As a gadget’eer, I pride myself in being able to sniff out some of the world’s coolest gizmo’s, and the IRUNNER app coupled with a heart rate monitor and pedometer have become my new new friends.

The meat and potatoes behind this app are simply amazing. Like any other HR monitoring system, the user specific HR zones are determined by entering your gender, age, height, weight, max HR, even resting HR. The app then generates your work zone chart, so that you can now enter your workout and track the effectiveness of your routine.

For example, I like to begin my workouts by warming up on a treadmill. This allows me to effectively warmup all muscle groups, raise my HR and increased circulation. In the above chart, I ran one mile at a comfortable pace of 6.0. By effectively studying the concept of stored energy consumed by increased HR, I have learned first hand how this applies. If I warm up at a pace of 6.5-7.0, my HR increases into the the next zone, where it then pulls from my bodies stored glycogen’s at nearly double the rate. If my intent is only to warm up, my body’s stored energy is significantly lowered before I even begin working out. As you begin tracking your HR, an effective measurement that will allow you to measure your hearts current ability to perform under physical exertion is your hearts recovery rate. This is also effectively tracked with this app. Note the direct fall of the HR line in the chart above. The numbers a crossed the bottom represent minutes in use.

If your goal is to increase distance ran, this app allows you to visualize your HR at a given pace, over a given time. The classic walk/run pace, increasing run times shows how the body learns to store energy as well as adapt to applied physical stress.

The chart above shows HR zone percentages. This app stores each days performance making it easy to refer back to and make comparisons of performance gains.
Thus far, we have only scratched the surface of this gizmo’s features and abilities; the IRUNNER app also tracks pedometers, cycling, spinning, even hiking. The units ability to track calories burned allows me to then couple this information with other health and performance related apps which I will blog about at a later date. If your looking for a HR performance related app, the IRUNNER ranks at the top for me. You create the desire, and these gizmo’s turn effort into productivity, ultimately fueling the passion!

CBT

This entry was posted on Friday, April 6th, 2012 at 2:41 PM and is filed under Fitness, Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.