Gymwatch's fitness strap can tell you when your reps are wrong
Doing a single exercise, like lifting a weight, is pretty easy. Doing an exercise well, on the other hand, is pretty hard. That's the idea behind Gymwatch, a fitness wearable that's designed both to tell you how many exercises you've done, but also if you've done any of them badly. After a successful Indiegogo campaign, the product is now ready for prime time -- almost.
So, picture the scene: You can use a cloth strap to wrap Gymwatch around either of your arms or legs and then fire up the app. Select the exercise that you're about to do, pick the object that you'll be holding (say, a dumbbell and a kettlebell) and an animation will tell you what to do. The wearable itself will then calculate your rate of motion and, should you overextend yourself, tell you that you've done something wrong. There's a pretty hefty battery tucked inside, and the company promises a 30-day battery life, which should cover your workouts for the month.
Sounds pretty exciting, right? There are, however, a few caveats that mean this isn't as wonderful as it looks at first blush. For a start, the Android app has yet to launch, and the iOS app remains in beta -- and isn't expected to be finished for another eight weeks. Then there's the fact that the watch can only calculate the movements for the limb that it's currently wrapped around, so if it's on your right bicep and you overextend a lateral raise on your left arm -- you're stuffed.
There is a solution to the latter problem, thankfully, which is to buy two units, but at $199 each, that's a serious investment. Compare that to the $59-per-unit price of rival device Moov, which came out early last year, and you're left wondering what the extra cash is for. That's not to condemn Gymwatch at all, since there's clearly tons of potential here; I just hope that it can realize this potential very shortly.
James Trew contributed to this report.
