Make fatigue your friend

THE SPORT COACH from Jabra is a pair of wireless in-ear headphones that can be your personal fitness trainer. The Bluetooth-enabled earbuds are your guide to “intelligent audio coaching” that’s great for cross-training and indoor workouts.

They’re integrated with Jabra’s Sport Life app.

If you run or walk as part of your workout plan, the Sport Coach is also useful with its TrackFit motion sensor. The sensor measures distance, paces, steps, cadence and calories burned and records every detail of your performance for the Sport Life App to analyse and suggest ways to improve.

The app lets you choose music to play while exercising, as well. The earphones come with Dolby Sound Enhancement for plenty of clarity and bass.

The earphones are sweat- and weatherproof, so there’s no fear of ruining the headset with perspiration or while jogging in the rain – provided your smartphone is also waterproof, of course.

The Sport Coach is designed to securely fit the ears with three sets of EarWings and four sets of EarGels to choose among. The EarWings lock the buds inside your ears and prevent slippage during exercise.

I consider the Sport Coach very useful if you’re trying to slim down or just stay healthy and strong because of the workout circuits of provided by the Sport Life app.

Once you install the app, you need to enter your profile data – birthday, height, weight and gender – which it uses to calculate the number of calories burned and to plan and track your workouts.

The app will then connect to the headset. It shows how much juice is left in the headset’s battery and invites you to select the type of activity you have in mind, including running, walking, cycling outdoors or on a stationary bike, hiking, running or walking on a treadmill and even spinning.

All that’s fairly routine stuff, but now the fun begins, with the workout circuits found under the “cross-training” option.

There are five circuits – CardiCore, MadCore, BellyBurn, PushPerfection and TakeOff. You can see the estimated time each will take. Tap on any one of them for the details – how it’s done, how many repetitions, etc.

When you complete a time-based workout, the app automatically guides you on to the next one. With repetition-based workouts, you have to tap the screen when you’re done to see what comes next.

If you don’t know how to perform a particular workout, tap its name for an illustrated guide to the particulars. 

The MadCore circuit, for example, takes five minutes and 40 seconds. You begin by running for 30 seconds with knees kicking high, then rest for 10 seconds, followed by 20 repetitions of squats and another rest. 

Next you’re told to do Kettle Bell Swings for 30 seconds, rest for 10, then 10 repetitions of Burpees and another rest. Now do 20 repetitions of Lunges, rest 10 seconds, 10 repetitions of Frog Jumps, rest, and finally another 30 seconds of high-knee running. 

Okay, you’re done – completely exhausted but surely happy about it.

I tried the “easier” PushPerfection circuit, designed to last three-and-a-quarter minutes, and that was quite exhausting enough for me. It involves 10 sets of push-ups, 20 seconds of plank postures, 10 repetitions of push-ups with rotation, 20 seconds of side planks, 10 repetitions of chair triceps dips, 20 seconds of side planks and 20 seconds of Mountain Climbers.

The app also proffers endurance tests, such as the Cooper test, which requires you to run as fast as possible for 12 minutes. The Cooper test for the treadmill gets you running for 12 minutes on walking machine.

And you can keep track of your workouts in the History section, which lists your astonishing achievements.

The Jabra Sport Coach is distributed in Thailand by RTB technology and is available in blue, red or yellow for Bt5,490.

 

Key Specs

- Dimensions, main unit: 18x21x32mm

- Cable length: 60cm; USB data cable 31cm 

- Weight: 16g

- Speaker size: 6mm dynamic speaker

- Speaker sensitivity: 94dB SPL at 1mW / 1kHz

- Speaker impedance: 16 ohms

- Speaker maximum input: 5mW

- Speaker frequency range: 20Hz to 20kHz

- Microphone type: MEMS

- Microphone frequency range: 100Hz to 8kHz

- Microphone sensitivity: 14dB +/- 3dB (SWR)