A month or so ago now, I was invited by the team behind Simply Health to visit a place of my choosing from the list they provided and see just how many calories can be burned and steps taken whilst doing these activities. I was helpfully provided with a Fitbit for this challenge and was given the following options of places to visit:
- Up at the O2
- Go Ape
- Escape In Time
All were very intriguing and something I would love to do but I eventually settled on Go Ape and headed off with a friend to test everything out. Now let me tell you, I am not a big fan of heights so this was always going to be a challenge for me. However it is a challenge I jumped into wholeheartedly and faced my fears as much as possible. I was interested to see how many calories could be burned and how many steps could be taken. Whilst some things didn’t take much energy, the netting sure proved a challenge as I struggled to get from it and onto the ledge – I probably burned the most calories here!
Due to being strapped up in a harness and having to use my hands to keep me safe at all times with my safety line, photos were obviously a no go – since both myself and my friend were strapped up and we had no one else with us, I’m afraid we had no one to take pictures but I do have this certificate which I am very proud of!
Simply Health have recently spoken about how wearable tech can help when trying to make exercise a little more fun and I certainly agree. I found the whole experience fun (whilst a little frightening and challenging at times!), especially looking up the data on the Fitbit later.
So what did swinging about in the trees do for me? Here’s a list of everything my Fitbit told me…
- I burned 224 calories overall – I think most of these were probably when I was stuck on the net and panicking, haha!
- I took 1229 steps overall from the office to the finish of our activity
- I covered 1.2km
- I was fully active for 41 minutes
- The activity lasted for around two hours – 41 minutes is for where I didn’t stop moving but a lot of time was spent catching my breath, panicking on netting or catching my bearings
I was very pleasantly surprised at these results. Whilst I didn’t burn as many calories as I perhaps would have doing some other activity, this definitely gave my muscles a workout and my mind too as I pushed through my fear. After experiencing such a different way of getting exercise in, I am very keen to try other more unique avenues of exercise. I really enjoyed myself and am very proud of myself for giving it a go.
Do you use wearable tech when exercising? Do you find it motivates you more? I definitely think my Fitbit inspires me to be more active – I am very competitive with the other ladies from Slimming World!
A Fitbit and entry to Go Ape was provided FOC for creation of this post