Human vs Machine: Fitness Gadgets

struggling with her weight. It was a lot of anxiety and depression and eating meals in my car and drinking a lot, and uh driving a hunt, sitting a lot, and working a lot. And I got to a point where I knew I needed to make a change, but I didn't know what to do because it was so overwhelming. For years, Jenna tried a bunch of things. Eventually, she committed to seeing a personal trainer every single week, and it worked. She lost thirty pounds over the course of

a year. She was so thrilled that she ended up quitting her high paying job and became a personal trainer herself. Today, Jen is forty five years old and she is the fittest person I've ever met. Now, this is the tape of you on a recent afternoon, basically getting your butt kicked by Jim. It's great. I've been training with Jen over the last two months, and she is really good at her job and gets paid a lot for her expertise.

She charges her clients a hundred seventy dollars procession. But in the decades since Jen has been honing her skills the tech industry she left has also been hard at work trying to automate away small slices of her specialty, which is getting people fit. Most of these products so far have been a flop, but there's a new generation of devices just coming to the market now that don't just track your steps or your calories. They actually tell you what to do in real time, the way Jen

has been doing with me. Jen thinks a compute could never do her job, but after taking these gadgets out for spin, I'm not so sure that Jen's career is as robot proof as she thinks. Hi am Akito and I'm brad Stone and this weeknd Decrypted. We have seventeen gadgets, one Elite personal trainer, and two months for me to

see which is better, the human or the machine. It's a competition that has big implications for the wearables industry that's estimated to become a thirty four billion dollar market by as well as the more than twenty thousand people employed as trainers in the U S alone. This will be the second episode in our series exploring the risk that automation replaces our jobs. Tell us your stories, record a voice message and send it to decrypted at Bloomberg

dot net and stay with us. I'll be discussing some of the more interesting devices I tested, including a set of heart rate sense and earbuds, emotion Sense and clip, a chess trap, and a risk based activity tracker. At the end of the show, I'll be sharing the gadget I recommend the most. So to start today's show, I want to go back a little bit too. When I

first met my wife Emily two years ago. Here we go again, when we got married in January, and over the course of our relationship, like a lot of people who settle into long term relationships, I gradually stopped exercising as much as I used to. In March, I realized that I was about nine pounds heavier than when I was single, and at my lean nest and you blame your wife for this. Well, here's how I explained it to Jen when I first met her. And why do

you think about is? I mean, I think a lot of it is because I don't have this like existential threat of never reading anyone, you know. And I think back when I was single, I I just like there was much a much bigger priority for me to stay under a certain way and look a certain way. And now I'm married, so I guess I don't care anymore. So after I came to this realization in March, being the diligent technology journalists that I am, the first thing

I turned to was obviously technology. I went into this with plenty of skepticism, since I've had a lot of disappointing experiences with wearables before. Yeah, I myself have a robust collection of smart watches and fitness trackers that now do a great job monitoring the dust levels and various dust Yeah, I've had one or two fit bits before to um and a GPS watch and even the super Bulky Watch a couple of years back that tracked how much I was sweating, and all of them generated these

really cool charts. But it was the same story over and over again of ending up with all this data and not really knowing what to do with it. They didn't tell me what I should do, you how I should change the way I lived my life, So I guess I stopped using them after a few weeks. And yet, knowing all of this, knowing that you were probably going to be disappointed again, you still gave these gadgets another

girl I did. I did, and as I did my research, I was intrigued because there was something different in the way that these new devices were being marketed. So these devices are not just giving you data, they're actually coaching you through an exercise, right, And that made me wonder whether they were just as good as the real thing, just as good as having a human personal trainer. And that's how I came to meet Jen Patty. Hey, that's good, good,

how are you for our first session? Jen came to meet me at our office in downtown San Francisco, and I was pretty nervous, which you can probably tell from how high pitched my voice got. She's five eleven hundred sixty pounds and at the time I didn't know that she competes in these crazy one hundred mile races in the mountains for fun. I immediately got intimidated and regretted

what I got myself into. Okay, so today we're gonna do some basic assessments to see where you're starting from and your fitness, and then we're also going to talk about your goals where you want to end up from when we're done with our sessions together, and then I'll help um you put a training plan like a road math together. So how did it go? I was sore for days? So what did Jen think about this little

experiment you are running pitting her against these machines. I was a little nervous because I thought she might find insulting or something. But Jen loved it. She really seemed to relish in this competition. Like this time. She started chatting up these two photographers at the end of one of our runs. What's the podcast? I read a tech podcast called Decrypted from bloom Brake, and I'm pitting her Gen's up her Seal trainer against a bunch of new

fitness gadgets. I'm winning that proclaimed to be AI personal coaches experience not as good or as attractive as I am. And Jen has been so confident in her value as a personal trainer. So confident that technology would never replace her job that she's even helped design these exercise videos on an app from Fitbit called fit Star. And that's an interesting choice for someone whose livelihood depends on people

needing to come see her to get fit. Do you ever stop and think, why am I automating away my job? It was in the back of my head, But again, like why am I doing my job? I care about health, So I'm doing my job because I want to make everybody healthier. Like I can't pick up all the starfishes off the beach. I can only help one or two.

And making fitness more excess bowl for more people. That's something she really cares about because she knows most people can't afford to spend hundreds of dollars on a trainer every month. She's still working with some clients on the side, and she made time for me for the story, but these days she's spending most of her energy building a startup that designs these public spaces where people can work out for free, kind of like these jungle gyms for adults.

So Jens sounds smart here. Even though technology is starting to encroach into her former career, as a personal trainer. She is moving on to a new career. Yeah, although she just kept laughing it off when I pressed her about this possibility of AI personal trainers living up to their promise. So you see how these guyshets coming into the market and you don't feel threatened. No, I mean, I'm excited. Trainers want to see people out there exercising.

So whatever is getting people off the couch. And I'm pretty sure any trainer you interview will say this, anything that gets people off the couch, we're excited about out. Do you talk about this with your friends who are trainers to about some of the gadgets that are coming we lack it. Yeah, why do you laugh? Tell me why you laugh? Because we can tell you pretty accurately when you're when you're not going to be wearing that

fit bit anymore. Okay, when you're gonna stop using it, and we can tell you how it's going to fail, and then we just we laugh. Yeah, tell me tell me more. We just know when that thing is when you're going to get bored of it. We know that something that helps you track what you're eating, that's if you're not motivated intrinsically well, look at what the trends we see today, like what are millennials spending their money and resources on experiences? Right? So that's something that we

share with another human being. The more tech that comes into our life, the more we seem to value in person human experiences. As I continue to meet up with Jen, more companies sent me review copies of their areous devices. I love gadgets, and this was like Christmas for me, although my wife wasn't very happy with all the boxes and the cords that were piling up in our bedroom, and she said, I looked pretty ridiculous each time I

went running wearing one of these gadgets. Stop, he looks psychotic. What do you think You've never looked cuter? What? What is this? So? This is my what band, This is my Polar running watch, this is my fifthit, this is my Atlas strength training watch, and this is my move activity tracker. And then this is this is that I

hate that thing. Now. I'm not going to go over all seventeen devices that I tested for the story today, but one of the first devices that him in the mail was a Bluetooth connected headset called v that connects to an app and it's specifically made for runners. This headset has a special technology inside the earbud that detects your heart rate. Oh my god, I've learned something today. I really had no idea that you could detect a

heart rate from someone's ear. Yeah. And what makes it really cool, though, is that it uses all that information on your heart rate and also your speed to give you real time feedback on how you're running. I took it out on a three mile run in my neighborhood the day it came in the mail. I'm v your new personal trainer. I sense your heart rate, your steps, and a whole lot of other things a human trainer can't.

That you just heard is the AI personal trainer that talks to you and she chimes in when she wants you to push harder. Come on, diet deep, you're about to break your and remembers how you did in previous runs. Last workout, you got a bit fatigued. I'm only bring it up because your body might still be recovering. My favorite thing about this is that my name Aki was in a preset name in the app, so I had to choose a nickname, which led to funny encouragements like

this nice work. Warrior. Henceforth ye shall be known as Warrior. I think I'm retiring the name of Okay, so Warrior, what was your verdict? Ultimately, I didn't feel like the really pushed me and motivated me to train harder the way I really hoped it might. Um, it's a very new product and there's still not a whole lot it can do, especially for something that costs two hundred fifty dollars.

So at this point I would call it more of a chatty companion to keep you amused through a boring run, So you wouldn't call it a coach or a trainer. Now I don't think so, Okay. So one point for Jen, zero for the machines. Okay, So next up, you tried something called the Lumo Run. Yeah. It's a little clip installed with motion sensors to clip onto the back of your shorts. It costs hundred dollars and appears with an

app after your runs. It shows you how well you fared on five very specific measures of your running form, and how did you do well? It told me that I scored too high on this measure called your bounce, which is how much your body moves up and down while you run. And to help me correct that, the apple so show me a video of this exercise called squat shuffles that's supposed to help me bounce less over time.

So this was really like having a running coach. Yeah, this is actually far more feedback than when I got with Jen. Her feedback was just a little bit more generic, like, you know, pump up your knees on these hills or take smaller steps. So Jen was never this quantitative. No, but I should say getting these stats wasn't very motivating, and it really look at the app after my runs and think like, oh man, I can't wait to go

my next run to fix my bounce. Okay, so the Loomo run not really for you, No, I don't think so okay, So one more point for Jen. Still zero for the machines. So acky? I mean, Warrior, what is the most expensive gadget that you tried? Well, Brad, you are a big basketball thing and a lot of NBA stars, including DeAndre Jordan's, have been seen wearing this black wristband. It has a heart rate monitor on the back of

the device. It's called the Whoop and they started by only selling to professional sports teams at first, but last year they started selling to ordinary consumers. To This device costs five dollars for this small wristband. Yeah, when you look at the hardware, it doesn't really look a whole lot different from some of the other activity tracerds that I tried um For example, the Fitbit Charged two. I tested that too, and it's a wristband with all day

heart rate monitoring. But what's really cool about the Whoop is the software. Unlike the Fitbit, it crunches all the data that it collects to give you advice that you can actually use, like what give us an example. So, one score it calculates is this thing called the recovery score, and it shows up on an app that pairs with the device first thing in the morning after you wake up.

It's looking at things like how much sleep you got and how much stress your body is currently under using this relatively new heart rate metric that's becoming popular in sports medicine. And if your score is high, it tells you that your body is ready for hard workout for the day. But you know, let's say you didn't sleep all the night before and your score is low, then it'll tell you to take it easy. I'm looking myself forward to a low score. But tell me how it

all competes with the human and the picture. Chin. Well, she didn't keep detailed stats on my sleep, but she did calibrate or workouts together if she thought I looked tired or if she knew that I was still sore from previous workout. Okay, so can we score one point for the gadget here? I think so, although I do have to say this kind of advice on when to take it easy isn't really what I needed the most, help with what I really wanted, with something that pushed

me harder. You know, something that motivated me to work harder than I ever could alone. Coming up? Ok, you will share the device she liked the most and whether she liked it enough to replace her personal trainer, Jen. That'll be right after this word from our sponsor. You know where you want to be. Red hat has the broad portfolio of open source technologies to get you there.

Meet your evolving business challenges head on with secure solutions for the enterprise, including Linux platforms and containers, hybrid cloud infrastructure, application integration and development, operations management, and beyond. Visit red hat dot com slash open Tech to learn more. Red Hat the open technology to help you realize your vision. Hi. Everyone, it's Pierre producer here on Decrypted. Thanks to all of you sending us your stories. We absolutely love hearing from you.

This week, we got one message that was so relevant to this episode we just had to share it with all of you. Hi Decrypted. My name is Jenny and I'm a personal trainer in New York City. I hear all the time people saying that apps are going to take the place of personal trainers. And while I think fitness apps are a great addition to somebody's workout program, they are certainly not there at five o'clock in the morning holding you accountable if you don't get out of bed.

Personal trainers are personal. They listen to people's woes, prop them up when they're feeling down, and keep them accountable when they eat ice cream for breakfast. Not only that, but personal trainers are standing over their client, making sure they are not hurting themselves, counting every rep and making sure that they finished the entire workout, no matter how tired or lazy they might feel. Show me an app that does all these things, and I will stand down

welcome back to DECRYPTI. Before the break, we went through the v the Loumo Run, and the Whoop, all new fitness devices that aim to be more useful than a fitbit or an Apple Wash. And when I eventually settled on my number one pick, naturally, there was one person I really wanted to check my work with. Okay, they wanted to be pretty tight, like, so it's good, it's actually it's good. Okay, anything for the podcast doctor, how's

that right there? That's all right, okay, full disclosure. What you're listening to here is me putting on the move hr burn, which is a black strap that you wear in your chest. It measures your heart right, and it appears with the company's app that talks to you, coaching you through difficult outdoor runs where you alternate between sprinting and jogging, and also through these indoor exercise classes. Right. I tried the intermediate level indoor exercise, which had me

start out with some jumping jacks. Let's go keeps game time. Make sure your legs land outside of your hips. Now that computer voice you just heard is computerized trainer. And what I really liked about it is, you know, since she's following your heart rate collected through the chest straps, she knows how hard you're working. She tells you where your heart rate should be during each exercise. For example, zone four means you're working really hard and zone one

means you're basically resting. And that all means when you're not meeting the goals, the app yells at you to work harder. Zone three bush harder to reach the target, So the targets none for zone too. Time to push, Let's do, let's go. You're almost at the finish line. And after thirty three minutes of this, I've never been more thankful that this is a podcast and not a video show. I was drenched in sweat stadium. You're doing great Zone four. I can keep it up in front

of us. Good Brad, This is the hardest time before the end is insightful. Way to go nice, So, Brad, would you think you know? I love the data collection, I love the workout in designed for me. The AI itself, the motivational tool, I found it funny. I don't think it quite sells the those motivational aspects of it. Um you know it's AI has a long way to go before I could mimic, the intonations, the humanity of actual people who are trying to get you to work harder. Yeah,

definitely so aky. What's the final verdict. Well, over the course of my sessions with Jen and also over the course of my workouts with these various devices, I've lost almost seven pounds, which has been enough for me to get back to the body that I had when I was single. At the beginning and the end of this project, I ran a one point five mile sprint. This is to test my cardiovascular strength, and I've gotten a whole

minute faster, which is pretty cool. And I don't know, I just feel lighter on my feet, my clothes fit better. My wife says that I seem more energized and in a better mood every day. So I think this has been a pretty successful experiment for me. So, Aki, do you think it was Jen the the trick or the move gadget? So thinking about this, and I didn't really set this up as a scientific experiment. I was trying all the gadgets at the same time, and I was

also training with Jen, so it's hard to objectively tell. Okay, Well, granting that this is subjective, let me put it this way, if you had to choose between three months with Jen or using the Move gadget, which would you do? Well. Jen is expensive. She charges a hundred seventy five dollars per session, whereas the Move costs just sixty dollars for the chess trap and the app that comes with it is free. So at my current salary, I would probably choose the gadget. Um, it made me work really hard

and the exercises I found were really fun. Okay, well, let's take price out of the equation, because this is about the future of a certain kind of work. If all things were equal and price was not a concern, which would you do? I would hire Jen and a heartbeat, yeah for sure. I Mean working out with her was definitely more fun, more motivating than having this computer voice talk at me like you talking about earlier. And the workouts I did with her were just a lot more variable,

you know. Um we did pull ups and stairs prints, and in our last session together we went on this ten mile run along them marin Headlands, and she even gave me cool tips like, um, what and when to eat for the half marathon that I'm training for. Right. But the thing is, I mean we can reliably say that the AI in devices like the Move gadget will get better. Right, So, over time, do you think Jen's

job is at risk? I think so, Yeah, maybe way down the road at least for now, though you would need a lot of disposable income to train with Jen in the first place. And as long as Jen is much better than these devices for people who don't really have to worry about money that much, I don't think these devices pose a direct threat to Jen. But um, maybe if you're like a group instructor, or you're a personal trainer, not as great and not as dedicated as Jen,

you might be more at risk. Certainly, the six dollar Move is a lot cheaper than having a monthly gym membership, for example. Yeah, totally. In fact, I wonder when Jim's will start giving us these devices, right or maybe offering certain kinds of tools as a competitive advantage. So ack, this whole product category is still in its early days.

What do you think is coming Well, First of all, I think the Move is already pretty cheap at sixty dollars, but I think that price is going to come down a lot with products with a lot more features than the Move. In the coming years. You know, for example, the Whoop band five dollars, that's definitely going to get

cheaper over time. So I think that's pretty exciting. Brad, What do you think I look forward to the day when this isn't even a product category where it's just your clothes, it's your shoes that are monitoring your health, that are maybe even recommending new kinds of exercises, are hard, work, harder, how to run properly. I do think this sort of fades into the background of the other things that we surround ourselves with, and then we'll kind of just take

it for granted. You know, I told Jen about my conclusion of ultimate ly liking training with her better, but you know, probably buying the gadget if I were still at my current salary. And you want to know what she said. What did she say? She said, she bets that I'm not going to be using the gadget in another three months, but she was excited for me, and she said she might be recommending the move to her

clients for them to train on their own in the future. Okay, how about this, Let's check in in the fall and see if either one of us are using these gadgets. Yeah, we'll see We'll check in September. And that's it for this week's episode of Decrypted. Thanks for listening. If you have a story about your job as it relates to automation, you can record a voice message and send it to us at Decrypted at Bloomberg dot net. Also, I'm on Twitter at at brad Stone and I'm at Akita seven.

If you haven't already, please subscribe to our show wherever you get your podcasts, and while you're there. We say this every week because it is so importan and we really do hope you'll take a minute to leave us a rating and a review. It does so much to help get our show in fort of more people. This episode was produced by Pia gut Kari, Liz Smith and

Magnus Hendrickson. A special thanks to Nico Grant who helped us with some of the reporting and research for today's show, and of course a truly special thanks to the Warrior. And check out my print feature and my video on these gadgets, which you can find on Bloomberg dot com slash Technology. Alec McCabe is head of Bloomberg Podcasts. We'll

see you next week. Decrypted is brought to you by red Hat, whose broad portfolio of open source technologies for the enterprise helps you get from where you are to where you want to be. Red Hat the open technology to help you realize your vision. Learn more at red hat dot com, slash open Tech