How fitness trackers can mess with your workouts by making them feel a drag
The goal of 10,000 steps a day your Fitbit sets you is initially a motivator, but when you’ve walked the dog, done the gym and find yourself marching on the spot to make it, you know it’s time to move on
“Fitbits could ruin your workout,” warned London’s Daily Telegraph and at least a dozen other newspapers - just in time to derail my New Year’s resolutions. Turns out that a new study concluded that Fitbits, Jawbones and other fitness trackers might not be all they’re cracked up to be.
“Measuring all that physical activity is a pernicious double-edged sword,” according to the study’s author, Jordan Etkin, a professor of marketing at Duke University in the US state of North Carolina, whose research will be published in the April issue of the Journal of Consumer Research. “Enjoyable activities, like exercise, can become almost like a job, by focusing on the outcomes of things that used to be fun.” In other words, tracking all those steps, floors and calories can make working out, even walking, feel like a drag. Sure, now you tell me.
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About a year or so ago, many of my health-conscious friends started wearing activity trackers on their wrists. Suddenly any conversations among these “sporterati” quickly turned to their target number of 10,000 steps, which Fitbit has preset as a one-size-fits-all goal. Did you achieve it? Surpass it? Not to mention that their wrists now started to flash with “durable elastomer” (a.k.a. synthetic rubber) in hues of lime, tangerine and violet.
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But I’m not immune to a good deal, so last summer when I saw an ad offering 20 per cent off, I was wavering. And the tipping point: The Fitbit now came in slate blue, a colour I like. I placed my one-click order.