How to Choose a Pedometer Watch

With so many different pedometers and pedometer watches on the market it makes it difficult to decide exactly which pedometer watch might be right for you. This article is here to assist you in determining which pedometer watch might best suit your particular needs. We’re not going to suggest any particular brands here because we’ve already done that in the Top 5 Best Pedometer Watches article but here is some advice that will help you make your own educated decision:

What are you going to use the pedometer for?

First and foremost it is a good idea to sketch out what exactly you need the pedometer watch for. Do you think you will be tracking your daily steps as you casually walk around the house, neighborhood, and office? Are you thinking about establishing a regimented work-out routine that involves daily or weekly running sessions that you want to track? Or maybe you are having a bit of heart trouble and need to keep track of your heart rate at all times during the day.

Figuring this out is the first step because it will determine what kind of functions and qualities you will be looking for in a pedometer watch. Different watches have different features and they range widely across the brands. You’ll find some watches that will just be able to track your daily steps and have no features that allow for dedicated tracking like daily stats storage memory.

It is also not really a common feature for pedometer watches to have the heart rate monitor built in. Touch and finger pads need to be affixed to these watches and you’ll want to find one that fits comfortably on you and doesn’t slip off.

If you’re looking for all of these features in one watch, you can expect to pay a little bit more for it which brings us to the second step in the choosing process.

pedometer

How much are you willing to spend for a pedometer watch?

I’ve seen pedometer watches with price tags from $20 to $200. You will have to try and balance feature sets with your budget. It is pretty common for the more expensive brands to have the most features. Some of the really expensive ones even allow you to upload data onto your computer so that you can easily keep track of it with spread sheets and similar programs.

The cheaper watches will have fewer features. Most of the really cheap ones will just tell the time and count your daily casual steps. They won’t be able to establish a dedicated track routine or give you progress reports and updates in any way. Keep in mind also that the more expensive a watch gets the more accurate it will be.

Cheap brands will miscalculate your stepping pattern pretty often and they will be too sensitive or not sensitive enough so it will be tough to know exactly how much you have been . . . → Read More: How to Choose a Pedometer Watch

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Some Benefits of Using a Pedometer

In November of 2007 the Australian Medical Association concluded that “the use of a pedometer is associated with significant increases in physical activity and significant decreases in body mass index and blood pressure.”

What does that mean? Well, it means that the owning and using a pedometer watch is going to make you a healthier person because it gets you out there being physical and moving your body towards a healthier way of life.

That’s the umbrella benefit to using a pedometer watch: When you’re using your pedometer watch you will be exercising. Exercising is never a bad thing (unless your doctor tells you otherwise) and rigorous sustained exercise like running, jogging, or power walking has been proven to significantly elevate your mood and general state of health.

Here are some more benefits to starting up a running, walking, or jogging routine using a pedometer watch:

You will lose weight: Weight loss is a big deal these days and being overweight is a difficult obstacle to overcome. Obesity in the United States is already considered an epidemic and it causes such a massive variety of health problems and even death.

When you start up a disciplined regimen of walking every day you can use your pedometer watch to slowly ramp up the pace so that you don’t over work yourself too fast and burn out.

Weight loss is achieved through sustained and disciplined exercise. You’re not necessarily going to see results in one week of hard exercise but you will definitely see results of a period of a few months and the pedometer watch is great for helping keep track of that.

Plus, watching the steps go up and up each week will keep your mind off how difficult the hours and hours of running are.

Your cardiovascular health will improve: No one wants you to have a heart attack. You have people in your life who care about you and will be really in a bad state if you have to go through that early in life.

Running, jogging, and walking routines will improve your cardiovascular health and therefore decrease the risk of heart attack or stroke. Some pedometers even have heart rate monitors built into them so that you can use them to keep track of your heart’s health as you keep track of how many steps you take in a day.

Your bone health will improve: Kids need strong bones but so do adults. If you want to avoid having bone problems later in life like osteoporosis you should start exercising right now. In fact, I wouldn’t blame you if you stopped reading this article this very instant, slapped on your handy pedometer watch, and did a few laps around the block. Your body will thank you for it. Don’t worry, I’ll wait….

Alright, you’re back? I hope you showered. Now tell me, is your mood improved? Are you happier now than you were before you went out for that jog? Exercise is proven to elevate . . . → Read More: Some Benefits of Using a Pedometer

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How to Use Your Pedometer Watch

The pedometer watch can be a complicated device at times. It has many different settings and each individual brand of watch comes with separate functions and terminology. Hopefully you will have received a small manual when you originally bought your particular pedometer watch but here are some few basic steps all pedometer owners must take when using our pedometer watch. It’s not just about setting up the mechanics of the device as you would with work out equipment like flat weight benches; it’s about taking full advantage of those mechanics so as to push our fitness routine to the next level.

Calibration: The calibration process is the first step for any pedometer watch owner. When you take the watch out of the box for the first time you’ll find it a blank slate. It has no idea who you are, what your body type is, or how fast you move. You’re going to have to get that information into the watch originally so that it will know you enough to keep track of your movements for the next time.

Think of it like the Control group in a science experiment. Without a base line control group (i.e. your original calibration) the pedometer watch has no idea what any movement means. It needs something to compare it to.

The actual process of calibrating a watch differs from watch to watch but it has some basic principles. You can find the nuts and bolts step by step guide to calibrating your personal pedometer watch in the owner’s manual. Basically, you put the watch on for the first time and then you take a few steps. This will establish a base line from which all future steps will be judged.

Walking/Running:

For most watches you can track separately your casual daily steps and your dedicated work out steps. What you want to do is decide which one of these you’re going to pay most attention to. Are you going to be a dedicated power walker and only track the stride you do while you’re in work out clothes jogging along the side walk? Or will you wear the watch constantly and track every step you take while at home, at the office, or around the neighborhood?

Each person is different. Personally, I only track my work out regimes. I don’t really care about how much I’m walking around every day on a casual basis because I’ll be doing that anyway. What I care about is being more disciplined about my work out and tracking my progress with the pedometer watch when I’m in run mode is a great way to stay motivated.

Goal Setting:

jogging

Speaking of staying motivated, goal setting is a huge factor in succeeding with your fitness regimen. When you set realistic goals you are more likely to strive to achieve them. Just by setting them out in a direct and understandable way it is committing to them and will be . . . → Read More: How to Use Your Pedometer Watch

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What is a Pedometer Watch?

The pedometer watch is the culmination of fitness research and the mashing together of two every day mechanical devices. Simply put, the pedometer watch is a step counter (or advanced accelerometer-pedometer) fixed upon a persons wrist in the style of a wristwatch. Pedometer watches today have all sorts of different functional uses. They act like watches and can tell the time, do count downs, set alarms, and they also carry the step counting and fitness motivating qualities of the original pedometer.

It is common to look at the pedometer and think that it is a recent invention. After all, it is complicated technology that allows us to track our own motion and count our steps by just slapping a wristwatch on our arm. However, the pedometer is not recent at all. In fact, the technology behind our humble pedometer watches is over 200 years old and better yet the concept in play can be dated back to the early Roman Empire.

“It can’t be over 200 years old” you might say. “Where did it all start from?” Well, like most oddball inventions it started with one of the United States’ founding fathers. Thomas Jefferson was not just a congressman, not just an author, not just a diplomat; he was also a renaissance man and inventor of things.

The author of the declaration did not patent most of his inventions so it is difficult to track them all but such things as macaroni and cheese, the dumbwaiter, the swiveling chair and of course the pedometer can be traced back to his Virginia home. Ben Franklin wasn’t the only one who could dabble in politics as well as science.

The debate goes on about whether Thomas Jefferson actually did invent the pedometer as he kind of just showed up with it one day after coming back from France. It is widely believed that he acquired it there and then perhaps made some modifications to it so that he could bring it to the Americas but either way, the story starts with him… or does it?

The history of the pedometer stretches all the way back into Ancient Rome. The Romans measured distance through steps (one mile being 1,000 paces and a pace being two steps) and they would calibrate their distance in the military using odometer technology. They didn’t exactly have a pedometer but the concept was there. Track someone’s footsteps and you’ll know how far they went.

As you can see, the pedometer is not a recent invention at all. It is one of the older technologies of our day. It has improved quite a bit since the time Jefferson first introduced it but the same mechanical principles are the same. The pedometer counts steps by detecting the motion of the user’s hips. Inside of it is an electromechanical pendulum that acts as a motion detector. Whenever the pendulum moves enough to match the original calibration, it counts a step.

The pedometer is not the most accurate piece of equipment . . . → Read More: What is a Pedometer Watch?

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Top 5 Best Pedometer Watches

There are a ton of different pedometer watches out there and all of them have their own little quirks. After extensive research and testing I have compiled a list of the top five choices for pedometer watches. You might not agree with some of my choices and everyone is entitled to their own opinions but these are the five that have worked for me in my running and walking fitness routine. They also look damn good.

So without further adieu, here are the Pedometer Watch.com’s Top 5 picks for best pedometer watch currently on the market. Use them to track distance, walking steps, calories burned, and all sorts of other statistics. They combine the aesthetic value of a sleek looking sports watch with the age-old technology of the pedometer. When you turn these babies on they will immediately begin tracking your steps and when you slow down to a sweaty halt, they shut off automatically as to make sure and only count those steps that matter.

1.    The Sportline Pedometer Heart Rate Watch 960:

sportline960-pgPrice:$66.23 This one makes it to the top of the list because of the design. I love the minimalist black wrist strap and silver clock face. Not only is the Sportline Pedometer a step tracker and stop watch but it also manages to keep track of your heart rate through a finger pad as well. You can use this particular watch to track daily steps by having it calibrated to automatically turn on at certain times of the day or whenever it feels you moving or you can choose to stick to the hard stuff and track only those steps you do during your regular workout routine.

2.     New Balance Sports Monitor

newbalanceviawrist-pgPrice:$78.99 New Balance makes some great shoes and they make even better sports equipment. This pedometer watch model can also track both daily and aerobic steps and it even gives you the option to set goals and will spit out progress reports when you want them. It doesn’t have a heart rate monitor but the other functions it has make up for that: 100 lap chronograph, stopwatch timer, and daily alarm. The cost isn’t too bad either.

3.    Polar AW200 Activity Watch

polaraw200pgPrice:$88.00 This watch is purely for the dedicated power walkers and runners. It doesn’t have the option to track casual daily steps and that is one of its drawbacks. However, there are some other great functions like the barometer and temperature displays and the altimeter that shows elevation changes as you make your way running along the Alps or something like that. I have no idea why it is market for over $200 retail though, at a price like that it should do a lot more and at least have some sort of goal setting function.

4.    Tech 4 O Accelerator Watch

. . . → Read More: Top 5 Best Pedometer Watches

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