Planet Fitness is the latest place to work out with Apple Watch and GymKit. Whether or not this was planned is another story.
A 9to5Mac reader tipped us off to the fact that their Planet Fitness location was upgrading its gym equipment to GymKit-compatible from LifeFitness, including treadmills, ellipticals, stationary bikes, and stair steppers. According to the reader, their gym called it an upgrade happening “across locations.”
From what we can gather, Planet Fitness has not announced anything about bringing GymKit support to its clubs. The company had nothing to share last week when we asked if GymKit equipment appearing in Planet Fitness locations was a company-wide initiative.
Since then, however, we’ve seen more people share updates online about their Planet Fitness location having GymKit equipment for the first time. No luck at my PF, but checking does give me an excuse to get in a workout.
Top comment by Dafty
My local gym has slowly been updating its equipment, and while I don't think it was "part of the master plan", most of the updated equipment has GymKit support. It's all pretty limited, but it is neat. Mostly you can see your heart rate on the equipment display without holding special pads, and also the timers are matched so when you start a workout on the equipment, it also starts the appropriate workout on your watch. Calories and other things are synced to the display... Really nothing too special, but still it's nice to see basic support.
Much like how CarPlay stuff takes years from announcement to make it into actual products, I think we are seeing the same trend for GymKit athletic equipment. Gyms don't replace gear that often....
So far, we’ve seen Planet Fitness roll out GymKit hardware in different states and regions, suggesting the equipment upgrade isn’t tied to a single franchise. Hopefully, the popular fitness club will have more details to share about the helpful Apple Watch feature appearing in more places.
Apple launched GymKit as part of watchOS 4 in 2017. We saw the first fitness clubs support GymKit with new equipment the following year. GymKit is beneficial for tracking precise workout metrics. It securely combines data from the Apple Watch (like heart rate) and workout equipment (like distance) to provide accurate information about calories burned and distance traveled. After each session, the exercise machine disconnects and retains no user data.
See GymKit where you work out? Share where in the comments!
Thanks, Logan!
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