SPHS508: Wearable Technology's Impact on Exercise Science Trends

This essay discusses the increasing importance of wearable technology in exercise science and human development, particularly in monitoring vital signs and improving fitness. It highlights the shift from disease management to disease prevention, driven by wearable devices like fitness trackers and digital watches. The essay contrasts these modern technologies with traditional methods of measuring health parameters, noting the rise of wearable tech across various age groups and its appeal to those seeking to manage lifestyle diseases. It also touches on the integration of group therapy and functional approaches in exercise science, and the growing popularity of wearable technology for home-based exercise. The essay references a study indicating increasing adoption rates of wearable exercise technologies. Desklib offers more resources for students.

Running head: Exercise Science
Exercise Science
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Authors Note

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Exercise Science
Wearable technology is a very important modern trend in the field of exercise science
or human development. The emergence of health information technology has taken a
huge leap in the field of exercise science and it is highly critical that the various
aspects of the gym exercises that are done with the individuals on a daily day to day
basis uses a lot of technology inside the gym itself in order to help the person monitor
his vital signs and the development he or she is undergoing through the progression of
exercises (Sprint, Cook & Weeks, 2016). Exercises generally focus to improve the
strength, power and endurance of the person and it is highly important that the person
who is undergoing the exercise training must understand his skills and self-efficacy
that is associated with the entire process of self-development by the application of the
exercises. In the last two decades and especially in the last decade specifically – the
emergence of health information technology in the field of information and heath
science has revolutionized the very ideas how the instructor and the trainee is able to
understand the betterment of her cardiovascular and other health wellbeing parameters
being bettered through the application of the progressive resisted or any other type of
assisted-resisted exercises that are also used in therapeutic senses. In health care
industry as well, wearable technology has found a great use in the development of
fitness of the individuals to prevent the causation of the diseases from the beginning
itself (Ferguson et al., 2019). It is to be understood that globally, the health care has
taken a historical shift from the disease management approach to a disease prevention
approach and with the idea of ‘fitness empowerment’, came into the market – the very
applications of wearable technologies such as digital watches, fitness trackers, digital
belts came to daily day to day application (Feehan et al., 2018). Historically, the
treadmill monitors, the other external non wearable technologies measuring the VO2
max and HRmax as well as heart rate, respiratory rate and other vital signs were into
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Exercise Science
use and the trainers, the exercise physiologists and the sport physiologists used great
deal of manual techniques to calculate and understand the various health parameters
related to exercise science. The development of wearable technology started in the
1970s and 1980s itself and with the development in the field of technology – more
and more health fitness and exercise friendly wearable technology came to use
especially from late 90s and the same flourished in the last two decades (Miyaoka et
al., 2019)
As mentioned the wearable technology became very popular in the last decade across
the ages from middle aged to young. The young people who were more empowered
with the knowledge of technology and science and as this population group (that is
people in the age group of 18-60) recognized or rather identified the importance of
developing more accurate measures to prevent the inception of diseases in their lives,
they opted for the health care technologies that were easily wearable and they could
control and manage their fitness in their home and surrounding as well, with full and
complete empowerment. The people in the age group of 50- 60 years also started to
feel that they are reaching their advancing years and chances of morbidity and
mortality are increasingly of higher chances in this age group, that is why this
population group also opted for the use of wearable technology. The population
suffering from lifestyle problems such as hypertension and diabetes also inclined
towards the use of wearable technology that aimed at improving the exercise science
related health care parameters (Barbee & Bennett, 2016)
The other trends in exercise science is group therapy and functional approaches in the
therapeutic human development. The use of wearable technology is similar to the use
of functional approaches in exercise science, given the fact that it only assists the
functional measures and programs being undertaken in exercise science. It is different
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Exercise Science
from the individualized framework of gym training that use to cater to just a group of
individuals who can afford the expenses of the gym and as nowadays as idea of
fitness has been made applicable and feasible to every human being, the usage of
wearable technology in daily day to day lives while exercising in the home or
neighbourhood environment, is finding a greater use than the previous health and
fitness approaches that were only in the advanced health fitness centres.
According to a report, seventeen percent young and almost more than about thirty
three percent of adults in the country of United States was using the wearable exercise
and sport technologies in the year of 2016 and the percentage was expected to
increase in the next decade (Barbee & Bennett, 2016).
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Exercise Science
References –
Barbee, S., & Bennett, M. (2016). Wearable technology and childhood fitness: Investigating
technology to enhance fitness levels of elementary students. In Society for
Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference (pp. 1299-
1304). Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).
Feehan, L. M., Geldman, J., Sayre, E. C., Park, C., Ezzat, A. M., Yoo, J. Y., ... & Li, L. C.
(2018). Accuracy of Fitbit devices: systematic review and narrative syntheses of
quantitative data. JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 6(8), e10527.
Ferguson, S. A., Berner, R. S., Bridger, M. A., Khan, S. N., Weaver, T. E., Elizabeth, M. Y.,
& Marras, W. S. (2019). Patient and practitioner experience with clinical lumbar
motion monitor wearable technology. Health and Technology, 9(3), 289-295.
Miyaoka, R., Pierce, L., Harrison, R., & Vesselle, H. (2019). Wearable technology to enable
personalization of Lu177-DOTATATE therapy for neuroendocrine tumor
patients. Journal of Nuclear Medicine, 60(supplement 1), 313-313.
Sprint, G., Cook, D. J., & Weeks, D. L. (2016). Quantitative assessment of lower limb and
cane movement with wearable inertial sensors. In 2016 IEEE-EMBS International
Conference on Biomedical and Health Informatics (BHI) (pp. 418-421). IEEE.
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