
Rule 55 of the Internet, as demonstrated by the Tangram Smart Rope: if it exists, someone can make it smarter. Yes, even a jumprope.
Even a moderately paced jump rope session torches upward of 480 calories in 30 minutes, when divided into three 10-minute sets. It is a perfectly portable low-impact cardiovascular workout tool that taxes the shoulders, rear delts, abs, arms and every inch of the legs while sharpening coordination, improving efficient breathing, and promoting healthier bones.
South Korean designer Joen Choe chose to innovate an even better anywhere-anytime workout that more clearly tracks improvement metrics and offers one-of-a-kind additional motivation. The LED-equipped Smart Rope takes the equivalent to an eight-mile walk and streams data from each jump to its embedded lights and displays your workout progress before your eyes with each turn of the rope.
Instead of a passive wearable fed by accelerometers, gyroscopes and GPS readings, the Smart Rope provides 100% active feedback that counts jumps, tracks each interval session and tallies body mass index (BMI)-based calories burned with the rope’s natural skipping motion.
Meanwhile, users can upgrade the Smart Rope’s functionality with ongoing use thanks to Bluetooth connectivity, the proprietary magnetic sensor array embedded in the handles, and the companion smartphone app. Do more than keep an accurate count of your jumps, since that becomes a tricky metric once the numbers climb into the hundreds or thousands. Enter your height and weight into the app to see how many calories each jump burns. Take some advice from the BMI and performance-based interval training suggestions, challenge other Smart Rope users to top you, and share your progress on Facebook. When you’ve wrapped up your workout, plug the Smart Rope right into any USB port for a quick recharge.