Sunday 22 January 2012

Sun Jan 22nd Jan: Nike+ Fuel Band launch, NYC













.......... the new NIKE+ FUEL BAND product that launched at this special social-media savvy event, is a devise that will bring your physical performance to the very same interface. I suggest you get up from your seat and start jogging on the spot as you read this ........ which will all make sense by the end and you would have earned some hypothetical NIKE+ FUEL power points......

International "influencers" (geeks such as I) were brought together in NYC on Thursday to be the first to see this secret formula and road test its performance whilst it tracked our own. When the team members came together from far flung destinations to join forces for a group mission, it felt like we were the excitable families taking part in that golden ticket visit to Willy Wonker's Chocolate Factory. The clusters of critics were whisked into the elevator of the High Line Studios until we came to a stage lit by hundreds of LEDs......... which we later realised was a giant replica of the wristband itself. The announcement (drum) rolled out as a fanfare of beats via two percussionists calling and answering each others riffs in a game of high hat tennis, bouncing juicy beats across the stage which caused the set's lights to travel from red thru amber to green............ a further nod to what was to come. The fact the battling musicians in question were Questlove from The Roots and Warpaint's Stella Mozgawa was only the beginning of the highlights to capture my curiosity.........

What can I tell you? Its an accessory. Its made of coloured lights. It keeps you fit. BAM. 3 of my preoccupations in one animal. Perhaps this is the reason I found myself at this incredible event......... and thank goodness I AM fit as we were later challenged to test the technological invention with a group of criminally agile athletes. However, the objective of this state-of-the-art piece of equipment is not aiming exclusively to sportscentrics but diametrically open to absolutely anybody and everybody. We all have a body and its what we do with it on a daily basis that makes our own unique workout and this is the message of "Nike+ Fuel" and making it count. Perfect timing if you are feeling that you haven't quite asserted or maintained your new year's resolution of implementing fitness into your regime. Nike are on a mission to educate us desk dwellers that an unavoidable seditionary existence can actually be easily and realistically altered. By setting yourself an energy goal in the morning, its up to you to burn it off however you wish, which will inspire decisions such as taking the stairs instead of the escalator or getting off the bus a stop earlier to walk to the door. Every decision counts and switching how you regard one simple movement as a way to keep fit is a small but effective way to long term well being.
Nike+ Fuel is a method to measure your activity in a new metric score system which counts steps, calories and time in this wearable neat device (via a system originally based on oxygen uptake). As you make progress in reaching the end goal, the inbuilt lights change colour a little like KITT from Knight Rider - making this piece of kit the nearest thing to your own answerable motivational kit. Nike Rider, if you will.

You can sync the program to an iPhone app to share with friends on facebook for even more motivation and encouragement e.g training for a marathon together ......... and check in on others targets on the worldwide cloud of users which will include professional athletes such as pro basketball player Kevin Durrant, current world's fastest woman Carmelita Jeter, and cycling legend Lance Armstrong who were at the event. But you don't need to be an Olympic winner to take part, the focus is rewarding your ability the same as any sports star. "If you have a body, you are an athlete", "Life is a sport" and "Just Do It" are a few of Nike's slogans. As any action counts, it could be dancing on a night out or if you are the other side of the turntables - schlepping vinyl and changing records on the decks also counts! Great news for me and another of the Brit crew, Thristian Richards who is the man behind Boiler Room TV who you can see in the photo above being filmed by director Grace La Doja. Grace counts carrying her camera equipment around as a key activity in her career and Cassetteplaya can measure her Nike+ Fuel during her weekly swims as its waterproof. Another of our team players, writer Charlie Dark heads up RunDemCrew which is a running club in East London who meet on Tuesday evenings for en masse training if you fancy joining a free and fun exodus of exercisers. If you've been on a night out in Shoreditch and thought you've been swept up in a scene from Warriors, chances are it was pack of 150 RunDemCrew runners sprinting past you............. something I fancy signing up to after seeing the inspiring bridge runners in NYC. I already cycle to work every day and do a yoga class in a concious attempt to battle stress clamping my body down to a squashed bag of nerves and also to stay supple till I'm in my 80's like the guru that is Vidal Sassoon. I'm hoping and aiming to still be doing sun salutations into my seventies...........

Without wishing to sound like a converted Drum'n'Bass star to Bikram, I do genuinely believe in the unparallelled pay back from natural endorphins produced from exercise that swoosh around my body after activity. Ive recently got into hula hooping which I can highly recommend as a ridiculously funny but effective work out! Whatever you think will get you standing up out of the "laptop hunch" then just get going......... start implementing this train of thought in training your body with easy steps ........ and before you know it, the Nike+ Fuel band will be on the market to record it .......on sale in the US on February 22, in the UK on May 1. Check it.............


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