Learning to Look Down Rather Than Up with Tech and Climbing

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All climbers are familiar with this. You're on a climb or a via ferrata and you look up but you don't see what to do so you feel stuck. As a result you try one hold, and then another, and then a third and eventually you stop. That's when you remember to look down.

If you look down you see that there is a foot hold 10 to thirty centimetres higher that will give you the extra reach that will allow you to climb onwards. The same is true with tech.

It's easy for us to look at the latest Apple Watch Ultra and the latest Garmin and Suunto and think "I need that device to get this data" but the reality is different.

I have a Mi Smart Band 8 and a Mi Smart band 9. I noticed that the pebble holder for the smart band 8 was being sold cheaply so I decided to test it indoors while cooking. With this device you get

forefoot strike data

multifoot strike data

cadence pace ration

average ms

heel strike

pronation and supination

impact force

average again.

GCT (ms)

flight time (ms)

flight ratio

impact force (BW)

Primary and Secondary Device

In this scenario the Xiaomi Band 9 is the primary device. It takes care of heart rate, GPS data from the phone and more. The Band 8 is the secondary device in pebble mode and it takes care of tracking the data listed above. With this setup you don't need to choose whether to track either the run with heart rate data or running form. You can track both.

With the pebble you will get information about whether you hit with your forefoot, midfoot or heel, and you can correct for that over time. With the cadence pace ratio you can judge if your strides are too short or too long as whether the cadence is too fast or too slow.

Pronation and supination is about whether your heels are rolling inwards or outwards and impact force is about whether you're hitting the ground with too much force. I think that there is an average time for heel strikes and another for forefoot strikes, to compare the two.

You also get ground contact time, flight time and flight ratio information. In combination these give you an oversight of how efficient your running is.

Cost

The Band 8 can be had for 33 CHF and the Band 9 for 40 CHF. The Xiaomi Smart Band 8 Running Clip is 11 CHF. For about 88 CHF you get a full run tracking experience. Compare this to 300-700 CHF for an Apple Watch and 400-800 CHF for a Garmin and Suunto device.

My aim is not to say "Don't buy the expensive devices if you can afford them. My aim is to say "stop reading the product reviews for luxury devices when a cheaper device might do something for a tiny fraction of the cost.

Reviewers are given the expensive products, and write about them. They make us want to waste our money on newer and better things, when they're often paying nothing for the devices they review. I envy them, but at the same time I think it's good to look down, rather than up.

If you have a friend, child or colleague that wants to take up running, but they don't want to spend hundreds of francs on a smart watch or a fitness watch, then two smart band devices, of which one with a running adaptor would work fine. The smart band 9 running adaptor is 28 CHF, compared to 11 for the 8.

And Finally

I suspect that the user experience is better with an Android phone. With an iPhone, with a few tests I find that GPS data is often lost for periods of time, resulting in straight lines, and incorrect distances. This seems to be less of an issue with Android, so far.

The Mi Fitness app is intelligent enough for a Band 8 in Pebble mode and a Band 9 in normal mode to work, in tracking a run.