Google Fit got an update today and one of the first noticeable changes has been the addition of a new Google Fit Challenge Android Wear app on wrists.
There’s two ways to launch challenges, first is through the Google Fit app, where you can swipe across to ‘Start a Challenge’, the other is through the new Google Fit Challenge app which sits in the Android Wear menu. Once you decide to start a challenge, you can start Sit Up, Push Up and Squat challenges with three difficulty levels:Beginner, Intermediate or Expert depending on your level of fitness. Each challenge is designed to be run over 30 days, with the aim to obviously build your fitness.
Each of the exercises features a brief demo of a person doing the exercise showing you correct form throughout, with tips to breathe and with Push Ups, the options to do it on your knees.
Once the challenge begins you can pause or stop the activity at any stage. The watch actually records your workout using the accelerometer, so there’s no cheating here – although from briefly trying it out the tuning could be improved. Once you’ve achieved todays goal you can stop the work out and your results are displayed in a summary.
Your results from the challenges are then incorporated into your Google Fit activity stats for the day in the app on your phone, as well as on the Android Wear app and the Google Fit web portal.
This is a big step for Google Fit, one of the criticisms has been the lack of support for gym based exercises. With this update it appears Google could be working towards at least a tool that could use the watch to count reps on a weight machine as well as these floor exercises.
There’s one more goodie on board, a Google Fit Digital Watch Face to go with the analog one that was already installed.
The update has begun pushing out to Google Play now, although as always if you haven’t received it yet there’s always a way to get the APK to side-load on your device.
Can anyone say if Google fit still is a horrible drain on the battery?