5 things you need to monitor to stay fit

Thomas Triebel18 June 2017

One third of people now monitor their health and fitness using devices such as fitness bands, smartwatches and mobile phone apps, a new survey has revealed.

There are 5 important aspects of your training that you should monitor to keep track of your progress and improve your health, experts have said.

Your heart rate

Measuring your heart rate during exercise not only helps you track your fitness improvements but equally prevents you from over-exercising, which can be dangerous.

At the beginning of your training, your heart should beat at 60 to 100 times a minute. Your heart rate while resting is only around 40 beats per minute.

If you go beyond the normal range, you are going beyond the safety parameters of your workout.

Smartwatches are great tools to monitor your progress.
Getty Images

Your steps

According to the NHS, we walk on average between 3,000 and 4,000 steps a day. But many fitness experts recommend that we should walk at least double that figure to be healthy.

The number that you will usually find on the internet is 10,000. Why that number?

Apparently, the idea of 10,000 steps first emerged in Japan during the 1964 Olympics. At that time, pedometers became widely popular in Japanese society. A company came out with a device called Manpo-kei, which translates in English to '10,000 step metre'.

Since then, 10,000 steps has become a commonly-acknowledged recommendation for fitness, but the figure remains arbitrary and isn’t based on any scientific study.

Your speed

It is probably the most obvious area to keep track of to evaluate your progress while running. Many devices, especially the combination of a smartwatch and an app, will allow you to record different times over a period of time.

You can then beat your personal record or share your accomplishments on social media to compare with others. A little bit of competition is always good to push yourself forward.

You can share your accomplishments on social media. (CC)

The calories you burn

Quite unexpectedly, the body burns more fat during lower-intensity exercise, which corresponds to working at 50 to 70 per cent of your maximum heart rate.

A pound of fat equals 3,500 calories, which means, to lose 1 to 2 pounds per week, you need to burn off 500 to 1,000 calories more per day.

The number of calories you burn during a workout depends on your size, the duration of the training and its intensity.

The quality of your sleep

According to scientists, sleep, along with proper nutrition and exercise is one of the three pillars of health.

Although the optimal amount of sleep is between seven to eight hours a night for most people, that's not a universal rule.

Tracking your sleep will allow you to identify whether or not you are getting enough of it and if it's quality rest. Lack of quality sleep has a detrimental effect on mood, weight loss, exercise performance, recovery, energy, productivity, immune system strength, cardiovascular function and brain health.

Simply put, a lack of sleep can have a negative effect on nearly every aspect of your life. So, to stay fit, sleep tight.

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