Apple isn’t the only fitness watch company making its way into the gym. Garmin now is extending its reach into the personal training and fitness realm by partnering with Gold’s Gym, one of the top fitness franchises in the world. The first fruit of this collaboration is a new Garmin version of the popular Gold’s AMP app that bundles in support for the latest Garmin fitness wearables.
Released in 2017, the Gold’s AMP app is a combo fitness coaching and music app designed to free you from tedious and unmotivating workouts. The app uses upbeat music playlists to keep you moving and audio coaching that encourages you throughout your workout. The app has thousands of DJ mixes in a variety of music genres and more than 100 workouts for both indoor and outdoor activities. It’s like having the best music and a great trainer right by your side while you push yourself to run farther, bike faster or lift more no matter what level you are at. You don’t even have to be a Gold’s Gym member to use it, the app is available to everyone.
The new Garmin integration keeps the audio coaching and curated music of the original Gold’s AMP app and makes it even better by connecting it to Garmin’s latest GPS smartwatches and its fitness trackers. In this first version, Garmin owners working out with the AMP app will be able to track their heart rate in real time within the app. Heart rate tracking can be a useful tool to gauge the intensity of a workout to ensure you are working hard enough to improve your fitness and not slacking off.
The Garmin heart rate tracking is just the first step in this collaboration. A future update coming in fall 2018 will add a Garmin Connect IQ version of the app. This Garmin-specific version will reside on the fitness tracker or smartwatch and will allow users to log and store their workouts in both Golds AMP and Garmin Connect. You can workout once and analyze your fitness data on both platforms.
The Garmin-enabled Gold’s AMP app is available in both the iOS app store and Android’s Google Play. Compatible Garmin devices include the Vivosmart 3, Vivosport, Vivomove HR, Vivoactive 3, Forerunner 645, Forerunner 645 Music, Fēnix 5s, Fēnix 5, and Fēnix 5x.
The OnePlus Buds Clip are a new pair of open-ear earbuds built around a simple convenience. They join Sony’s LinkBuds Clip in the growing ear-cuff category, but either OnePlus bud can go on either ear.
Sensors recognize how the earbuds are being worn and route the audio channels accordingly. There’s no label to check before putting them on, and the feature also works when only one bud is used.
We buy fitness bands and activity trackers to keep tabs on our exercise, but it is easy to forget to start tracking or switch modes when moving between different activities. For Fitbit and Pixel Watch users, that could soon become a lot less annoying, as Google is rolling out a major upgrade to automatic activity tracking that can recognize more than 100 types of exercise, up from just 10 before.
Google first showed off the improved tracking earlier this month alongside the Fitbit Edge. It is now coming to Fitbit Air and the Pixel Watch 3, 4, and 5, and Google claims the added context behind the system makes workout detection nearly twice as accurate while cutting missed activities by more than half. Fitbit Edge will support it too.