I'm thinking of getting a pedometer but there are hundreds on ebay and they all look the same. I'm not a serious athlete, I'm just trying to do more walking (not running) to get a bit fitter and lose weight. I suppose I need a calorie-counter pedometer, and maybe it would be interesting to see my heart rate as well. But apart from that, are there any other features which anybody has found particularly useful? Any brands to recommend?

I'm using an Omron Walking Style 11 pedometer. It's really good, I'm always obsessively checking my steps! I've tried some cheaper ones but they weren't any good.

I have to make dinner, so I won't waffle on about the pedometer - check out amazon for the product description for more info. By the way, my colleague has got a pedometer on his new mobile phone, and there's a pedometer on the new ipod nano. I don't know if they're any good though.

The Yamax brand pedometer is the one used by scientists studying movement. They often do experiments comparing the accuracy of other pedometers to the Yamax, using the Yamax as being correct and all the others expressed in terms of how 'wrong' they were from the Yamax. It's dearer, but at least you can rely on the result.

Thanks for the recommendations - I know the name Omron but I hadn't heard of Yamax before. I'll do some research into these two brands this evening

I've just tried to download an application called imapmywalk on to my iphone but it says the application isn't compatible with my phone. As well as mapmywalk, there's mapmyride and mapmyrun as well, and for anyone who wants to know the distance of their walk/ride/run, here's the website...

http://www.mapmywalk.com/

And I've now downloaded a program called iTreadmill which will show step count, calories, pace etc.

Thanks for suggesting a download, moon.

I had already ordered the Omron when I read this thread. It arrived this morning minus a battery so now I have to wait to go shopping to buy one.


Thank you for this information. Despite having the Omron on order which arrived this morning I have also ordered a Yamax one along with the book. All I have to do is get walking now !

silly me just found the battery it had fallen out of the packaging !

I use one of these, but mainly to add a bit of extra fun to the walking/running.

Before spending money it's probably as well to bear in mind that they only give a rough guide as to what's going on (unless you buy some hyper-sophisticated GPS-ridden thing that also monitors heart rate and heaven knows what else). As I said in my response to your first thread, there are other physiological aspects to exercise which the pedometer won't indicate.

Usually, it's just a pendulum/switch device that counts the number of steps and converts this into a distance from a length of stride you've entered yourself, which introduces a degree of uncertainty. It'll then use that to calculate the energy (i.e. calories) you've used (based on your weight, which you also enter). In other words it's really telling you the energy required to move a given mass (i.e. your weight) through a given distance -- and with a certain degree of inaccuracy -- regardless of the terrain and of whether you walk, run or hop (provided the action moves the pendulum). I've driven round some of the routes that I walk and my (cheap) pedometers have been accurate to around 10-15% -- which for a fun thing isn't too bad.

Hope that's useful before spending...

The E

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Thanks for that info, elephant. At the moment I've been trying to program the pedometer application that I downloaded to my iPhone but haven't managed to measure the length of my stride accurately yet. In the meantime, I'm finding mapmywalk is brilliant, and I can access it from my computer even if I can't get it on my iPhone.