| |September 20199and founded Fitbit in 2007 with an initial raise of $400K. By 2015 the company went public with a 4.1 billion dollar evaluation. That same year, Apple launched its first generation Ap-ple Watch which incorporated fitness features that paired well with iPhones.Soon Nike, Sony, Pebble, and Samsung entered the market with their own fitness capable smartwatch-es. Today our smartwatches are nothing less than powerful wearable computers with human biometric sensors.A key driver in the emergence of fitness devices is the need for individuals to track their health and fitness goals. Individuals with preexisting medical conditions and in-dividuals interested in improving and maintaining their health naturally gravitated to the use of external tools to support their goals. Those tools range from food, diet, and medical components and extend to technological de-vices which measure and track activities.The availability of low-cost fitness tracking devices spawned a movement of self-tracking. Wired Maga-zine editor Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly, coined the term "Quantified self" to describe "a collaboration of users and tool makers who share an interest in self-knowledge through self-tracking". Wearable tech can still be con-sidered in its infancy but is actively being fueled by the Maker movement and funding sites such as Kickstarter. The widespread availability of fitness trackers has also led to the emergence of an entire ecosystem of fitness apps. Apps like RunKeeper and Stravacombined con-nected and social fitness tracking. Games like Pokemon Go and ZombieRun feature gamification elements to get their owners moving.Many people use their fitness trackers in combination with an ever-growing collection of fitness information, training and scenic videos freely available on YouTube.So where does that leave the local gym? It turns out that we humans still enjoy working out in the presence of others. Indoor stadium cycling studios such as Soul Cycle and Flywheel offer its members a sense of community. There's palpable energy generated while moving together in unison to a particularly motivational piece of music. The feeling has to be felt to be understood, but it's not unlike other team sports.This feeling of working out together has moved well beyond the gyms and into our homes via connected so-cial fitness machines. These machines connect individu-als via Internet connections to instructors and other studio members.The iconic example is Peloton, who pio-neered connected social fitness featuring live spin classes where at-home connected rid-ers could spin with and compete against other riders across the country. Fly-wheel Sports followed as has Echelon and Mirror (mirror.co).The Mirror product is a particularly inter-esting connected fitness device. It consists of a 40-inch flat screen monitor which is vertically wall-mounted. Think, mirror mirror on the wall, who's the most fit of them all? As you face the mirror you see your reflection as well as an image of your instructor. Mirror, like Peloton and Flywheel offer Barre, offer strength and performance training classes.The connected fitness space is growing rapidly. So what exactly are the next fitness invocations likely to look like? To answer this we need only consider that connected fitness devices and our smartphones and smartwatches al-ready capture a great deal of data. Data that is ripe for mining and analysis. The next wave of fitness programs will use machine learning to analyze our workouts. It's a case of where data becomes information, and information powers AI-based personal trainers.Once a Google-glass-like device is perfected, the use of augmented reality could render a device like Mirror obsolete. Such an innovation would allow us to have better outdoor workouts. In the near future, we'll also have the option of working out in virtual reality with AI-based personal trainers and interact and compete against others worldwide.Connected fitness is poised to leverage the next round of technological innovations and help to create a more fit human species. Carlos JustinianoConnected fitness is poised to leverage the next round of technological innovations and help to create a more fit human species
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