Pedometer and Heart Rate Monitor

Monitor Everything - Your Distance And Your Effort

There is no reason to not take advantage of technology. The combination of a pedometer for measuring the distance and a heart rate monitor for measuring your effort is ideal.

Here's a combination that can't be beat. A pedometer to measure the distance you are covering and a heart rate monitor to measure the effort you put in.

A good pedometer is going to give you information that you can use to monitor distance, time, number of steps, and maybe even the amount of energy you have used.

A decent heart rate monitor should record your heart rate over time and allow you to view the information right on the monitor or download the information to a computer.

The combination of a heart monitor and pedometer allows you to compare your effort over time AND distance.

The pedometer typically requires some setup, specifically "what is your stride length". Here's one area to be careful with. If you plan to use your pedometer for walking only, you're fine. But if you have plans to use it for running, you'll have the following to consider.

Remember that when you set up a pedometer, you need to provide your stride length. Typically, this is the distance you take when you are walking.

If you are out running, then you can expect your stride length to be longer. A typical pedometer doens't know the difference between when you are running and walking. By taking longer strides during a run, you are short changing your results.

Say you ran four laps around the local high school track. That distance is typically a mile (or 1600 meters for those with a metric track). Your pedometer might say that after four laps you have only covered seven eighths of a mile and not the full mile.

A pedomenter calculates your distance by mutliplying your stride length you provided by the number of steps you take.

Now I'm not sure how the meter knows how many steps you take - there must be some kind of sensor that gets triggered with every step. But I do know that the math is relatively easy for calculating the distance.

A good pedometer will have the option to switch from walking to running mode. This means that when you setup your meter originally, either you gave it both your walking stride and running stride OR your meter automatically assumes that your walking stride is proportional to your running stride and does the calculation for you.

That's getting kind of heavy. The bottom line is that the combination of a pedometer and heart rate monitor provides valuable feedback on your efforts.