THE new sunday express Voices Pushpesh Pant Damyanti Biswas Sathya Saran Gautam Chintamani Neil McCallum Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev MAGAZINE Buffet People Wellness Books Food Art & Culture Entertainment november 1 2020 SUNDAY PAGES 12 Smart Tech Equipment Fitness Checker Apps & Gamification Wearables Virtual Trainers Virtual Reality Online Workout Sessions Health Podcasts The WiFi Fit List The ongoing pandemic has shifted fitness into a virtual world. Virtual Reality, online training, apps and digital sessions are the new normal for better health. By Bindu Gopal Rao S VIRTUAL REALITY Involves pulling on a VR headset attached to a computer or a cell phone to run apps and games, hands free or connected. Top quality headphones and hand controllers that operate specially designed treadmills enhance simulated experiences of being in another world. Built-for-VR games Beat Saber, Iron Man VR or Star Trek: Bridge Crew Facebook’s Occulus Quest 2 is the most sophisticated VR gadget available at present. Strap it to your head using rubber and Velcro straps, and you’re ready to go. HTC Vive has singular features, including a front-facing camera to bring the real world into your virtual world using specific apps. taying at home has never felt as good as before. But it also adds on the kilos. The virus has forced people to turn to technology as a solution to better health, physical and mental, in more entertaining ways than just pushups on the bedroom carpet. YouTube workout videos of Leslie Sansone and Lucy Wyndham tell you how to walk in one place at home and sweat it out. Tarun Gill’s tough fitness videos. And then there are FitTuber and Beer Biceps. Bicycle helmets with wireless backup and 3D modelling. The Apple Watch has a heart monitor, which alerts you of an impending heart attack. Garmin Venu sells a smartwatch boasting health tracking for various functions, including menstrual cycles. Drone racing gets the body parts moving. Drones are integrated into outdoor fitness and exercise programmes or used in the home gym to capture a 360 ° view of training and performance, constantly reviewing, adjusting and urging you to push the envelope. Holographic tennis and workout podcasts are new regimens. Amaresh Ojha, CEO & Founder, Gympik, observes, “Podcasts offer the right counselling on health and fitness by industry professionals. Food and nutrition or weight loss and muscle gain, podcasts bring the latest news in wellness and fitness trends.” Got a pool at home? Alternate Augmented Reality (AR) Form goggles with a Google Glass headmounted display strapped to your eyes. The accelerometer in the goggles tracks strokes and speed in real time to monitor metabolism during aquatic AR. E-sports are the new frontier in muscle construction. Diksha Chhabra, Fitness Expert, Nutritionist & Founder, Diksha Chhabra Fitness Consultation, notes, “ client A of mine who had no time confessed the online programme gave her better results. She did not miss her exercises and she was emailed the schedule in advance with the necessary instructions and guidelines.” Nintendo’s home workout kits combine legendary villains with a silent Adventure mode. Then there is the ultimate rock star in the digital wellness space—Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI-based personal trainers integrated with wearable devices follow and correct workout posture and provide real-time feedback like a trainer does. You can also customise lifestyle and diet with AI apps such as Millie Fit and Aaptiv Coach. There are apps such as Lifesum that integrate your diet with lifestyle habits to help you achieve your health and fitness goals. Most of them can be paired with other health apps such as Apple Health, Fitbit, Google Fit and Withings. There’s more to wearable tech than watches. Nocturnal tech to save cyclists and bikers from careless drivers is getting more sophisticated by the day A . unique jacket has a cape sphere—4,000 glass globes embedded in each sq cm that reflect and scatter light. During the day it has a , psychedelic look with shifting metallic sheens of colour. Another has phosphorescent membranes to catch and store light: the stronger the light the brighter the glow. Strobe-lit spheres clipped on to your shoes warn errant motorists when you are on a jog. Many apps are built with data gathered from professional athletes. BlazePod, a Bluetooth ‘flash reflex training’ system, uses reaction-training lights, and works by tapping touch-sensitive pods with your hands, knees, or feet during a workout. The pods light up in different colours during the exercise, signalling reaction time, coordination, balance, and strength. E-games cater to every need. The Stealth Plankster acts on your core using a balance board plugged into a cellphone and works out up to 29 muscles. Turn to page 2 Stealth Plankster works on your core using a balance board plugged into a cellphone and works out up to 29 muscles BlazePod, a Bluetooth ‘flash reflex training’ system, uses reaction-training lights, and works by tapping touch-sensitive pods with your hands, knees, or feet during a workout Decathlon’s self-powered bikes and ellipticals make practice possible in any environment. With Kinomap app, users can connect their equipment with this reality software. PODCASTS Holographic tennis and workout podcasts are new regimens. Podcasts offer the right counselling on health and fitness by industry professionals. Food and nutrition or weight loss and muscle gain, podcasts bring the latest news in wellness and fitness trends. VIRTUAL TRAINERS Online Workout Sessions Numerous gyms are presently streaming expertly trained classes through apps such as Zoom and Instagram that permit clients to reproduce the experience of individual instruction with a mentor through their earphones. There are workouts that cater to all ages, metabolic capacities, illnesses and even time constraints. From five minutes of intense HIIT to 90 minutes of relaxing yoga, all are now available with the click of a button. Decathlon’s ‘All For Sports’ platform provides various fitness live sessions for users to stay fit at home.