musicMagpie Blog

Home workouts have surged in popularity since the UK government announced new measures to restrict social contact. Naturally, this has got us thinking about how we can keep track of our fitness in the best way possible.

Smartwatches are a popular go-to when it comes to monitoring your health. They provide a whole host of stats such as your heart rate, number of steps, sleep activity and so much more. They're almost like a Personal Trainer strapped to your wrist!

Should I buy a smartwatch to track my fitness?

This depends on whether you solely want a fitness tracker, or a fitness tracker combined with a communicative approach, notifications and app integration so you can use your favourite apps to keep fit. 

You might be thinking that smartwatches are well out of your budget. Fortunately, refurbished wearables are a fantastic route to go down if you cannot afford a totally brand new one (purchasing refurbished is good for the environment too!). You can spread the cost too!

Tempted? Here's how you can use a smartwatch effectively for home workouts.

Know your resting heart rate

Monitoring your heart rate is really important for your overall health, It allows you to see how hard your body is working. The average for a healthy adult is between 50-70 beats per minute.

Smartwatches can monitor your resting heart rate. If you have concerns about how fast your heart beats during exercise, or how high your resting heart rate is, you can present the heart rate monitor to your doctor.

Stay motivated

Hook up Spotify, Apple Music and other streaming apps to your Smartwatch! You can easily pause music and switch between tracks with the flick of a finger. It also means you won't need to carry your phone or music player whilst you're exercising. One less thing to carry means one less distraction from working out!

Maximise recovery and monitor your sleep

Smartwatches are fantastic for sleep monitoring. It can track your REM sleep – the most important cycle for recovery. 

Not getting enough sleep? Smartwatches can track how long you spend in each sleep stage. With this info, you can make the necessary changes to your sleep regimen, whether that be going to bed earlier, staying off your phone before going to sleep or even adjusting your room temperature to improve your comfort levels.

Some smartwatches even have a built-in SPO2 sensor, which can monitor the amount of oxygen in your blood. Why is this important you ask? This measurement can indicate if you have sleep apnea – a condition where breathing stops for a few seconds to a few minutes. It can cause low energy and sleepiness throughout the day.

Set reminders to stay active

It's hard to stay active when you're working from home or binging Disney+ (although there's nothing wrong with the latter!). Whilst we all know it's important to stay active, it's very easy to forget. Before you know it, the day has gone by in a flash!

Set reminders easily on your Smartwatch to get moving. They'll often make an alert sound or vibrate, so you know you need to get up and go.

Set goals

Smartwatches are capable of setting a variety of fitness goals from flexibility to weight loss. The beauty of smartwatches is that you can integrate other apps that keep track of your goals too, like Samsung Health.

They can also remind you when you have or haven't completed a goal – so you know you can stay on track with a reliable device.

Complete daily challenges

Competition is a fantastic motivational tool for keeping fit. Smartwatches allow you to compete with your friends and family to work harder! By doing a longer run or burning more calories – you can see how you compare to your contacts. 

Although there's no real reward for beating your goals, you'll get the satisfaction that you came out on top and worked out harder than the rest!

Integrate the top workout apps

We touched on this earlier – but it's possible to integrate top fitness apps with your Smartwatch. But what's even better is you can get access to smartwatch-friendly versions of apps that you can download straight away!

Through these third-party apps, you can monitor exactly what you want to. Plus, they can record data to tracking monitors within the Smartwatch for a quick overview of your health!

Count your steps

Smartwatches act as pedometers too, meaning it can track the amount of steps you take per day. The NHS recommends 10,000 steps daily, and whilst this is hard to achieve if you're working in the office (or at home), simply having a walk in the house, during your one exercise per day or going up and down the stairs a few times can seriously rack up your daily steps (and calorie burn!).

Thinking of investing in a smartwatch? Buy a smartwatch from musicMagpie! Our refurbished tech products come with a free 12 month warranty and are available with contact-free delivery!