It’s 5am. You kill the iPhone alarm. It’s time to gag down some slimy, raw eggs, scream into the void, and drag yourself outside for a run. Please. I’m begging you. Stop. Because despite what certain fitness influencers might suggest, exercise doesn’t have to painfully take over your entire life. Honest. Fitness gadgets can’t do the hard work for you either, but the right equipment can make that work easier to fit around everything else.
And that’s where this feature comes in. None of the products below will magically transform your body without any effort on your part (believe me, I have tried). What they can do, though, is remove some of the time, space, boredom, and uncertainty that make regular exercise difficult.
Oh, and because the headline promised fat-torching workouts, we’ll deal with those too – but in a more honest and open way than the usual fitness clickbait fanfare. But before we do, here are some of the best fitness gadgets to help you smash your goals.
1. Walk this way
If you work from home, a treadmill can turn hours that would otherwise be spent sitting and destroying your back, hip flexors, and more, into an opportunity to move. And Urevo’s FoldiMix 5L Smart Treadmill is particularly suited to this because you don’t need to own a standing desk.
It has its own height-adjustable desktop, which is comfortably large enough for a laptop and mouse, or a keyboard and mouse if you have a separate monitor. Its folding design, automatic incline of up to 9 per cent, and speed range of 0.6–7.6mph also allow it to function as a more conventional treadmill once work is over.
If you already have a standing desk or need something easier to accommodate in a small flat, the UREVO CyberPad for Office is the more compact alternative. It fits underneath a desk, reaches 4mph and offers up to 14 per cent automatic incline, letting you crank up the effort without breaking into a proper run.
The attraction of both machines is that walking doesn’t have to feel like a formal workout. You can move while working, making calls, or watching TV, steadily increasing your daily energy expenditure without surrendering another part of your evening to the gym. Walking is also lower impact than running, although any new routine is worth building up gradually.
Increase the pace or incline sufficiently, and walking can become dedicated cardiovascular exercise – particularly for those who are just starting out on their fitness journey.
Heart-rate zones can also help you manage the intensity – a steady, moderate effort, where you can still talk but probably couldn’t sing, can help build aerobic fitness, while shorter periods at higher intensities provide a tougher cardiovascular challenge. You don’t need to obsess over the numbers, though. Particularly if you’re just starting out, ten minutes of walking is still better than ten minutes of sitting, and you can always build up to jogging and running, if you fancy.
2. Keeping track
A fitness tracker won’t make you fitter, but it can show you how much you’re moving, whether your training is consistent, and how well you appear to be recovering from it.
The new Garmin Cirqa is particularly appealing because it provides that information without putting another screen on your wrist. The discreet band records steps, heart rate, sleep, stress, and other health and activity data, with up to 10 days of battery life. It supports more than 80 activities, and feeds its results into Garmin Connect, where you can examine longer-term patterns and recovery information.
The best part, though? It also means that existing Garmin users like myself can wear a traditional watch again without abandoning the information and history stored inside Garmin Connect. Just remember that its calorie figures, like those produced by every consumer wearable, are estimates. They’re useful for comparing your own activity over time, but shouldn’t be treated as exact permission to eat back every calorie supposedly burned.
3. Resistance is futile
Cardio might dominate conversations about burning calories, but resistance training provides the stimulus your body needs to build and retain muscle. You don’t necessarily need a garage filled with iron to do it either.
The EnterSports adjustable dumbbells above, for example, provide five weight settings per hand – 2kg, 6kg, 10kg, 14kg and 18kg. The load changes by rotating the handle while each dumbbell sits in its tray, allowing one pair to replace several fixed dumbbells while taking up considerably less room.
They’re suitable for presses, rows, lunges, Romanian deadlifts, squats, and plenty more torturous movements that’ll have you sweating and cursing in no time. More importantly, their adjustable load makes it super easy to ramp up the weight as you get stronger, making them far more convenient than those cheaper, cast-iron spinlock dumbbells that most of us started out with in our teenage bedrooms.
Their max weight per hand should provide plenty of scope for many home users and exercises, although stronger lifters may eventually outgrow that load for larger lower-body movements. Switch to lower weight and higher volumes though (that’s what I’ve done to maximise injury prevention), and they’ll last even longer.
Elsewhere, the Bowflex SelectTech 840 kettlebell applies a similar space-saving idea to a different genre of weight. Its dial offers six settings – 3.5kg, 5.5kg, 9kg, 11kg, 16kg and 18kg – making it useful for goblet squats, suitcase carries, deadlifts, cleans and kettlebell swings.
There’s inevitably some crossover with the dumbbells, but a kettlebell’s shape lends itself to more dynamic exercises and offset loads. A set of swings can challenge both your muscles and cardiovascular system. Good technique matters too, particularly before you start attacking fast, high-repetition workouts, so keep it light and slow until your movements are fluid, before ramping up the weight.
4. See my vest
A weighted vest makes familiar activities more demanding without requiring you to carry a dumbbell or kettlebell. The Gravity Fitness offering above has up to 20kg of removable weights, letting you adjust the load as you see fit.
This makes it useful for progressively loading exercises such as squats, lunges, step-ups, push-ups, and other calisthenics. It can also increase the demands of walking or running, providing another way to raise your heart rate and energy expenditure without breaking into a run.
A fully loaded vest is a considerable additional load, mind, and starting too heavily can change your movement and place unnecessary stress on your joints. Begin conservatively, give your body time to adapt, and increase the weight only when the current load feels controlled. You’ll burn some extra calories, and feel light as a feather once the vest is off. Win-win.
5. TV to cardio
Walking is brilliant for increasing everyday activity, but an indoor exercise bike makes it easier to sustain a higher heart rate without the impact associated with running or skipping.
Peloton remains the obvious premium choice if you want polished hardware, live and on-demand classes, leaderboards, and an entire connected fitness ecosystem. The equipment and continuing membership can make it an expensive commitment, though, and none of that is essential. You’re simply looking to cycle, at the end of the day.
The above Toputure TEB2 indoor exercise bike is a considerably more affordable option. It serves up magnetic resistance with a 15kg flywheel, LCD, heart-rate monitoring, app connectivity, and a tablet holder. Put it in front of a TV or load a class onto your tablet, and you can exercise without losing your mind.
A steady ride can provide moderate aerobic exercise, while increasing the resistance or pedalling harder lets you introduce more demanding intervals. It’s also easy to control the intensity – paired with a heart rate monitor/tracker like the Garmin Cirqa, you can push yourself to higher heart zone training, or maintain your current fitness levels at lower zones.
6. Skip this one
Skipping is cheap, portable, and capable of skyrocketing your heart rate and burned calories very quickly. Just make sure your knees and body in general can handle it first, as there are plenty of other lower-impact options available until you’re more comfortable.
There are plenty of traditional and tech-filled options out there. The Renpho R-Q008 smart skipping rope adds an LCD counter and app integration, letting you track jumps and session data without trying to maintain a mental tally while concentrating on your feet.
It includes a conventional adjustable rope and cordless weighted attachments, giving you the option to skip in a smaller space without a rope travelling underneath your feet. The cordless setup mimics some of the arm movement, but it doesn’t completely reproduce the coordination, timing, or physical demands of conventional skipping, so that’s something to bear in mind if you want to improve at the actual act of skipping itself.
Either setup is well suited to short intervals. You could alternate a brief period of skipping with rest or a lower-intensity movement, repeating the pattern for as long as your experience and fitness allow. It can provide an absolutely brutal cardiovascular workout in considerably less space than a treadmill or exercise bike, but again, make sure your body can handle it, and ramp things up slowly:
Skipping is higher impact and more technically demanding than walking or cycling, and beginners should start with short, controlled bouts rather than launching immediately into an exhausting 30-minute session. Your calves, Achilles tendons, and will to live may need time to catch up.
The connected features on smart skipping ropes make progress easier to record, but of course, any regular one will do. It’s up to you to keep yourself honest about how hard and how long you work for.
7. So, what’s the best workout for torching fat?
Surprise! There isn’t one. Well, not in the traditional sense, at least.
“Torching fat” is marketing language, not a special metabolic mode activated by burpees, skipping, or a carefully branded High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) circuit like Hyrox.. Higher-intensity exercise can burn more energy per minute and provide a substantial cardiovascular stimulus in relatively little time, but it doesn’t have unique fat-melting powers.
Losing body fat requires a sustained calorie deficit, meaning you use more energy than you consume over time. The basic equation is simple, although consistently putting it into practice often isn’t. For most people, a manageable combination of consuming fewer calories and moving more is likely to be more sustainable than trying to outrun their entire diet through punishing workouts.
That’s why the best activity is generally one you enjoy, can fit into your life, and will perform regularly. It could be walking while you work, giving the dog an extra walk, cycling in front of the television, running, following a home programme, or doing a few rounds of skipping. None of these is something that everyone has to do.
Also remember that a spontaneous, brutal 600-calorie workout is less useful than a casual walk that burns fewer calories, but actually happens five times a week (instead of once every few years when fleeting inspiration hits).
HIIT is definitely valuable if you enjoy it, mind, and I’m by no means trying to put anyone off. But it’s also tiring, harder to recover from, and less approachable for many beginners. Easier walking, steady cycling, and moderate aerobic work remain worthwhile, and any activity is better than none.
Building muscle follows a similarly unglamorous set of principles, by the way. Perform resistance training, gradually increase the weights, consume sufficient protein, and give yourself time to recover. Dumbbells, kettlebells, weighted vests, and suspension trainers provide different ways to create that stimulus, but no gadget in the world can replace consistency.
So yes, the fitness industry will always need another “ultimate” workout to sell, but your body doesn’t care whether the activity came from an influencer, an expensive app, or an extra walk around the block. Find something that works with your life, do enough of it to make a difference, and keep going.
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