How Tech Can Help with Your Workout

It is recommended to stretch before and after every workout. Stretching not only keeps muscles flexible and strong, but it also good for maintaining your joints and increasing blood flow. When you are limbering up before exercising, it is also a good time to make sure you have everything you need for your workout. Your pre-workout checklist might include:

• Making sure your water bottle is filled to keep you hydrated
• Getting your workout playlists or podcasts queued up
• Confirming that your smartphone and wireless headphones are charged, if applicable

Resetting your fitness smartwatch is also a good idea during your pre-workout routine. Besides monitoring your heartrate, many fitness smartwatches can detect how many steps you walk or run and how many laps you swim. Some can even track your sleep patterns after the post-workout phase, going above and beyond the limits of exercise technology.

Other wearable tech workout trackers are also available to help you monitor your progress and health. For example, fitness tracking rings are much smaller than a fitness smartwatch and don’t collect as much sweat. With an inexpensive membership fee that most fitness rings require, you will be able to track your body’s activity to take a holistic picture of your health, all from a ring around your finger.

More vintage methods of exercising, like jumping rope or tossing the medicine ball around will still burn calories, but advances in technology has made getting in shape easier than ever. For one, you don’t need an entire gym to get adequate strength training anymore. Many modern dumbbell and kettlebell sets are compact and adjustable to easily fit inside any-sized living space, allowing you to change the various weight sizes to your comfort level.

If weight training is a little too much or you just like having a balanced workout, cardio exercises fit into any workout routine. Bluetooth enabled treadmills sync up to your smart device and provide personalized workouts, with some even providing virtual courses that you can “run” through. Smart fitness bikes and elliptical machines also utilize tech with smart touchscreens, a library of adjustable settings and Bluetooth compatible audio options, exemplifying workout tech at its finest.

Every workout session should be followed by a recovery period. This is why foam rollers are an essential element when recovering from a workout. Most of them feature vibration settings that move around the sore muscles to help with recovery. Other benefits may include:

• Reducing inflammation while the muscles are rebuilding themselves
• Getting rid of soreness in the back, shoulders and other common pain points
• Helping reduce the risk of injury by removing tightness and tension
• Increasing range of motion

Other exercise tech massagers are also available to help your body recover, like percussive massagers, which combine vibration therapy with the use of repetitive and rapid pressure. This accelerated pressure extends deep into the muscles to provide extra relief. Muscles need time to rest and rebuild themselves, and without a proper recovery between workouts, your muscles never get a chance to heal and gain more mass. This is why utilizing the best tech gadgets for workout recovery is just as important as getting the right amount of sleep.

Your body cannot recover from a workout without sleep. Not only does a good night’s sleep support healthy brain function, but it also helps maintain your physical health. Health benefits of sleep can include:

• Letting the muscles and joints rest to recover properly
• Potentially lowering the risk of serious health problems
• Helping the immune system stay strong to fight off germs

However, even after a strenuous workout earlier in the day, sleep can still be difficult for a lot of people. In fact, about one in three adults in the U.S. doesn’t get enough sleep every night.See Disclosure ¹ If you’re in need of a well-deserved slumber, white noise machines provide soothing sounds to help you fall and stay asleep. Some versions also feature light therapy, meditation settings and other helpful tools to help get a better night’s rest.