Deshaun Quinn @quinntowers_2 [Staff Writer]
Marion has put in a new grant to further extend our fitness technology into the future.
Our school has been making fitness for our students easier and easier over the years, and now the students have watches to make it even more convenient to be fit. The watches keep track of time, steps in a day, and miles walked or ran.
In the past, gym classes have worn heart rate monitors during exercise, but those had many drawbacks. First, they required the student to wear a strap around their rib cage that was supposed to pick up their heart rate, then transferring to the very large watch that would tell how long and how often the student was in their heart rate zone. More often than not these monitors struggled to pick up an accurate heart rate, and even when they did students complained that the monitors were uncomfortable. Students could also only wear them during their gym class due to the shortage of monitors.
Marion now has watches that are very updated, easier to use, and more comfortable to wear. There are no more dreadful straps that never stay on and always affect the watch from reading the correct heart rate. These watches keep track of daily movements instead of heart rate, so only a sleek watch is needed. With the new watches they make it fun to exercise because its always nice to see how many miles someone can get in a week or how many steps they can average a day.
The only problem with the watches is the fact that our school puts the safety of the watches in the students and some students don’t take very good care of them. Many watches have been lost and even broken and kids have to refund the money to the school. Other then that the watches are a great idea and a great way to reduce the obesity rate in our school and in our nation. It also allows the gym teachers to see how active the students are outside of school. Hopefully the watches stay around because the movement watches are much more convenient than the heart rate monitors that have been used in the past.
