I noticed at a store today that they are selling heart rate monitor watches. To get a heart rate reading, you have to put your fingers on these two little contacts on top of the watch.

The watch says it also can keep track of how many calories you burn. But do those actually work? If I'm doing weight training, I'm not exactly able to hold my fingers on my other wrist for the entire time. So How does it actually keep track of calories burned?

Does anyone have one of these? Do they work well?
I know treadmills and bikes have counters on them (I work at a department store - sometimes I run the fitness department and sell treadmills). But with those, your hands are always on the contacts for the HR monitors.

Since your fingers can always be on a watch's monitor, they would have to count the calories a different way.

All of calories burned meters are just a rough estimate. They're not an exact sceince at all. It's supposed to calculate what the average person in average conditions would burn. I've never seen the ones on a watch before, but you can find them on treadmills and eliptical machines. Basically it just comes up with a rough average for calories burned, they're never exact.

Filed under: Heart Rate Watches

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