Step inside any public gym these days and you’ll see legions of gym-goers with iPods strapped to their arms, in the midst of a gruelling workout.  Long gone are the days of cassette walkmans and portable radios.  The iPod allows you to freely choose from a large library of music as you work out, allowing you to tailor your music to your specific action (walking, running, etc.).  Yet imagine a device that does this for you, synchronizing your music with your workout and even providing a little motivation as needed.

The idea of exercising with the aid of music is not a new one, the military has been using marching cadences for generations.  This device from Yamaha puts the same effect on your arm.  By combining an mp3 player, pedometer, and heart monitor, it becomes a one-piece workout aid.  You load songs onto the player (it only holds 512mb, but that’s enough for most workouts) and enter your information (age, height, weight) and then strap it on your arm.  You also need to connect the pulse monitor to your earlobe (looks kind of goofy, but works well).  As you run or walk, it monitors your pace to match it with music, as well as your heart rate.  As you start off, it’ll give you a slower song, and will continue to play faster ones until you reach an optimal heart rate.  Of course if your heart begins beating too fast it will play a slower songs.  Between songs, to help remind you of the rhythm, it plays a randomly remixed beat to make it clear.  If you get tired you can manually adjust the pace, or just set it to “free workout” mode.

This looks fun on paper, but does it work?  I’m in the middle of a record-setting heat wave, so running wasn’t really an option.  I could, however, take a brisk walk, and I did.  It was right away that I realized how poorly I had selected songs for the player, as they were all slightly too fast.  The only song I had that was close to a normal walking pace was Pink Floyd – Run Like Hell, so let’s just say that I heard that song a lot.  This is, however, not the players fault, and in the software you can view a bar graph of the speed of the songs you have loaded.  Thus, it is important to give a good variety, from fast to slow.

I initially chose the “Walking Workout” mode, which gradually speeds up your pace by playing faster songs.  Once I got past Pink Floyd, it became quite a challenge keeping up.  Yet, since this mode is meant to give a workout, and my heart rate was still normal, it kept beeping at me to remind me of the tempo.  Aside from being a reminder of how out of shape I am, it became annoying and I just switched it to “Free Workout.”  Lesson learned: do not use the “Workout” modes unless you REALLY want a workout.

Upon returning from my workout, I was easily able to plug the device in and get graphs of my workout, including pace, distance, and heart rate.  These are all saved, of course, so you can track your improvement.

To summarize, this is a really innovative product that occupies a niche that has never been filled before.  At only 512 megabytes, it’s not really good for use as a regular mp3 player.  I’d suggest buying it in addition to your iPod, not instead of.  Also, this thing really pushes you quite hard in the workout modes, so be prepared to sweat.  In free mode, however, it simply matches songs to your pace and can be quite pleasant.  Be sure to load songs with a variety of tempos, or you’ll be stuck in an endless Pink Floyd loop like I was.  At nearly $300, this is a bit steep for such a dedicated device. but for certain people it can easily be worth it as it offers a lot of unique features/benefits making it worthy….