Trotzendorff

While it’s true you don’t need any tech or gad­gets to run, there are a lot of them out there that are fun to use or can pro­vide you with data, moti­vat­ing insights or that can enrich your work­out. I’ve come across three gad­gets and new tech­nolo­gies late­ly that caught my atten­tion — and that I’d like to briefly intro­duce to you.

Whoop 4.0

Descrip­tion: the Whoop 4.0 is a fit­ness track­er that col­lects data about recov­ery, strain and sleep per­for­mance. «From these fig­ures, it offers advice on how you should bal­ance your train­ing and rest to achieve peak ath­let­ic per­for­mance,» Har­ry Bull­more writes on Live­Science. What sounds like any oth­er fit­ness track­er on the mar­ket, has its USPs: the band itself is screen­less, IP68 dust­proof and water-resis­tant at depths of up to 10 meters for two hours. The lack of GPS might be anoth­er con for some of us, but on the data sight the Whoop is show­ing off, as «it is the mul­ti-dimen­sion­al approach to cal­cu­lat­ing recov­ery that is the jew­el in the Whoop 4.0’s crown. By con­sid­er­ing heart rate and heart rate vari­abil­i­ty, as well as sleep quan­ti­ty and qual­i­ty, it gives a more round­ed view of your readi­ness for exer­cise.» Read the whole review at livescience.com.

Motesque

Descrip­tion: We all would love to own indi­vid­u­al­ly fit­ted equip­ment, may it be the per­fect run­ning shoe, or the right bike. Motesque, a start­up from Berlin, wants to find exact­ly the right equip­ment with a com­bi­na­tion of motion analy­sis and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. With «MQ Pro Run­ning» the com­pa­ny has an «advanced motion analy­sis tech­nol­o­gy,» that pro­vides a «state-of-the art solu­tion to ana­lyze a customer’s run­ning behav­ior and rec­om­mend the opti­mal sport shoe.» Motesque’s sys­tem con­tain­ing the sen­sors, body-wear brack­ets and a com­pute sta­tion with soft­ware and remote update func­tion­al­i­ty is designed for retail­ers who want to give rec­om­men­da­tions based on sci­en­tif­ic results. The run­ning style for exam­ple is deter­mined «by prona­tion excur­sion, prona­tion veloc­i­ty, impact forces, and the smooth­ness fac­tors are cal­cu­lat­ed through brak­ing and accel­er­a­tion forces. This com­plex data set is then trans­ferred into a clear and easy to under­stand overview that helps con­sumers make an informed deci­sion.» If you want to dig deep­er, there’s this video about how motion data could change the sports indus­try in the next years.

Omorpho

Descrip­tion: «Load­ing your body with small amounts of dis­trib­uted weight can help you build strength, pow­er and endurance.» That’s the the­o­ry behind Omor­pho’s «Grav­i­ty Sports­wear». The sports­wear col­lec­tion by the com­pa­ny from Port­land strate­gi­cal­ly places small amounts of weight across the gar­ments. Per Omor­pho’s web­site, these weight­ed clothes help ath­letes move like they nor­mal­ly would while increas­ing inten­si­ty. «We’ve always been told that what we wear for sports and fit­ness should be as light­weight as pos­si­ble, but the first thing we do to get stronger and fit­ter is add resis­tance. So why not build it into what we wear?» says Ste­fan Olan­der, Co- founder of Omor­pho, in a press relase. If you want to know more there is a fun to read expe­ri­ence report by Allana Akthar for Busi­ness Insid­er.