Fitness trackers can monitor your results and progress, while some can even track your stance, posture and form. Now Wahoo Fitness has introduced what it calls the world’s only heart rate monitor with activity tracking that provides real-time analysis of a runner’s form, helping to improve efficiency and avoid injury rates. The TICKR Run is Wahoo’s new heart rate monitor that pairs with Android and iOS smartphones and devices.
It utilizes triple axis motion sensors along with an accelerometer that together can measure a runner’s form in three planes: vertically, side-to-side and front-to-back. Those sensors and Wahoo’s fitness app for Android and iOS produce a measurement of each runner’s form called Running Smoothness, a sophisticated algorithm that assigns varying levels of importance to each axis and combines them into a single, easy-to-understand index.
With Running Smoothness athletes can improve their form to avoid unnecessary body motion, which improves efficiency and reduces the risk of common running injuries. Using Wahoo’s app, runners can even track Running Smoothness through their workout history to see improvements over long periods of time.
“No two runners are the same, so ideal running form is different from person to person. With TICKR Run, any athlete can use Wahoo’s Running Smoothness index to make small adjustments in their form and see the effects of those changes in real time,” says Chip Hawkins, CEO of Wahoo Fitness. “Using one of our products and the smartphone that most people carry every day to reduce injuries is something that I don’t think many people ever thought would be possible. We’re pretty excited to have made that a reality.”
TICKR Run tracks heart rate as well as calories burned in real-time and even provides data on stride rate, replaces replacing a traditional footpod. Most runners find increasing their turnover or cadence helps to improve their efficiency. TICKR Run measures vertical oscillation and ground contact time, which in addition to Wahoo’s proprietary Running Smoothness algorithms, gives any runner 360 view into their running fitness and form. Realizing that runners sometimes can’t get outdoors to exercise, TICKR Run also features a Treadmill Mode for capturing speed and distance data from treadmill workouts.
TICKR Run is ANT+ and BLE capable and easily connects to a range of smartphones and GPS watches. TICKR Run can also be paired with over 50 of the most popular fitness apps including Runkeeper, Strava, MapMyFitness and Cyclemeter/Runmeter. TICKR Run can be used together with Wahoo’s free BURN & BURST heart rate training plans that have been designed to optimize fat burn (the BURN) or improve speed and performance (the BURST).