GymKit for Apple Watch makes North American premiere
GymKit -- Apple's platform for two-way sync between an Apple Watch and cardio equipment -- is now available at a lone gym in New York City, having previously grabbed toeholds in Australia and England.
New Yorkers can try the technology at the Life Time Athletic at Sky, located at 605 West 42nd Street, CNET said on Monday. The facility is said to have 13 compatible TechnoGym machines, including ellipticals, treadmills, stationary bikes, and stair-climbers. Life Time says it will eventually bring equipment to 130 other locations, beginning in 2018 with gyms opened during 2017.
Support should also be coming to Equinox gyms in 2018, starting in New York City and spreading from there. That chain will be using Life Fitness machines.
GymKit was launched in October with watchOS 4.1, but didn't arrive at a real-world gym until it came to an Australian branch of Fitness First in November. Earlier this month it appeared at a Virgin Active gym in London.
GymKit tries to provide more accurate indoor workout data by syncing stats such as distance, speed, weight, floors climbed, heart rate, and estimated calories burned. Users simply have to pair their Watch with a machine via NFC, and once a workout is over, data is saved in watchOS but wiped from the gym equipment.
New Yorkers can try the technology at the Life Time Athletic at Sky, located at 605 West 42nd Street, CNET said on Monday. The facility is said to have 13 compatible TechnoGym machines, including ellipticals, treadmills, stationary bikes, and stair-climbers. Life Time says it will eventually bring equipment to 130 other locations, beginning in 2018 with gyms opened during 2017.
Support should also be coming to Equinox gyms in 2018, starting in New York City and spreading from there. That chain will be using Life Fitness machines.
GymKit was launched in October with watchOS 4.1, but didn't arrive at a real-world gym until it came to an Australian branch of Fitness First in November. Earlier this month it appeared at a Virgin Active gym in London.
GymKit tries to provide more accurate indoor workout data by syncing stats such as distance, speed, weight, floors climbed, heart rate, and estimated calories burned. Users simply have to pair their Watch with a machine via NFC, and once a workout is over, data is saved in watchOS but wiped from the gym equipment.
Comments
Hope they implement a way to hook machines other than cardio into GymKit. They local YMCA has had a system for almost two decades now that is installed on the weight machines and counts reps and time. It's basically two sensors and a small Windows CE computer on each machine, networked to a server that tracks users.
Those two sensors networked with an Apple Watch instead of a server would be nice.