Last week there was news of Apple Watch being an astonishingly accurate reporter of abnormal heart rhythms, GymKit being rolled out across different machines and Oculus Go being tested. Oh, and the new Apple Watch bands for Spring were revealed.
The Week in Wearables is a news digest, out each midweek, focused on some of the things that have happened in the world of tech you can wear on your wrist, perch on your head, stick in your ear, sling around your waist, tuck into the small of your back or, well, you get the idea.
Using an Apple Watch in the gym is suddenly more accurate than ever.
Life Fitness and Technogym talk GymKit
GymKit-compatible equipment is the gym gear that’s compatible with Apple Watch, letting you jump on the running machine (well, climb, please don’t actually jump on) and know that your Apple Watch and the gum equipment can communicate for the best in workout accuracy. 9to5Mac has reported that there are now over 5,000 compatible machines now deployed.
Technogym was first to debut workout equipment equipped with Apple GymKit back in November starting with a fitness club in Australia. Apple’s Jay Blahnik demonstrated how GymKit and Apple Watch work with compatible equipment.
GymKit popped up in the UK a few weeks later at the Virgin Active gym, followed by the US debut in New York City with the promise of more fitness clubs with GymKit equipment throughout 2018.
I tested the Technogym equipment with Jay Blahnik in London myself and it was impressive.
I tried the Technogym running machine and the system worked seamlessly. In fact, the only awkward part of the picture was me, huffing and puffing as I ran.
Apple told me the idea was to make the system gym-proof, which sounds like code for idiot-proof to me. It’s designed to be as simple to use as Apple Pay. And it is.
One of the coolest features is that if I forget to tap the NFC panel at the beginning of my workout, all is not lost. At any point in my run, right up to the last seconds, I can make the connection and the two machines work out the data for the entire session.
And now, Life Fitness has machines in Hong Kong and Japan, as Apple Insider has revealed.
Pure Fitness of Hong Kong and Anytime Fitness in Japan installed Life Fitness machines compatible with the Apple Watch data sharing platform. The two clubs are the first in the region to feature GymKit support, according to Life Fitness.
"There are nearly 1 billion workouts per year on our cardio machines across the globe, and we know that exercisers want workouts that are personalized, motivating and with easy data tracking to drive better outcomes," said Jaime Irick, president of Life Fitness.