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I'm hoping they can incorporate something for weight lifting too. It'd be awesome to chart your growth in a more intuitive way rather then just using Excel.
What data points does a phone collect that you see as a beneficial measure of lifting activity?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>"No need to check one app to see your weight and another to review a run" Except the blog post doesn't allude to anything more than what's already present. I can already input weight and run time and it looks like it tracks heartbeat. Maybe the phone app has problems loading widgets with the webservice currently being flakey.
> "You can also connect your favorite fitness devices and apps like Strava, Withings, Runtastic, Runkeeper and Noom Coach to Google Fit and we’ll surface all of the relevant data in one spot, giving you a clear and complete view of your fitness. No need to check one app to see your weight and another to review a run – with Google Fit, that data will all be surfaced in one, simple place."
If I track a 2 mile 20 minute run with another app, Google Fit (so far) only exposes the data as "Ran 20 minutes" completely eliminating the useful information. And if they have a hidden feature that does track distance as well, why isn't that exposed to me to manually enter?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
True, but be careful to not fall into the other extreme. There was a time when I was lifting 3 times a week, every week, bench pressing 100kg, etc. And I tried to ride a bike uphill (pretty long ride) and nearly puked my guts out. You need both strength and endurance. And some fine motor skills, like playing ping-pong or throwing a frizbee. And some R&R interspersed in there, regularly, otherwise you'll collapse from…
A 100kg bench is not extreme strength, sorry. It's "I'm average and I've been at this for 6-12 months" strength.
I meticulously entered my lab results, height, weight, etc into Google health few years back. And they promptly discontinued the service. What is the guarantee that this will not meet the same faith? I am not buying into this unless they make it open source -- so that somebody else can take over when Google loses interest.
There's generally no guarantee that any service anyone provides won't be discontinued. Either (1) the service provider is prepared to jettison services that end up becoming net money losers (and thus, its services are at risk of being discontinued voluntarily), or (2) the service provider is not particularly concerned about being able to sustain itself (and thus, its services are at an elevated risk of being discontinued involuntarily).
There is not a third option.
> I am not buying into this unless they make it open source -- so that somebody else can take over when Google loses interest.
Open sourcing the implementation is kind of orthogonal to providing a transition path for the data so that what has been captured for any user can move to a new provider's system. It is neither necessary nor sufficient for that.
I'm hoping they can incorporate something for weight lifting too. It'd be awesome to chart your growth in a more intuitive way rather then just using Excel.
What data points does a phone collect that you see as a beneficial measure of lifting activity?
- Time your rest periods
- Track your progress
- Remember what weight you did last time
- Count your sets
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And you can see that strength training or HIIT are completely left out from the announcement. Strava, Withings, Runtastic, Runkeeper and Noom Coach: all of them tracking apps, with very little emphasis on the prescriptive aspect of fitness. People need a coach, not a tracker.
And the only way I can see that solution happening is some sort of full-body wearable, neck to toe. I remember an Under Armor commercial demoing some sort of envisioned prototype of this kind of tech. edit: They also have something called Armor39, a strap that goes around your chest. I am now curious. Anyone used this?
Thing is although, it costs $300-$400 dollars. Runkeeper works with the phone you already have, and you can optionally add a couple of $50-$150 accessories. Very different price points.