High-Tech Personal Training

Hit the road, hit the gym — or just stay at home and sweat with the latest training tech

- Cliff Joseph

The gym is the first port of call for most people who want to improve their fitness, and Apple recently unveiled big plans to get into the gym business. But rather than opening a chain of elegantly designed gyms, Apple came up with GymKit, a new piece of software that is included in watchOS 4. GymKit enables treadmills, rowing machines, and other types of fitness equipment to record data about your workout, such as distance, speed, and calories burned, and transmit that data direct to your Apple Watch. 

Of course, an iPhone or Apple Watch can already monitor how far or fast you run when you’re jogging or cycling around the park, but they’re less useful if you’re simply running on the spot on a machine at the gym. But a running machine that works with GymKit can use an NFC (near-field communication) chip to record the details of your workout in precise detail, and then simply push that data over onto your Apple Watch.

Apple has announced that it is working with all the main manufacturers of gym equipment to add GymKit support to its products, including Life Fitness, StairMaster, and Nautilus, and some of them have even promised to release their first GymKit-compatible machines by the end of 2018. However, most gyms tend to update their equipment every two or three years, so it could take a while for Apple’s new tech to reach the majority of US gyms.

WORK IT OUT 

If you want to get started a little sooner, then there are still plenty of options available for taking your training to the next level.