Most people have heard of the FitBit®, Nike+ FuelBand, Jawbone UP®…but have you heard of the Polar® Loop™?
Craig Lewin of Busy Body and Fitness HQ stores in the Dallas / Fort Worth area shows Hut how this nifty little gadget can help you increase your activity and even monitor your sleep patterns.
Wear it while walking, jogging, running, swimming, biking, playing and sleeping…in fact, you never have to take it off.
Watch Craig & Hut’s video review of the Polar Loop:
Hut: This is Hut Allred of New Wave Fitness, here with Craig Lewin of Busy Body and Fitness HQ, for another “Craig Lewin Show.”
Craig: Thanks. I feel like it’s the “Lewin Allred Show.” I don’t feel like it’s just “Lewin,” but thank you. It makes me feel good.
Hut: You’re the hero.
Craig: It’s a boost to my ego a little bit.
Hut: There you go, good stuff. So what do we have for our viewers today?
Craig: We’re going to do something a little different today. We always focus a lot on the equipment and today I found an accessory that’s really cool. This is called a Polar Loop.
Everyone is familiar with the Polar Heart Rate Monitor where you wear the chest strap and it tells you your heart rate. Polar just came out with something that’s just like the Nike FuelBand and the FitBit–very similar to those but even better.
Hut: Tell me why.
Craig: That’s the perfect question, Hut. It really is amazing. You take it, put it on your wrist. It will tell you how many steps you’ve taken, which people want to know. It will tell you how many calories you burn, which is great.
But the other thing that’s really cool about this one that none of the others do is if you put one of the Polar chest straps on, like that come with a watch (and you can buy them separately just to show you–you can buy the chest straps separately), it will pick up your heart rate. None of those other ones will do it.
Let me give you an example. If you say, “I’m going to go to Arbor Hills,” which is a cool park down the street…which, by the way, there are coyotes there, so be careful.
And you start going through it…if you’re walking with this, it’s going to be accurate obviously, but if you’ve got the chest strap on, it’s going to be even more accurate because it’s doing the calories based on your heart rate.
Hut: Wow.
Craig: So that’s cool. The other thing that’s really cool is let’s say you’re riding your bike. It’s very difficult for these things to monitor you while riding a bicycle, right? Natasha (one of the girls who works here) likes to ride her bike through Arbor Hills all the time. If she was wearing this it wouldn’t really pick up anything because her hands are on the handlebars. Except when her hands are in the air going, “Ahhhh Ha!” [Contact New Wave Fitness for your exclusive Craig Lewin ringtone.]
But if you’ve got the chest strap on, then it’s picking up your heart rate on that and now you’re still monitoring your activity levels; you’re still getting the calories, even if you’re doing something where your arms aren’t moving.
Hut: So you’ve got basically all the metrics you need to be able to manage your workouts and your daily activity on it.
Craig: That’s the big thing–it monitors daily activity. It’s even got a little bar that shows you with little dots how much activity you’re doing.
Hut: What about sleep?
Craig: That’s the other cool thing about this too, is that it will monitor your sleep progress while you’re sleeping. When you have it on, it automatically stores when you woke up, what levels of sleep you’re in, and it will pick that up automatically and upload it to an app that’s on your phone.
Hut: Amazing. So we could track calories burned, average heart rate, sleep patterns–basically everything that you need to track to see if you’re living a healthy, fit life.
Craig: Absolutely. The really cool thing is that when you go in to the application that’s on there, it shows you so many graphs and so much really cool information. It’s pretty awesome how they’ve done it. It’s really clever, obviously, the technology behind it.
Hut: That’s great. I’m actually going to buy one right now.
Craig: Good, I’m glad. Yes! We just sold one, baby! Do you know too, that you can actually swim with this? It’s waterproof.
Hut: Oh, you can swim?
Craig: What’s up? [Contact New Wave Fitness for your exclusive Craig Lewin ringtone.] Told you, it’s pretty awesome.
Hut: Great! So we can swim, ride bikes, run, play with our kids…
Craig: Whatever. The point is, take it, keep it on forever. You can shower with it. You never really have to take it off. When you turn it on in the morning it will even say, “Good morning, Craig,” unless your name’s not Craig. [Contact New Wave Fitness for your exclusive Craig Lewin ringtone.]
Hut: And it looks pretty cool. It’s kind of stylish.
Craig: I think that’s the other thing too. It is cool. This thing here is sitting in a case but it’s a stylish little watch. It looks really neat. It comes in these little packages so you guys can see…and the price is great. They’re $109, so the price is really, really awesome.
Hut: That’s great.
Craig: We love them.
Hut: The Polar Loop. If you want to come check out a Polar Loop, come to any of our…
Craig: Busy Body or Fitness HQ stores. We have them in both.
Hut: All of them? Great. Come check it out. I’m getting one right now. Come on out. We look forward to seeing you next month.
Craig: Sounds good.
Hut: It’s getting warm, finally. Thanks.
Craig: See you guys.