In an effort to try to monitor our physical fitness (or lack thereof), we opted to get a few pedometers so, at the very least, we know how much walking we’re doing every day. The goal is 10,000 steps in a day, which is, on average, around 5 mi. On our first day, you can see we didn’t quite hit that…
Part of the issue I’m having is in placement of the pedometer. It comes with a ~4 in strap with a clip on the end, so it’s easy to put in different places. These particular pedometers operate on two axes, so you can’t just leave it in your backpack or purse: you have to have it in a vertical position, not horizontal. As such, on the first day, I put the pedometer in the small change pocket of my corduroy pants. The second day, I put it in the change pocket of my slacks, however that pocket is down inside the main pocket, not up higher on the hip. On that day, I recorded over 10,000 steps, though I don’t think I really doubled my steps over the previous day. On Friday, I tried clipping it to my belt and having it hang into my left pocket and I was back down to around 5,000 steps again.
My guess is that the constant motion of my legs, due to over a decade of drumming, could affect the pedometer, but I probably won’t know that until further data comes in. These pedometers save 7 days worth of data, but I’m recording it in a Google Docs file so we get a more “visual” interpretation of our progress.
Today, I’m wearing a dress shirt, so I have the pedometer clipped up on my torso, hanging down underneath my shirt. This is the last position for a pedometer I can think of, and probably isn’t all that good of one, as your torso tends to stay more “stable” and feel less movement than your legs do. That’s what a few years of marching percussion leads to, at least…
Anyway, I’ll probably post from time to time on this. It’s my first time trying to use a pedometer. Brooke used one after we first got married but stopped using it. We figure that if both of us are using one, it’s easier to hold each other accountable, at least to some degree.
Still, it’d be nice if there were a GPS and Wifi-enabled one that could upload the data to some remote server once a day. Sure, I could use my phone for this purpose, but it’s quite a bit bigger than these pedometers, and most people don’t want to clip a phone to their bodies… 😛