CES 2015: Under Armour's fitness app gets supermodel seal of approval
LAS VEGAS — New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady shouldn't take this the wrong way, but I've been following his wife Gisele Bundchen.
No, I haven't been stalking the Brazilian fashion model. Bundchen is one of the high-profile people who turned up in UA Record, a new health and fitness network app that Under Armour is launching here at the Consumer Electronics Show.
UA Record, which you can download free starting this week in the Google Play Store or Apple's App Store, aims to simplify your personal health data with fitness activity tracking tools, and to connect you to a digital community of folks who might motivate you to get and stay in shape.
That's where Bundchen fits, along with a list of other high-profile Under Armour ambassadors you might choose to follow — among them ballerina Misty Copeland, skier Lindsey Vonn, tennis player Sloane Stephens and retired baseball star Cal Ripken Jr. You can also follow a feed from MapMyFitness, which Under Armour owns.
Record is a repository for tracking your steps, calories burned, sleep, heart rate and weight, with the data provided by third-party wearable devices and sensors.
If all this seems familiar it is, especially given the myriad of big-name companies that have designs on the digital health market, notably Apple, Microsoft and Samsung. Such companies have not only been developing wearable devices, but have been producing sites and/or apps where you can park the health and workout data that has been collected.
Under Armour founder and CEO Kevin Plank's intention is to play nice with everybody. "Everyone is operating in a silo," he told me during a recent interview. "No one has done a great job of aggregation. We operate in an open platform."
After downloading UA Record and creating or logging into your account — you can use Facebook, or sign in with an Under Armour-owned MapMyFitness account — you connect the devices you'll use for tracking. Out of the starting gate, UA Record can connect to apps and devices from Garmin, Jawbone, Withings, MyFitnessPal, Fitbit, Suunto, Misfit, Wego, Polar and Fitbug.
And Plank hopes to work with the upcoming Apple Watch when it appears later this year. "We don't see Apple as a competitor we see them as complementary," he says.
How Apple views things remains to be seen.
As a UA Record member, you can invite up to 20 friends to compete in customized health and fitness challenges centered around specific goals. You might challenge pals to see who can walk the most steps, burn the most calories, go the longest distance, or see who works out the longest. I'm certainly not going to win that last challenge.
You can track these daily, weekly or monthly competitions through real-time updates, leaderboards, and by motivating each other through an open forum devoted to group participants.
Robin Thurston, the ex-professional cyclist who cofounded MapMyFitness is now running UA Record. He believes the social component is critical. He says people who share fitness data with three or more friends work out 50% more than people who don't.
UA Record is free, though Plank says there could be premium offerings later.
And Under Armour can get you to part with your loot in other ways. There's an all-too accessible shopping section in the Record app where you can purchase Under Armour jackets, shirts, shorts, shoes and other training apparel.
On the road map: letting members incorporate customized feedback and use personal in-app health assessments.
In the meantime, I best get off my fanny — in case Bundchen ends up following me.
Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow @edbaig on Twitter
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