Exercise is a four letter word for many on HN. Content posted here touting the various benefits of exercise is always met with mental gymnastics from commenters who would rather do anything but go out and break a sweat.
If you’re on the fence and reading this definitely give it another shot
- a tiny step to do small one leg squat
- a kettle bell or any weight for deadlift
once in the morning, once in the evening.. or maybe more as one sees fit, until you feel the drive to do more (usually a month of slow and pleasurable exercise will naturally lead to a desire to try more)
[0] real slow, like taichi slow.. no muscle burn, no fast breathing..
It's stats on stats on stats and essentially creates a "character health" panel for your own body. Charts, metrics, real time tracking and exportable data. There are achievement badges and social connections if that's your thing too (good for you and your SO).
For me, being able to see real-time metrics and real time improvement really amped up my motivation to go out an exercise. Rewards were no longer this mysterious ethereal thing that will maybe show up sometime in the future if I keep grinding. Day by day, I could see improvement and sure enough could feel it too.
Also, for most of the weenies here, an $800 purchase isn't too rough. They have decent $500 and $300 dollar options, but the available amount stats and tracking goes down.
IMO, it's all about what drives someone - if they are going to be more motivated by someone training them, then they should do that. But if they are going to have more longevity by paying for an overpriced watch, maybe that's the better choice. Maybe even both? One thing is for sure - speaking in absolutes doesn't apply here.
Pretty much any of the more recent Forerunner series will do. The Forerunner 165 starts at $250 and the Forerunner 255 has been discounted to this level several times as well. They both have nearly all the available metrics and many sports modes, as well as triathlon modes most of us probably never need. They sync with the same (free) Garmin Connect smartphone app and cloud service.
So with any of these watches, you can sample the Garmin features. Upgrading to a more expensive watch later would mostly be for case material and size, aesthetics, or conspicuous consumption reasons.
The biggest functional difference between their lower price and expensive watches is that they limit on-watch mapping to only the expensive watches starting around $400-600 when on sale. The cheaper watches can only show a "breadcrumb" trail of your path in an ongoing activity, but no mapping of the surrounding terrain, roads, or landmarks.
There is also a funny distinction where their "outdoor" watches work a bit differently than their "health fitness" watches, developed in separate product divisions. But, these differences seem to be narrowing in recent years.
The other major feature tier is "music" which is a roughly $50-100 premium for the Forerunner 165 and 255 having non-music and music variants. This is where the watch can store and play music through bluetooth headphones, without a phone being present.