There's an Armband for That!

A message from Cari, A FIT Radio Promo Girl & Social Media Guru

Before I joined the rest of humanity and got a smart phone, I honestly thought my workouts were great; I was enthusiastic and motivated and thought I pushed myself hard enough to make a difference. Boy, was I wrong. This past weekend, September 9th to be exact, I became a proud owner of an iPhone 4. Yes, me, Cari, the girl who has been promoting a smart phone app for nearly 8 months, can finally boast about actually being able to use the app! I always listen to FIT Radio while I work at the office, however, I’ve never actually been able to enjoy it for its original intention (to amp your workout) until now.

I brought my brand new smart phone with me to the gym with my mixes favorited and ready to go. However, I was without a trusty armband to keep my little baby safe. Seeing numerous cracked smart phones, I was super paranoid of the thought of this happening to me. Needless to say, I kept the arm flailing to a minimum and rested my iPhone in the cup holder on the machine.

During my workouts, I typically start with a little warm up on the stationary bike and try to burn a few cals and get my HR up a bit to kick start the gym sesh. I’m kinda lazy, so my goal is to burn about 50 calories in no specific amount of time at level 7. Mind you, I generally listen to whatever Top 40 tunes are playing on the radio. Last night, I was on the stationary bike and chose to listen to a favorite mix of mine, Top 40 vol. 6 by Chris Rimby (an oldie but a goodie in my book), and all of a sudden I thought, “screw level seven, let’s go nine!” And so up to level nine I went. I’m sure anybody reading this is like whoa big whoop, 2 levels. But really, for music to give you that kind of motivation is kinda cool; it’s just a song! It gets better. As I get up to 50 calories, and I’ve got a solid HR of 157 and think “kk, time to get off and go row” (my newest obsession), it happened again. One of my favorite songs, I Am No Angel by Wynter Gordon, comes on and I have a sudden urge to go harder and longer on the stinking stationary bike, just as I was about to hop off and call it quits! I got through the rest of the song burning about 75 calories and was pretty proud of myself for the little extra umph.

Now, onto the rowing machine… Again, I am faced with the iPhone flying to it’s death I. tried putting it in my shorts (don’t get grossed out, you would have tried it too) and that was not going to work with the type of movement my legs do while rowing so I put it in the next best spot, right between the girls in my sports bra. It worked fine but as you can imagine, not super easy access. I bent over to put my water down and I was kinda nervous it was going to slip out of my shirt and at this point I was trying to conjure an armband out of thin air. But, I figured as long as I stay upright the phone would be safe enough.

I am happy to say FIT Radio greatly improved the quality of my workout. However, if you are having the same issue of not knowing where to put your phone or ipod touch, pick up an armband. I ordered a TuneBand, and it worked great! On the treadmill, I was able to fully concentrate on my workout without having to worry about accidentally dropping my phone. It was super easy to navigate FIT Radio while on the machines, and I ran a solid 3 miles at 6.5 🙂 Woohoo!

You can pick up a TuneBand or something similar on Amazon.com