Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

Suunto has just released a new series of watches called the T Series. All of them are heart rate monitors that track your calories burned and time in each training zone. The upper end watches work with foot and bicycle pods to track your mileage.

Only the t6c comes even close to doing all that I would want and the Suunto website is so sparse that I can’t even tell if the computer program would be anything near as good as the Nike+ site.

• New Suunto Training Series

Sure, the Nike+ doesn’t track my heart rate or use a GPS to locate my position, but it has a place where there are a lot of runners who can compete with me in challenges. It’s nearly impossible for me to find a group of runners in my hometown who are running exactly as fast and long as I am, but on Nike+, I can find a large group easily.

Right now, it looks like the Suunto t6c is about $400 and that only includes the heart rate monitor. I’d have to pay extra for a foot pod or GPS tracking device. At that price tag, the new Suunto series doesn’t even pique my interest. I’ll stick with my low tech Nike+ for now. Ironically, it’s still better.

Via: Shiny Shiny: Suunto answer the ‘sun shining = diet’ equation

After a week of exercising with the Wii Fit, I have a few thoughts.

Is it a good workout?

When I started working out with the Wii Fit with my Nike Imara Heart Rate Monitor, I was worried that I wouldn’t get much of a workout. Some of the balance games (like the Soccer Heading game I showed you last week), barely got my heart rate above the low mark. The aerobic sections of the game were the BEST at getting my heart rate up.

Worse still, there is a lot of navigating through menus that wastes time. For example, I kept my stopwatch running and in over an hour of workout time, the Wii Fit logged only 45 minutes of actually working out.

Here are the stats from a typical workout:

Wii Fit Activity Time: 45 minutes
Total Workout Time: 1:07:14 minutes
Total Calories Burned: 536 calories
Average Heart Rate: 121 bpm
Time in High HR Zone: 26:37 minutes
Time in Medium HR Zone: 30:12 minutes
Time in Low HR Zone: 10:24 minutes

In this workout, I did every Yoga, Strength Training, Aerobic and Balance activity that had been opened. I’m sure you could workout for hours once you’ve opened up all the activities and repetitions.

Hands down, the biggest calorie burner is the hula hoop game. My heart rate shot up to 167 bpm while I played this game trying to keep all the hoops in the air and catch more. I’m surprised at how good of a workout it is and I’m excited to keep testing it over the weeks.

Shiny Shiny made a collection of the other week-long reviews of the Wii Fit here:

• Shiny Shiny: Does the Wii Fit actually get you fit? The reviews decide…

It doesn’t look like anyone is reporting weight loss any more than a simple one or two pounds a week, but it certainly is a fun way to add activity to your day.