Make Your Home Fitness Smarter
"Don't Be A Dumbell, Make Your Home Fitness Smarter" Control4.com; Accessed August 17th 2021
Sleep Technology
"For the sleep obsessed, there’s a plethora of technology available designed to keep an eye on your sleep quality and habits, from wearables and sensors you place on your mattress to headbands that aim to measure brainwave activity. If you’re already using an Apple Watch or a Fitbit, you’re probably familiar with their built-in sleep tracking functionality. However, there’s a couple new companies offering wearable products that are geared more narrowly towards rest and recovery, like the Oura ring or the WHOOP band. The Whoop tries to parse out the data taken from your everyday life and break it into three categories: strain, recovery, and sleep, then gives you an overall percentage grade of readiness for more strain so that you have some feedback about whether you’re ready for a workout or should be prioritizing rest. The Ouro uses a similar system, but their tracker is a minimalist ring with sensors inside the band."
Lighting
Your sleeping environment should be a restful one; an easy way to ensure this is to optimize your bedroom lighting. With Control4 home automation, you can set scenes for bedtime that automatically lower the blinds at sunset and dim the lights to a softer level to help signal to your brain that it’s time to wind down at the end of the day. In the morning, set wakeup scenes to open your blinds to let sunshine in and start the day off right. Integrations like these can be set up to be timed or added to voice commands on your favorite home assistant to make waking up or going to sleep more seamless and convenient.
Smart Scales
Old school scales just measure your total weight. While weight does have a bearing on health, it’s not the best single overall indicator for wellness. New smart scales go a step further, using electrical impulses to measure your lean muscle mass, bone mass, water content, and more. Some connect to wearable trackers via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth to correlate data and give you a fuller picture of your health altogether.
Connected, Interactive Equipment & Community
Maybe your home gym environment is missing the energy of boutique classes, enthusiastic instructors, or other community members to compete/commiserate with. If that’s the case, there’s a bumper crop of equipment that connects you to friends, community members, or livestream classes directly to your app or a connected device. Peloton is famous for creating a cult-like community following with guided workouts, killer training playlists, inspiring instructors, and the ability to “ride together” with your other Peloton-addicted friends, but many other platforms are building similar connected home fitness products and services.
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