I’m up at the Manchester Athletic Club and they have these fitness bands that you strap around your chest and it measures your level of physical activity and then sends a report while you are working out to a computer system which generates a report.

The idea intrigued me because I know I try to push myself at the gym but you don’t really know how much your activity is stacking up.

So I signed up to get the MyZone Band and tried it out.  First you enter your height, weight and age and it calculates your average energy expended based on that criteria.  As soon as your workout is done you unhook the strap and you get an email with your physical activity report.

Now when all that gets explained to you you’re think wow, that sounds pretty cool.  But this is what happens in actuality-

There is a monitor inside the Manchester Athletic club and once your MyZone Band is on your name pops up and your level of activity is recorded.  The only thing that is displayed on the public monitor is your current level of activity, how many calories you’ve burned since your workout started and how many MyZone Points you’ve racked up.  So once you go throug a workout and you get your results you see where you might have backed off and it makes you want to push through harder all the way through your workout, knowing that you’re totally accountable when you see your results.

You can say it’s a gimmick, you can say that you shouldn’t need a fitness monitor band to motivate you but you know what?  Knowing I had that damn band on and that it was gonna spit out my results in my email box made me push harder than ever.  Gimmick- shmmimick it’s effective and at the end of the day that’s all that matters.

So now to top it all off on the cool factor you can issue challenges to anyone else that has the band.  You just send them an email challenge and select a date range and whoever puts in more effort wins the challenge.  You can make bets around that, you can use it to motivate you even more.  Believe me when you have friends like Muffy White who you know is just gonna rub your nose in it if you lose- you will be motivated!

So It’s ON!

Muffy issued a challenge to me through the MyZone website that went like this-

Muffy  has invited you to a MYZONE Points challenge
from 16 January 2013 to 1 February 2013.
"Bring your A game wharf boy. "
Please log in and accept or reject challenge

Here are screenshots after my activity on January 23rd and Muffy yesterday-

and here’s Muffy’s-

So after one day Muffy is kicking my ass.  Her workout was 1:02 minutes, mine 45.  It should be said that Muffy is a gym rat and you all know me as the slug who works down the dock so if she doesn’t kick my ass there should be an investigation.  But that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna give it hell tryin.

Day 1 Muffy 177- Joey C 147.

Oh I forgot to tell you, you can also work out away from the gym I think as long as you activate your fitness band and then once you get to the gym it will upload the data. Somebody correct me if I’m wrong.

Alright Muffy, let’s do this!