Forget Steps: Tracking ‘Active Zone Minutes’ Is About To Become The Biggest Fitness Trend
If you’ve ever counted your steps, checked your heart rate, or tracked your sleep, tracking your ‘Active Zone Minutes’ is about to bring you to a whole new level of information that will make your workouts more effective. This brand-new fitness metric ‘Active Zone Minutes’ has been unveiled by Fitbit in April 2020, and it will be available on Fitbit Versa 2, Fitbit Versa, Fitbit Versa Lite and Fitbit Ionic soon.
And get this, Active Zone Minutes might actually push you to work out harder, burn more calories and make sure your heart’s pumping.
Bur first, what are active zone minutes? And why is dishwash dancing now a thing?!
Enter: The Fitbit Charge 4.
You’ve heard of Fitbit, but this is your introduction to the Fitbit Charge 4, Fitbit’s latest innovation and basically the holy grail of personalised activity tracking… Active Zone Minutes! (AZM). From the people who got the world moving, this is a pretty revolutionary feature designed to get your heart PUMPING.
Your home workouts have just levelled up!
JUST MOVE! Climbing the stairs, washing dishes, making your bed, doing Yoga at home – if it gets your heart pumping, it COUNTS!
With Fitbit’s PurePulse 24/7 heart rate tracking, the device goes beyond simply tracking steps and uses personalised heart rate targets to track ANY movement that gets your heart pumping.
So, whether it’s kitchen cardio, front hall flexing or simply any workout you can muster up at home, (do couch curls count?!) you can earn credit for each minute of moderate activity in fat burn zone, and double the credit for vigorous activity in cardio and peak zones, and quickly understand at a glance, how many Active Zone Minutes you still need to reach your goal.
Based on the World Health Organization guideline, it’s recommended to get 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous activity each week, which has been linked to better overall health and well-being, disease prevention, improved cognitive function, less anxiety and better sleep. However, you can hit this faster thanks to AZM delivering higher points for higher intensity movements that get your heart rate into Cardio or Peak zones, like 10 minutes of heart-pumping Zumba could earn you up to 20 AZM! So, let’s get moving!
Catch more zzz’s: Sleep scores and smart wake can help you understand your sleep and pick the right time for you to wake up
The key to a good day is a good night’s sleep, (if I don’t get a FULL eight hours, I may as well still BE asleep) and it’s no secret that sleep is critical to maintaining overall health and wellness.
Fitbit’s sleep features in the Charge 4 help you understand your sleep patterns, (so if you’ve been tossing and turning, it KNOWS) and then figures out the BEST time to wake you with a smart wake. *This is the moment you realise how cool sleep science really is.
Plus, you get a sleep score everyday which gives you insight on your sleep patterns, helping improve your sleep, whilst you can also set alarms and activate the Sleep Mode to help you fall into a sleep routine and catch all those well-deserved zzz’s without disturbance.
From home workouts to hillside hikes, you can track your movements and monitor your progress
Leave your phone at home, this has built-in GPS, tracking your pace and distance in real-time. Post-workout, you can sync your device in the Fitbit app and check just HOW intense your workout got based on your heart rate zones, and you can even work on improving on different terrain.
The go-to’s that make Fitbit famous come as standard with the Charge 4 too. So SmartTrack automatic exercise tracking, Cardio Fitness Level and Score, floors climbed, Reminders to Move every hour, (this is actually SUPER helpful for office workers!) female health-tracking, food, water and weight logging and a very real connection with a like-minded community who use Fitbit daily to stay healthy.
The extras that you need to hear about
Doubling up as your wallet, you can now make contactless payments with Fitbit Pay – so handy! It’s available with a variety of banks including Al Hilal Bank, Emirates NBD, Finance House, Najm, RAKBANK.
Not *just* inspiring you to stay active, you can also stay informed with World Health Organisation advice and get ideas on how to stay healthy at home with the COVID-19 Tab on the Fitbit app
Need extra guidance? Get even more personal, (YES, it is possible, and it works like a dream) with Fitbit Premium to get health and fitness guidance wrapped up in a tidy pack. To support users and help people stay active at home, Fitbit is offering 40 new pieces of Premium content free in the Fitbit app. In addition, anyone new to Fitbit Premium can get a 90-day free trial of this paid subscription, which includes personalized health insights, guidance, advanced sleep tools, customized programs and 200+ workouts.
