As the market for wearables becomes increasingly crowded, tech for fitness junkies is going niche.
UK company Climbax has designed smart wristbands for rock climbers, a fairly small segment of the wearable-tech market. Motion sensors embedded in the bands, one for each wrist, track the climber's movements; they can distinguish between resting and climbing motions, and even detect tired, shaky muscles.
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Like most fitness-oriented wearables, the wristbands function as a training aid, allowing you to monitor your performance. Information recorded by the sensors is uploaded to Climbax's website, and visualized as a timeline of your progress.
"Improvement in climbing is achieved through directed training and practice," founders Cassim Ladha, Nils Hammerla and Tom Nappey said on Climbax's Kickstarter page. "For the more advanced athlete, training regimes involve strict cycles of power, endurance and rest, all of which can be hard to keep track of."
The product is aimed at beginners and experts alike: Climbax's creators said beginners will be motivated by hard evidence of their progress, while the wristbands' analytics will provide advanced climbers with a fuller picture of their training regime.
Climbax's technology is still in the prototype stage, so its Kickstarter campaign is aiming to raise 150,000 pounds (around $246,000) to finance production of the wristbands, and to develop tracking software. A set of bands costs 120 pounds ($200).
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