According to your fitness band, you took 10,000 steps yesterday. Perhaps you took the stairs instead of the elevator, or you parked your car at the end of the lot instead of the closest spot…each of those little decisions add up to help you achieve that 10,000 step milestone. But do you really understand what that actually means?
Wearable devices have been one of the biggest trends in the fitness industry in recent years. Hitting 10,000 steps every day has become as ‘on fleek’ as rocking Lululemon even when you’re not hitting the gym. So how do you use the data you get from your Fitbit, Garmin, Apple Watch, or Jawbone to increase your fitness level? Most people want to use wearables to better understand their body and help them proactively manage their health… but most people don’t know what their wearable data means or how to apply it to better themselves. That’s where Intel and EXOS come in. The two companies have announced a collaboration to make the data more useful to wearable device users.
Intel and EXOS have had an ongoing partnership around corporate wellness since 2008. Intel knew that productivity increases when their employees feel healthier so they enlisted EXOS, the expert in human performance, to help develop a corporate wellness program that resonated with their employees. Now the two companies will come together to further broaden the fitness ecosystem.
‘Intel delivers technology with functionality and EXOS provides expertise on human performance and biodynamics so the two companies will work to develop industry education programs and enhance corporate wellness programs as well as combine their expertise to inform the development of future Intel-based fitness products to deliver a valuable user experience with meaningful, quantifiable data,’ explains Sandra Lopez, VP of Strategic Devices and Business Development for Intel’s New Devices Group.
The first phase of the partnership is Continuing Education Courses for certified trainers to teach them how to make data from wearable devices actionable for their clients. According the American Council on Exercise, 72% of trainers are asked by their clients for insight and feedback on their wearable devices, but only 51% felt prepared to answer those questions. Intel and EXOS aim to better prepare trainers to provide their clientele with answers through online content on a variety of topics related to wearable data, including the number of steps you take and the amount of sleep you get.
The idea for this new program actually stemmed from Lopez, who as a working mom wanted to be able to leverage her wearable device as her personal trainer while she’s on the road. She saw an opportunity to figure out what she can practically do to add energy without adding hours to her day that she didn’t have.
‘Trainers have a sense of the body and what it takes to reach a goal,’ explains Lopez. ‘So if your goal is to increase your energy levels, a trainer will look at the various data sources and ask what should you be doing differently?’ That’s how she discovered she wasn’t getting the right kind of sleep. While she was exercising and getting the steps in, she was still lacking energy. By studying the data from her wearable device, she found out she was not spending the ideal 30% in REM sleep so she took actions to get more REM sleep.
How do you make the most of everything you are doing and how can wearable devices help you to achieve those goals? Intel and EXOS are ready to change how that question is answered and give the fitness industry more than numbers on a fitness band. As people crave more data related to their fitness performance, that data is about to become more actionable, understandable, and personable.
