Pedometers have been revolutionised over the past decade.
Find out how the serious pedometers have evolved...
There are two serious pedometers for the title. The Silva and Yamax pedometer range. At roughly the same price under £35 each we thought it would be interesting to put them to the test. Both are widely accepted as well known branded pedometers that are accurate and do a great job counting steps. However, where traditional pedometers, leave you to calculate your calorie loss and time exercising. These functions are now part of the basic make up pedometers. What you’ll find is that Yamax and Silva technology have taken them to a new level.
The results…
The Yamax PW611 pedometer It was clear that the Yamax Pedometer’s 3D sensor technology works in your pocket and so doesn’t have to worn on your hip. What is impressive is that it is sensitive enough to separate ‘continuous steps’ from your all day steps and also counts, sideways, step ups and other everyday moves that might otherwise be missed by the pendulum mechanism found in most pedometers.
This gives you much greater scope if you want to know how much exercise you are actually taking in the day as well as improving fitness and walking for weight loss programs.
The Yamax stores information on the pedometer for seven days. As weeks can easily drift by it was useful to see where you are up to after seven days. Also, it does force you to make a conscious effort to keep on top of this and your training schedule.
Utilising similar technology the sensor-based pedometers did pick up on your day-to-day steps too. The big and telling advantage was the ability to save the information in the pedometer per day up to 30 days. With busy lifestyles and in the vein of convenience, forgetting about the data until you got back to your PC was a real blessing and you could upload it as you wish. There was a slight draw back that some of the results for a big run or scheduled training exercise would be skewed because you added on lots of other steps on the in between or if you’d left it your pocket. Something we felt the Yamax was better at differentiating between.
Conclusions: There was a general feeling that in the modern world being able to upload your exercise data to a PC and login online to see how you had been performing overtime was a better modern day solution. It was also felt that the team challenge software on Silva Connect pedometers website left a lot more breadth for getting teams together to train.
You may interested to follow Polygons progress as we have also been using this kit with some colleagues that you may wish to follow when reading our blog. Or read this article for a 5 point plan to get your training back on track which can be accessed by clicking here, there is also a discount available too on these products.
