Have you heard of MyZone? Over the last few months, I've been using MyZone 3 during my workouts, a belt designed to track your heart rate, give you points and show your progress. After issues initially, I've really got into using it and thought it'd be good to share my review with you and help you decide if it's something you'd benefit from.
How does it work?
The belt fits around your chest and enables users to see their heart rate in terms of percentages of your individual maximum heart rate. Each percentage range is identifiable by a colour or zone: 60-70% is blue, 70-80% is green, 80-90% is yellow and 90-100% is red. By spending time in each 'zone', you earn MyZone Effort Points or 'MEPS' relative to the colour so the higher the percentage, the more MEPS per minute you get. You can view these live on the app or do your workout without the phone and it will then add your points when you open up the app.
Each month, the aim is to achieve 1300 MEPS which over time enables you to get statuses. This can be kept as a challenge for yourself or shared with other users to keep track of others and get competitive together. You also have the option to set your own MEPS monthly target although this doesn't affect your status.
After each workout, you receive an email from MyZone with a report of your points, time in zones and general breakdown (like the above images) which is also accessible on the app. It notifies you when you reach the weekly recommended exercise which is quite useful to be able to recognise. Monitoring your progress is also easy, allowing you to stay motivated by fighting for more time in certain zones, achieving the points required each month or maintaining statuses. The plus side is you only need to compete with yourself, of course, you can enjoy the community aspect it offers but the only real competition is you- whether you get in your red zone or you achieve the points you need that month is down to you.
The belt also has the ability to connect to equipment so that you can get a more accurate heart rate reading and base challenges or workouts off of this, for example, spending 5 minutes in the red zone on a treadmill.
One significant benefit has been the ability to use Blaze classes at David Lloyd which have been designed around the MyZone belts. Combining cardio, combat and strength training, it really helps to get the best out of your workouts and allows you to see your progress throughout the class for clear aims. I'll be going into more detail in a post on Blaze classes shortly so keep an eye out for more information on this.
The app also allows you to do different challenges and fitness tests using your belt which I'm yet to try myself but am looking forward to testing out one day!
The cons
The first belt I bought didn't work at all, whatever the fault was, it just wouldn't switch on and connect and therefore I had to swap it that same day. My new belt then worked for about a month and unfortunately stopped working again. It took a little longer to sort that time but eventually, I got a new belt again and so far (touch wood), it's been third time lucky! It was a bit gutting to start again and lose the points and status I'd already worked hard to achieve but at least it seems to be consistent now. Although this wasn't ideal and did taint my experience, I think I was unlucky to have to go through three belts. They do seem to be temperamental and have connection issues among several people which is a shame but when they do work effectively, which over the last few months, mine has been doing more consistently, they are worth it. Now I've got used to having a belt, I would struggle going back to not having one, it really has changed how I view my workouts.
As I bought mine through my gym, it has made it somewhat easier to deal with issues by asking people there and being able to swap them in person when there has been an issue. I'm not sure how easy it would be to swap directly with MyZone or a third party but if issues do arise, you can get in touch with the company to try and sort it and in theory swap it, it just may take longer than it took me.
Final thoughts
The belt costs £129.99 from MyZone and can be bought through Amazon although I don't believe you get the same warranty if purchased through Amazon rather than the store itself. As I purchased it through my gym, who had an offer with MyZone, I paid £70 for mine and find it to be worth the price I paid. I do think the original price is on the expensive side so if you need the motivation that this can offer, have a keen interest in the benefits or progress of your workouts and can see yourself using it regularly then it's worth the investment however, it is rather expensive so if you aren't going to be using it a lot, maybe it's not right for you. Having said that, I am yet to hear of anyone that regrets buying it and that hasn't benefitted enough from it to consider it worth the price tag, it's just something to consider, particularly as there are alternative ways to measure and track heart rates or fitness although I find this to be the easiest and believe it to be the most accurate.
My motivation and fitness have definitely increased since using the belt... It's so much easier to push myself even when I feel I can't do anymore as I can see that I'm not at my maximum and can do it. I also love that I can track my progress and see what each type of workout looks like in terms of MEPS and time in zones. Plus, I want to get my points and statuses each month so I make sure I do enough to get them.
Have you come across the belt before? What do you think about it? If you have any questions please let me know in the comments. I hope you've found this useful and interesting. If you like this kind of post and want to see more, let me know. Don't forget you can follow my YouTube channel and social media (at top of this blog) for more content. Thank you for reading this post, I'll be back with another next Thursday at 6pm.
Love, Steph x
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