Weekend Reading List (05.24.2014): Golf Gear, Interbike Opens Up, Vacation Fitness

Golf Gear

Golf

From Sport Techie: Golf Gadget Round-Up for All Types of Players
I’m far from being a high-tech wizard. I don’t collect gizmos for the heck of it, but I can appreciate the latest offerings in golf gadgetry just as much as the next guy. When GPS-enabled golf carts hit the market, essentially, if your local course didn’t jump on board, they were considered behind the times. While some of us still prefer to know more about the course than our carts do, it’s impossible to remain analog in this newly digitized version of the game. Continue reading Weekend Reading List (05.24.2014): Golf Gear, Interbike Opens Up, Vacation Fitness

TRAINR Links Wearables to Fitness Regime

FOCUSTRAINRWearables have become popular. Juniper Research forecasts $19 billion in revenue for the market by 2018. But with many health monitors and wearable devices there is a divide between fitness monitoring (and smart wearable devices), and getting coached on a training regimen. FOCUS: TRAINR is a newly-released app that links between your Samsung Galaxy Gear watch and compatible smartphones. Continue reading TRAINR Links Wearables to Fitness Regime

Sports and Fitness App Market Flexes its Muscles

MapMyRun_screenWe use apps for sports and fitness related activities, and a new report says that many others do as well. “The World Market for Sports & Fitness Monitors — 2013 Edition,” a report released by IHS, forecasts that by 2017 app downloads will grow from 156 million (in 2012) to reach 248 million. Continue reading Sports and Fitness App Market Flexes its Muscles

Sunday Q&A: Jon Keidan Gives Us the Inside Hook on Insidehook.com

The web is changing and evolving, but today there is the belief that 40 is indeed the new 30. Jonathan Keidan, CEO & co-founder InsideHook.com, tells how his new website can also give that InsideHook on staying fit, feeling young and living the life you’re meant to live. Continue reading Sunday Q&A: Jon Keidan Gives Us the Inside Hook on Insidehook.com

MSN Gets Healthy

MSN is introducing MSN Healthy Living, a new health and lifestyle website that will feature wellness content from respected brands including Prevention, Health.com, MayoClinic, Harvard and EatingWell. This is also a spin-off of MSN Helath, but with a redesign that includes an emphasis on wellness. The idea is help readers live more healthy and proactive lives

Sounds like an idea we might have had!

MSN Healthy Living

Runtastic Adds to Mobile Fitness Tracking Apps

Runtastic added two features to its activity tracking app. Ideal Weight 2.0 and Altimeter are now part of the Runtastic Pro apps, which cost about $3.99 in the Android and iPhone app stores. Continue reading Runtastic Adds to Mobile Fitness Tracking Apps

Airports Look to Fitness As Options for Passengers In Transit

The newly opened Yoga Room inside Terminal 2 at San Francisco International Airport (CBS/AP).

USA Today is reporting on a growing trend at U.S. airports: fitness. As an alternative to the food courts, shops, bars, and lounges for travelers stuck at airports during long layovers or for those who check in early, airports are adding fitness areas such as walking paths and yoga rooms. Airport hotels are opening up their fitness centers to travelers, as well, but for a fee. USAT also highlights the community-based website AirportGyms.com, which lists exercise options that are available around airports. Even if an airport lacks the facilities for a proper workout, there are ways to keep fit before you board your connecting flight. So, the next time you find yourself stuck in a long layover, check out what the airport might have to offer besides bad food and beer.

USA Today: Airports get into the fitness craze for stressed travelers
CBS News: Yoga room opens in San Francisco airport
AirportGyms.com

Fitness Journal: Purdue University Offers Easy Tips to Help Reach Fitness Goals

Hey, where did everybody go? (Photo courtesy of Vagabond Shutterbug)

It’s February, we’re well into the year, and there’s no turning back. Which begs the question, how are your fitness goals coming along? Have you been going to the gym regularly since you signed up during the New Year?  Have you stayed true to your resolutions? If you said no, you’re not alone. Most of us make unrealistic goals for ourselves, according to Purdue University.

It’s not rocket science: people give up on fitness because they have no goals to begin with, they make unrealistic goals, or they lack the knowledge, motivation, discipline or tools to achieve their goals without injury, according to Lane Yahiro, clinical professor and director of the A.H. Ismail Center for Health, Exercise and Nutrition at Purdue University.

Yahiro offers some very easy tips to stay focus if people wish to get fit. One, be accountable, and exercise with someone with a similar schedule to help you with accountability. “I am a firm believer in having accountability,” Yahiro said. “Having an accountability partner does wonders, especially if the partner is just as excited about exercising.”

Second, establish exercise goals that can be reachable. Yahiro says working with a personal trainer can help you create realistic goals. “Personal trainers should set up daily training session objectives that will help the client work toward reaching both short- and long-term goals. An accountability partner can also work with you in this way.” (In our experience, many personal trainers are expensive and lack the proper training. Before you work with a trainer, make sure they are certified and understand your needs.)

Third, keep track of your progress.

These aren’t bulletproof tips that will guarantee a fit body, but exercise requires motivation, so don’t set the bar too high for yourself.

CES 2012: Basis Band Tracks Activity, Heart Rate

There’s a number of activity monitors out there. They all have their own edge. But the Basis B1 band has the ability to track your heart rate from your wrist. You don’t have to wear a chest strap or touch sensors to get a heart rate from your pulse.

Continue reading CES 2012: Basis Band Tracks Activity, Heart Rate

CES 2012: Withings Puts Health in the Cloud

Next time you step on the scale, run a few miles or even wake up in the morning you can send your data to the cloud. That is if you have Withings Cloud platform and applicable workout devices. Withings, famous for the Wi-Fi scale that tweets your weigh-ins, is consolidating all your health and fitness data onto a cloud site.

Among Withings devices, you can set up your scale and Withings blood pressure monitor to upload to the cloud. A volume of additional data from other sources then joins these data. These can be fitness tracking apps, sites where you log your fitness and data from other devices such as a compatible heart rate monitor or cycling computer. A few that have joined in the cloud are Zero Sleep Manager and Runkeeper.

Withings is offering a free API for apps and fitness devices to get set up on the cloud. The platform the operates as a single source for all those devices. Data can be sent to the cloud, but also from the cloud to inform your iPhone or other device with updates.

Withings Company Website

Sears Gets in Fitness Game

Mass retailer Sears has tried to redefine itself a few times. The store that is still probably best remembered for tires and its tasty popcorn, offered its “softer side” back in 1994. Now the company is following such retailers as Best Buy, showing that it can help customers get fit as well.

Sears has announced it is introducing its “Fitness Flagship” store-within-a-store at more than 35 sites across the country. These 6,000 sq. feet centers provide new fitness products and floor models. Is this the fitter side of Sears? Press Release after the jump

Thursday Reading List (11/03/2011)

Welcome to a weekly digest of web links I think are worth checking out. These items include articles, images, and video. Please comment on what you find interesting. If you have something to share, please submit links of interest to mike@kineticshift.com.

 

The Stages of Change

Stages of Change picture

From Experience Life Magazine

Break a habit. Achieve a goal. Transform your life.

At one time or another, most of us have embarked on an effort to change some part of ourselves or our lives. We’ve decided to stop smoking, to start saving, to drop a few pounds, or to get a new job. As a rule, these sorts of changes don’t occur overnight. They take time and effort.And they tend to evolve through a multistage process — one that many behavior-change experts know as the Transtheoretical Model of Change.

Experience Life: Stages of Change Continue reading Thursday Reading List (11/03/2011)