Do you have a New Year's fitness goal? Contact 6 looks at technology to help your workouts



WAUWATOSA — Do you have a fitness goal for the new year? There's some new technology that can help you ease your way back into the gym.

There are plenty of options to help you prepare, track and even enjoy workouts.

Contact 6's Jenna Sachs learns about fitness tech from Verizon's Gadget Guy Steve Van Dinter.



FOX6 Contact 6 reporter Jenna Sachs met Verizon's Gadget Guy, Steve Van Dinter, at The Wisconsin Athletic Club in Wauwatosa to test out some apps and devices that can help you with your fitness goals.

Van Dinter recommends the Samsung Gear IconX cord-free fitness earbuds.

"They slip right into your ear so they're not gonna fall out, which is nice," Van Dinter said.

The Samsung Gear IconX  earbuds play up to a thousand songs and keep track of your heart rate.

"These came out just in the last couple months. A lot of companies are doing the same thing. I love the idea that you're completely wireless," Van Dinter said.

The Samsung Gear IconX cost between $150 to $200.

Samsung Gear IconX



Next, the Bose Sound Support Pulse headphones. The headphones will play your music and track your heart rate. The headphones include controls on the side that allow you to turn the volume up and down or change a song.

Bose Sound Support Pulse headphones cost about $180.

Bose Sound Support Pulse



For those who love their Fitbit, Van Dinter recommends the next generation of the device — the Fitbit Charge 2.

"It's giving me live heart rate monitoring -- so you can see I'm at about 90. Keeping track of the steps in real time so as I take those, you're seeing those add up so you're getting that instant gratification of knowing it's tracking my workout," Van Dinter said as he demonstrated how the device worked while running on a treadmill.

The Fitbit Charge 2 costs about $150.

Fitbit Charge 2



If you're looking for the benefit of trainer, but cannot afford one — Van Dinter recommends the free Workout app. The app helps you design a lifting workout based on what you want to achieve.

"If there's things like, I really want to work on my abs. I can click on abs for instance, and now I see all the different ab exercises that there are that can help me," Van Dinter said.

The app has animations and videos to show you how to do the exercises properly.

Workout smartphone app



For runners, there's the Runkeeper app. It comes up with training schedules for upcoming races and tracks your runs.

"You can see where I ran, the duration, how many minutes per mile," Van Dinter said about Runkeeper.

Runkeeper smartphone app



If you have a busy schedule, Van Dinter recommends trying Google's goals feature. It finds time in your existing calendar to workout.

"It'll find time for our goal and automatically schedule those sessions," Van Dinter said.