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Body Fat Calipers | Fitness and Exercise Gadget Reviews

When It Comes to Measuring Body Fat, Forget The Fancy Electronic Scales and Instead Reach for The Body Fat Calipers

In my mind, there is no single piece of fitness, bodybuilding or health equipment that more useful than a good pair of body fat calipers.

Yes, they are made out of plastic. Yes, they take a little bit of practice to get right. And yes, they won’t give you instant,  flashy digital results (which are usually inaccurate anyway.)

If you want high tech, go ahead and fork over $50 for an electrical-impedance body fat scale. Chances are you’ll get different body fat readings each time you step on the scale — even if that’s five minutes after your took your last measurement.

Or you could try to convince your doctor to order a hydrostatic body fat test, which is considered the gold standard in body fat measurement, but is unlikely to be covered by your insurance or employer (unless you are LeBron James) and will set you back hundreds of dollars for just a few extra percentage points of accuracy.

So unless you are an elite athlete with a cadre of sports trainers at your beck and call, you should be able to get along fine with a single-measurement reading from a quality body fat caliper.

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Perfect Pushup Review: Is The Perfect Pushup Hit or Hype? | Fitness & Exercise Gadget Reviews

The Perfect Pushup promises to help you achieve better results from your pushup workouts. But is the Perfect Pushup a hit or a just a bunch of hype?

Product Reviewed: Perfect Pushup Basic
Manufacturer: BodyRev/Perfect Pushup
MSRP: $39.99
Place of Purchase: Dick’s Sporting Goods 

Perfect Pushup Pros:

• Ergonomics protect against wrist strain associated with flexion at wrist during standard pushups
• Well-constructed, sturdy; foam hand grips are comfortable
• Rotation may protect against shoulder strain
• More challenging from a stabilization standpoint than fixed-position pushups
• Novel and fun; breaks up the monotony of the usual pushup

Perfect Pushup Cons:

• Price may be a little high for some people
• Perfect Pushup workout plans are limited with the basic model
• Perfect Pushup routine included on the poster required some deciphering
• Marketing claims that you’ll “get shredded” with the Perfect Pushup are unrealistic

Ratings (1-4 Scale: 1 = poor, 2= fair, 3= good, 4= excellent)

Construction: 3
Comfort: 4
Durability: 3
Price: 2
Does It Do What It Claims? Yes, with qualifications
Would You Buy It Again? Yes, with qualifications

Overall Rating: 3

Perfect Pushup Review 

When it comes to bodyweight exercises, the standard pushup is pretty much already perfect.  Not only does it help strengthen and condition the chest, triceps, shoulders and back, but it also improves core stability, improves balance, and can even help contribute to a tighter mid-section.

So when the Perfect Pushup says that for $39.99 (less, in some places) it’s improved the lowly, but already wicked-effective pushup, it’s difficult to not respond with some skepticism. And it doesn’t help that the Perfect Pushup gained much of its initial fame courtesy of “As Seen On TV” type advertising and infomercials — a label that’s been attached to countless useless fitness devices and gadgets ranging from the Thigh Master to Tony Little’s Gazelle.

But here’s the thing: People who have rolled the dice and actually bought the Perfect Pushup uniformly have good things to say about it.  So in the interest of making myself a human guinea pig so you don’t have to be stuck with a basement full of ineffective fitness contraptions, I decided to spring for the $39.99 and put the Perfect Pushup through it’s paces myself.

The Standard Pushup Not So Perfect After-all?

Pushups should be part of every person’s workout routine, regardless of gender or experience level.

They are the ultimate portable body-weight exercise, and can be performed anywhere that you can find a 6′x3′ swath of open floor - whether that’s in your apartment, dorm room,  hotel room, living room or the gym. 

While pushups themselves are very simple exercises to perform, they are actually bio-mechanically a very sophisticated exercise, recruiting nearly every major muscle group in some way to support the body during the movement (provided you are doing them with correct form.)

The pushup is also extremely versatile, letting you emphasize certain muscle groups by simple changes in hand-arm positioning (wide versus narrow), incline or decline, or through elevation of the hands, which deepens the range of motion.

But even the nearly-perfect standard pushup has a kink or two.

The main sticking point with pushups is the strain that they can put on the wrists.

When you perform a pushup with standard form, you hands placed flat on the floor and bent at the wrist. While you aren’t supporting 100% of your body-weight with a pushup (the floor takes some of the load for you), you are balancing a fair amount of your total body-weight on your toes and wrists.  The wrists are actually quite strong when they are in a neutral position, but once you bend them backwards, they are weakened, and the risk of strain to tendons or Carpel Tunnel Syndrome is increased dramatically. In fact, many people simply can’t comfortably perform standard pushups because of the discomfort it causes the wrists.

The other point of possible strain or injury during a pushup is in the shoulders. While many people are able to comfortably perform pushups without any discomfort in the shoulder girdle, for some people, having the hands fixed in a single position in relation to the shoulders, can stress the rotator cuff. This is especially troublesome if you’ve had past shoulder injuries or if you perform the exercises with your hands position wide in relation to the shoulders.

Finally, the because the floor naturally limits your range of motion, if your goal is to maximize muscle recruitment during a push-up, you need to find a way to allow yourself to go beyond parallel — in other-words, allow your chest to move below the horizontal plane of your hands. This is typically accomplished by elevating your hands on platforms (or less safely, stacks of phone books as I’ve been known to do) or pushup bars.  The main issue here is around stability of the platform that you choose. Some of these elevation mechanisms can occasionally slip, causing potential injury.

The Perfect Pushup to the Rescue?

The manufacturers of the Perfect Pushup claim their device is designed to overcome these three issues associated with the plain-vanilla pushup, and then add a twist (literally) to how you perform pushups. This “twist” is really their “secret sauce” even if the other characteristics of the Perfect Pushup are really no different than what you could get with a pair of pushup bars.

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The Fitbit: Pedometer on Steroids? | Exercise Equipment & Gadgets

Will the Fitbit change the way you look at diet and exercise and give the lowly pedometer a run for it’s money?

Watch out pedometer, you’re about to have some new competition from Fitbit.

It’s called the Fitbit Tracker and its inventors are hoping that it will change the way people view activity, exercise, diet and sleep.

FitBit is the brainchild of entrepreneurs Eric Friedman and James Park. The company recently debuted the Fitbit Tracker and supporting website at the TechCrunch 50 conference in San Francisco, a yearly event that allows entrepreneurs and start-ups to pitch their products to investors and the media. I caught wind of the FitBit through a colleague who attended the event.

The Fitbit: Better Than a Pedometer

Here’s how it works:

Like a pedometer, the Fitbit Tracker is a small wireless device  (about the size of a small pack of matches) that you can clip to your belt, pocket, pants, shirt, bra or wrist. The device uses motion sensing technology to precisely capture moment-to-moment physical activity across the day and night — things like steps taken, distance, exercise intensity, calories burned and sleep. The Fitbit Tracker then automatically transfers the data via a wireless connection to your home computer, where you can see a holistic view of your activity via a website.

While the Fitbit Tracker does all of the things that a traditional pedometer would do, it adds a new twist by also tracking your sleep — or lack thereof. This is an interesting concept, since a flurry of recent research has shown that sleep quantity and quality can have significant impact not only on your energy levels, but also your weight and life expectancy.  

The use of wireless to automatically connect your Fitbit Tracker to your computer and upload your activity information to the Fitbit website is particularly ingenious. 

One of the reasons many people don’t consistently keep track of their activity levels is because the process of recording that information is manual and tedious. Even if you’ve ditched the traditional paper exercise log or journal for an online health and fitness tracking site like TheDailyPlate.com, Diettv.com or FitDay, you still have to manually enter your information each day. And you are still tied to a paper log at the gym.

While the Fitbit Tracker won’t keep track of details like exercises performed, reps, sets and weight; it will help you more accurately record and track your calories-burned during these activities. And more importantly, it makes transferring this data to your tracking site a breeze.

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