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Wife (to Shaun), Mother (to Danni), Dog walker of Archie the JRX, improving cyclist, reformed gym bunny, broken runner Collector of exercise DVDs & equipment. Cake is my weakness together with cider (Westons only thanks)and brandy. Noisy spectator of running & cycling events. Owner of Tribby the campervan

Tuesday 13 May 2014

Garmin Vivofit

In my last post I briefly touched on the birthday present from my lovely hubby - a Garmin Vivofit.   I hadn't really had much chance to get used to it at that point and to be honest I think it may be a while before I'm using all the functions correctly, apart from of course the step count which is the easiest thing to get the hang of!   In fact I think I may be a little obsessed, especially at the weekends when I'm finding it harder to get to target!

The watch itself comes in a box with two straps, one large and one small.   I did try it with the large band but seemed to have a lot of strap left over so swapped the "unit" over to the small band.   Also in the box is a teeny weeny ANT+ which links the Vivofit to the computer/laptop/smartphone etc - I'm so scared of losing that little blighter that we have designated it to a special keepsake box - you know the one with hairgrips, hair elastics, odd bits of thread and the watch you keep meaning to take to the jewellers to get a new battery put in - or maybe that's just me!

Setting it up is pretty easy, there's a micro set up instruction on the box - plug in the ANT, press the button on the Vivofit til it says PAIR then away you go.   In fact, it's all so quick I've forgotten exactly what to do.   You do need to set up a Garmin Connect account (which I already had) so that you can view your stats and connect with friends and take part in "Community Challenges".

I have no idea how the step count works - we've tried jumping up and down and swinging my arm but that doesn't seem to work, and it doesn't work when I'm cycling either so it must be something to do with heart rate.   I have found a way of cheating the steps slightly.   Once you've been sat down for an hour a red line appears at the top of the screen, which is added to by a block of red every 15 mins.   To get rid of the red line you have to move.   The dog is quite enjoying this fact over the weekends - he's getting about 5 walks a day at the moment.  The other way of removing the line is to do running on spot or side steps - which comes in quite handy when you're doing the washing up or the ironing!

The sleep function is most fascinating.  The report you get from the previous night's sleep pattern is great - my graph is a bit up and down with the occasional "flat line".   How I manage on average to do 30 odd steps in my sleep is beyond me!

Here's my Garmin page

I've now worked out how to record the heart rate monitor information too!  The only thing which is frustrating me at the moment is downloading my cycle rides from my Garmin Forerunner and then downloading the Vivofit later before I go to bed - the laptop freezes and a shut down and restart is the only way to do both!   It stores the information too - so far I've not downloaded for 4 days and it's managed to keep the information.  I think you can leave it for about 7 days before downloading!

All in all I love this little gadget, it's making me move more and now I need to find a way of it not telling me I'm more than 50% sedentary!


1 comment:

  1. I had my editor test the Garmin Vivofit, a fitness tracker, since she is a runner and also frequently chasing after her 2-year-old. Here is her review after testing it out for 15 days: I wore the Vivofit side-by-side with my year-old Fitbit Flex, which both work as pedometers to track your steps and also calculate calories burned by your efforts, based on information you input into an account profile.

    Read More : http://garminvs.com/detail.php?id_detail=202

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