When you think NordicTrack, sleep is likely the last thing on your mind. But as any high-powered athlete might tell you, sleep is of the essence when it comes to maintaining top-notch performance. So it should come as little surprise that NordicTrack, a company best known for its line of workout equipment — treadmills, ellipticals, and the like — is now venturing into dreamland with its new collaboration with iFit.
In August, NordicTrack will unveil the latest in its sleep technology, which will help users determine how their downtime influences their active time. The company told Digital Trends it will give individuals a closer look at how sleep influences not only their daily activity, but their exercise patterns as well.
“It’s fitness technology specific for people who spend a third of their life in bed but want to know how sleep is going to influence their exercise and activity throughout the day,” iFit Marketing Director Chase Watterson told us in an interview at CE Week.
The technology, all contained in a small, disc-shaped gadget, slides under a mattress and can wirelessly detect heart rate, respiratory rate, and sleep patterns. As soon as you crawl into bed, your mattress will start keeping tabs; once you wake up, you’ll be presented with a sense of just how well you’ve slept.
The accompanying app is meant to provide you with a full diagnostic of just how restful your rest really was, and promises to recommend what you might do throughout the day to perhaps improve upon your sleep the next night (or whenever you manage to catch some z’s). But it won’t just make recommendations — if you have a connected iFit workout machine from NordicTrack, your equipment will make changes to your workouts meant to improve your sleep quality. For example, if NordicTrack’s sleep tech determines that you were tossing and turning all night, it may not let you work out quite as hard the next day. Alternatively, if you seem particularly well-rested, your exercise machine may challenge you to step it up.
NordicTrack says that you’ll be able to get your hands on this technology by ordering one of the company’s special mattresses in August. Available in queen and king sizes, they’ll cost $1,500 at the very least for one of these 11-inch thick, highly connected pieces of bedroom furniture. To get iFit, you’ll have to spend some iBucks, it seems.
