Posts Tagged ‘fitgear
What’s in your Fitness Closet?
Today I’m linking up with a bunch of my Fitfluential Peeps over at Pavement Runner’s blog to share what’s in my fitness closet.
Once you’ve read my post why not hop over to his post to see what others have in their closets? I’m pretty sure that even though I am a fitness instructor (and 80% of my wardrobe is fitness clothes) that my fitness wardrobe is probably going to be one of the smaller ones!
My “closet” actually consists of my closet, one drawer and a trunk. So let’s start with the trunk, otherwise known as Zumba Land:
Inside we have:
Zumba jackets and hoodies, long sleeved shirts, t shirts and Zumba bras
tank tops (including my favourite “Eat, Sleep, Zumba” tank)
cargo pants, and
and capri pants.
Moving on to my fitness drawer, otherwise known as Lululemon Land:
Inside you’ll find…
my Sweat Pink tops, Fitfluential Tank and a few other random tanks, my regular sports bras,
my Lululemon CRBs (cool racer backs – my fav, fav, fav tank tops), and my swiftlys (2 long sleeved, one short sleeved),
my No Limits and Practise Freely tanks, some other lulu tanks (my beloved Back on Track tank is on top)
running shorts and skirts,
and all of my crops and full length pants.
My actual closet houses all of the rest of my fitness wardrobe and all of my regular clothes. When I say fitness clothes makes up most of my wardrobe I’m not lying…
Here we have my 4 wraps (1 Splits 59 and 3 Lululemon), my 2010 Canada Olympic hoodie, 3 hoodies and my Lululemon Cuddle Up (missing from photo is my other Lululemon hoodie which is in the kitchen).
This is the top shelf in my closet. On the left you have all of my running hoodies/jackets and couple random sweatshirts (including my high school graduation hoodie – Go Gators!) On the right are all of my pants. Mixed in with my jeans are a few pairs of sweatpants, 2 pairs of wunder unders I wear as normal leggings (my herringbone full length WU’s and my grey pique WU’s).
And this last shelf is all of my regular shirts/tanks/sweaters but there are a few lululemon and nike items mixed in with the rest.
As for my footwear collection, I used to have 5 or 6 pairs of sneakers that I rotated while teaching, and then they all wore out at once. I replaced them with one pair of Nikes that I’ve been wearing for all my classes since last August (which means I’ve logged well over 400 hours in them) and they are finally DOA. I’ve ordered two new pairs online last week so hopefully they will be here soon but for now I’m wearing my Saucony running sneakers to teach in. Here is my sad shoe collection
Truthfully I do still have a few other pairs of sneakers in the basement, but they are all so worn out I can only wear them for casual use now (which is where the yellow nikes will be going when my new sneakers arrive).
And there you have it, that’s what in my {fitness} closet! What’s in yours???
SportLine Solo 925 Heart Rate Monitor Review
If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram you’ve no doubt seen me sporting this watch for the past month or so
It is Sportline’s SOLO 925 Heart Rate Monitor which they sent me to review.
While I knew they were sending me a heart rate monitor I didn’t know what colour it was, and of course I was tickled pink (excuse the pun) when it arrived and was a super pretty pink colour!
As a Polar F4 user, I was interested to see how this monitor compared to my beloved Polar. The SOLO doesn’t include a chest strap and required you to touch your finger tips to the metal area around the face in order to record your heart rate and this feature was what really drew me to the SOLO in the beginning.
I’ve come to find that wearing my Polar while teaching classes is a real pain. The chest strap always slips no matter what I do to it and it’s a bit awkward to be adjusting your chest strap during classes in front of a room full of people. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked down at my Polar during a class only to see “Check Transmitter” and know that there was no way I could fix the problem because I was in the middle of teaching a song. This has led me to having a lot of inaccurate calorie burns and makes it difficult for me to monitor my heart rate during classes.
Enter the SOLO.
While some people may find having to touch your fingers to the watch in order to register your heart rate a pain, it doesn’t both me at all. I do find it registers most quickly if you are standing still so I tend to only take my heart rate between songs or on water breaks which works out really well. It doesn’t disturb my class and it gives me a good idea of how hard I’m working. Another thing I really like is I can wear the watch for all of my classes and if at the last minute I decide I want to record my heart rate or calorie burn I can, there is no chest strap to bother with, and no parts that I need to wet down prior to use (with the Polar you need to wet the chest strap in order for it to get a proper reading).
Something else that is really cool about the SOLO is that it can record your total calorie burn each day. If you remember to reset it when you get up or before you go to bed, and record your heart rate during exercise it will be able to tell you how many calories you’ve burned all day long. If you are trying to lose weight this information can be invaluable as it helps to take the guess work out of how many calories you should be consuming.
Honestly, the SOLO has a lot of functions that I still haven’t completely figured out. It has a pedometer which can calculate how many steps you’ve taken, how far you’ve travelled, it has a timer, an alarm clock, has a dual time feature if you travel frequently between time zones and even within the heart rate monitor functions there are lots of features I haven’t yet used.
As far as it’s accuracy, no heart rate monitor is going to be 100% accurate as far as calories burned is concerned, but will give you a much more accurate reading than exercise equipment. Compared to the Polar, I wore both monitors one night when I went for a 2 mile run and the total calories burned according to my Polar was 275, and the Sportline registered 248 so a difference of 27 calories. That makes sense to me since I had to stop running in order to get my heart rate to register on the SOLO and obviously as soon as I stopped moving my heart rate would start to slow.
Overall I think the SOLO is a wonderful tool – and is now my preferred tool for calculating calorie burn while teaching classes and for every day use. I think the strap and fit of the SOLO is much more comfortable than my Polar (which I find a bit big and clunky). However, when running I will still be using my Polar since I can see my heart rate without having to stop, and when I’m running it is easy for me to adjust the chest strap if it begins to slip.
If you are looking for an affordable option to help keep you motivated to move more I would urge you to take a look a the SOLO 925, besides being pretty it has a lot of wonderful (and practical) functions.
DISCLAIMER: I was sent the SOLO 925 free of charge in order to review it for Sportline, however all thoughts and opinions are 100% my own. Those aren’t for sale.
Stay tuned: Sportline also sent me an Ab Station which I’ll be reviewing in the coming weeks!
