Things to Know Before You Buy a Pedometer

A pedometer is a device that can sense the motion of a human body and thus can be used to count footsteps of an individual. If the length of a person's stride is known, the distance covered by a person can be calculated with the help of his footstep counts. Thus, a pedometer can be a great motivating tool for a walker giving him a precise idea how much distance he covers during his daily walks.

A pedometer is a wearable device and one can wear it while going out for a walk. There are several types of pedometers available in the market but before buying one, a person needs to have some brief knowledge about pedometers and its uses.

Essential Feature of the Best Pedometer:

There are different types of pedometers and all can give you step counts but you need to choose one that can give you more accurate results. In fact, the accuracy of a pedometer depends upon their functioning mechanism. They use different methods such as coiled spring mechanism, hair spring mechanism and accelerometer. In general, an accelerometer is considered to give the most accurate results. On the other hand, hair spring models are often considered as notorious, giving inconsistent footstep counts.

Besides this, you need to select between a dedicated walking pedometer and an all-day tracking pedometer. A dedicated walking pedometer will track your daily workouts. An all-day tracking pedometer can keep running throughout the day and can measure your total daily steps. Depending upon your needs, you can choose between the two.

Your pedometer 's display is another important feature and you need to make sure that its display is easy to read and you need not to remove it from its waistband every time you wish to read the display. There must be a reset button allowing you to configure the display results when you wish to do so.

Wearing a Pedometer:

If you buy an old-style pedometer based on the spring mechanism, you need to be always conscious that you are wearing something to count your footsteps, because for getting the best results you need to keep it in an upright position. If it gets titled anyway, it might not be in a perfect position to measure your footsteps. On the other hand, if you get a pedometer with accelerometer mechanism, you will get accurate step counts even when it gets tilted. You can wear such a pedometer on your waist or can keep in your pocket, but it will keep counting your steps consistently. There are several wear-anywhere models available today that you can wear on various body parts such on your wrist, arms or on your waist.

The size of your pedometer is another crucial aspect that you need to give a due consideration. If you are planning to buy a pedometer to count your total daily steps, you will preferably choose a small one that can be perfect for your all-day wear. It needs to have clips and a safety strap to keep it in its place safely and restrict it from falling.

3 Tennis Elbow Exercises to Strengthen Your Arm

It is a widely acknowledged fact that tennis elbow exercises are absolutely necessary to strengthen the arm. Repetitive and sometimes forceful movements of the arm can result in a severe inflammation of the elbow and its surrounding areas. The term tennis elbow is quite a misnomer because this ailment affects office and factory workers and not just tennis players.

If you are prone to this problem then you will benefit greatly from practicing tennis elbow exercises regularly. They are surprisingly easy to do and will save you a great deal of discomfort and money. There are many tendons, ligaments and muscles in the elbow and forearm that can get injured because of repetitive use. All of them will gain a lot of strength and flexibility as a result of these exercises. This ensures that future injury is unlikely to happen.

The following tennis elbow exercises will be of immense help to you:

1. Repetitive squeezing with your palm. Grab hold of something that is very easy to squeeze. A tennis ball would have the perfect size and flexibility. Squeeze and release it repetitively for a few minutes at a time. Increase the duration of this exercise as you feel your muscles and tendons strengthening.

2. Twisting the wrist rhythmically. This is a great exercise to strengthen the pronator and supinator muscles of the wrist. Hold a light weight in your hand; a can of soda will suffice at the outset. Your thumbs should be aligned upwards. You have to exercise these muscles by turning the wrist inwards, holding the position for a couple of seconds, and then turning it outwards.

3. Extend your hand as if to shake someone's hand. Move your hand upwards and downwards in a repetitive manner.

Be very careful to practice these exercises only as long as you don't feel any pain. If you keep exercising thinking that the pain will go away you will just aggravate your condition. Monitor your progress very carefully and only increase the number of repetitions very gradually. You should also be very gentle with your movements. If you make sudden and rough movements then you might injure yourself further.

It is also a good idea to massage the elbow and surrounding areas very carefully so that the muscles feel some relief. The right tennis elbow exercises will save you plenty of trips to the doctor's office and you will be able to regain complete mobility of the arm.

Read about a few tennis elbow exercises that will help you reduce inflammation of your arm and elbow. These exercises will help reduce your dependence on medication or surgery for this problem.