count the steps you take during the day, you can use Fitbit to count the number of calories burned each day or the number of minutes you've been active.

This is especially helpful if you’re using your new walking program to help you lose weight. The FitBit, like most wearable technology, does have a battery that will need to be recharged.

However, each charge should allow you to use your Fitbit for 5-7 days before you have to recharge. The Fitbit is a great pedometer with some advanced features. But it’s not the only gadget that counts your steps.

You should also check out the UP24 by Jawbone. The UP24 works in a similar way to the Fitbit in that it measures your steps as well as your health and fitness level.

Unlike the Fitbit, you can’t change out the wristband on the UP24. This means that you have to stick with the color you originally chose. This isn’t a big deal to some consumers, but others find this annoying.

While the UP24 looks similar to the Fitbit, it is chunkier. The clasp is easier to work with and you can adjust the wristband easily if needed. It weighs less than an ounce - so despite the bulky look, you won’t feel like your wrist is weighed down.

The UP24 also has an app available that tracks your calories, the number of steps you’ve taken, and how active you’ve been today. The application can be used on both iOS and Android devices.

This means that you can use the app on devices like the iPhone, iPad, Samsung tablet, and more. The UP24 uses Bluetooth technology to sync your activity level with your account.

Like the Fitbit, the UP24 application is a helpful system that can give you an accurate measurement of how active you truly are. It will also help you figure out if you’re not nearly as active as you thought you were.

One of the features that a lot of users like is that you can use the app to record what you’re eating. It has an extremely convenient way of doing this. If you don’t want to enter in your food manually, just grab a picture of the barcode.

The UP24 application can scan the barcode and will log what you’ve eaten. One feature that many consumers like about the UP24 is that it has an inactivity alert. If you’ve been inactive for a long time, the UP24 will gently vibrate against your wrist to remind you to get up and move.

This can be helpful if you spend long hours working in a sedentary job. You can set the inactivity alert on your account so that you can customize how often the alert goes out.

You could use it to remind you to take a short walk every hour or every few hours. The choice is up to you. If you want to challenge yourself, you can share your walking and fitness goals through the app.

This way, your friends and family can encourage and challenge you to meet your goals every week. The UP24 is described as water resistant. This means that you can get liquid on the device like sweat or water.

But you shouldn’t submerge the UP24 under water, so make sure you remove it before swimming or other aquatic activities. The UP24 application can log and store your data for nine months.

This allows you to track your health over the course of several months. You’ll be able to see what habits helped you the most and which ones didn’t. Pedometers by Omron are also helpful tools for walkers.

The HJ-112 Pocket Pedometer by Omron is a good one. It has the ability to reset itself every day so that you don’t have to manually subtract one day’s step count from the following day.

It can hold a week’s worth of information at a time. The pedometer can keep track of your step count, how long you walked, the distance that you covered and the calories that you’ve used.

What a lot of walkers like about this pedometer is that it can divide the amount of regular walking steps that you take from the specific brisk ones. This means that you’ll be able to keep a track of just your walking program steps if you want to.

Other technology that can be helpful for walkers focuses on entertainment and motivation value. The best technology for this is music device. Having an iPod or other music device along can offer great boredom buster benefits to walkers.

One of the ways that it can help is by giving you motivation. You can use your playlist to create a walking challenge. For example, you can keep your focus on a point in the distance and aim for that point before the end of a song.

When you’re starting out on your walk, you can have the slower paced songs in your playlist set to start playing. These can be your warm up songs. Then, after you’ve warmed up, you can switch to a moderate tempo song, followed by a song that has a fast beat.

You can use how fast or slow a song is to help you know when to change your pacing. Or, you can use a playlist to determine the journey of your walk. Music devices are great ways to set up interval walking during your time.

So if you want to walk quicker for some minutes over others, a song can help you keep track of that. Music can help shake up how you figure your accomplishments, too.

Rather than counting off the length of time you’ve been walking for that day, you can set it up by songs. For instance, you’re going to listen to four songs that are at least four minutes long on the walk that you take for the day.

When you want to add steps to your walking routine, you can simply increase the length of your playlist and add more songs. Your walks will be a lot more enjoyable and you’ll get to hear some great tunes.

If you do walk with a music device, you want to be careful that you exercise caution with the volume control. Always make sure that you can be aware of your surroundings by hearing what’s going on around you.