How are wearable health and fitness devices changing people’s lives
The health and fitness industry has been subject to drastic changes as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many others, it has had to adapt quickly to changing conditions, and changing expectations from consumers. In this article, we will look at some of these changes and in particular how wearable health and fitness devices are changing people’s lives.
During the lockdown periods, products such as free weights and resistance bands have become extremely popular as people are forced to move their gym routine into their own home. People have gotten used to either using free YouTube and Instagram videos for their workouts or paying for online classes with instructors looking for work.
Despite the way things have changed though, there are huge positives in the industry because of the pandemic, which is not a position many other industries are in. Millions of more people have thrown themselves into health and fitness as they have suddenly found themselves with more free time if they were furloughed. Work and personal lives can easily get in the way of taking care of your body and health.
These changes have led to companies thinking on their feet or finding themselves with a product that has suddenly soared in popularity. One market that is growing quickly is wearable health and fitness devices.
In simple terms, wearables are products such as an Apple Watch or a FitBit that you wear to either monitor exercise, or all day long to monitor various parts of your body. This is an area that is growing rapidly though, and many more products that people may not have heard of are starting to fly off the shelves. It is predicted that by 2022 over 900 million people will be wearing these devices. In 2020, wearable device sales rose by around 30%, which is highly unusual for anything given the global economic situation. They’re expected to be a $70 billion market globally by 2025. This is all according to the senior vice president of Samsung Electronics.
It has become common for people to take a more holistic approach to their health and fitness, meaning they want to enhance their sleep, recovery time, and mentality rather than just lifting weights or improving cardiovascular fitness.
That is why products like the Oura Sleep Ring have become popular. The ring provides a range of statistics about the quality of your sleep. It monitors your heart rate, temperature, respiratory rate and more, and gives you a ‘readiness’ score when you wake up. Based on that score, you can decide how hard to push yourself that day. Perhaps you can add an extra 10 minutes to your workout, or maybe you need to cut it down because you slept poorly.
Oura’s product boomed at the beginning of the pandemic because it showed the ability to detect early coronavirus symptoms. A Finnish businessman had to fly to a few European cities in early March. One of these was Tyrol in Austria, which had become a coronavirus hotspot. Having been there he decided to self-quarantine out of concern for his employees and was wearing his Oura ring the entire time. The ring started giving him a readiness score around 30 points lower than usual, citing his elevated temperature. Despite feeling fine he contacted his doctors and it transpired that he had coronavirus but was not experiencing symptoms.
Another product that is gaining popularity is the WHOOP recovery strap. You pay for a membership and are sent a product that looks like a stylish felt watchstrap. It supplies data to you by monitoring your heart rate 24/7 and gives you information on your recovery after exercise, your quality of sleep, and the amount of strain your body is under. Devices like this allow people to take control of more aspects of their health than they have previously been able to.
As has been pointed out by the CEO of WHOOP, consumers are much more interested in the recovery aspect of their health nowadays, as opposed to the obsession with building muscle and fitness during the 2010s. Logically, the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic has caused consumers to take a serious inward look at their health, and that’s driving this holistic fitness trend.
Many within the industry theorise that big companies who traditionally offer gym memberships as a perk to their employees could now start offering wearable devices and subscriptions instead. It could be more beneficial to the company if their employees are tracking and trying to improve the quality of their sleep and recovery time.
It’s clear that for consumers, there has never been a better time to invest in wearable devices that can help you become a better version of yourself. Wearable health and fitness products do not tend to come cheap in comparison to general fitness equipment, but for the millions of people who are now being these products and more, they seem to feel they are worth the money.
Euan Burns is a features editor at Origym Centre of Excellence, which provides high-quality personal training courses and packages.