Fun and fitness are good and well, but the core of sport is quantifiable feats of athletic prowess. From Epinician poems praising Ancient Olympic victors to The Guinness Book of Records, simply competing is not enough; objective greatness must be achieved.


That may not be a problem for professional athletes, but what about those of us who will never, say, be in the lane next to Michael Phelps? Amateurs can set goals and feel a sense of accomplishment, but it’s just not the same as feeling the weight of 14 gold medals around your neck. Thankfully, new technology and age-old self-monitoring techniques are coming together to help us intramuralists get more from our sport.

Coined by Wired magazine's Gary Wolf in 2007, Quantified Self is “a collaboration of users and tool makers who share an interest in self knowledge through self-tracking.” Of course self-tracking is not a new pursuit. Men and women of science have been keeping records on diet, sleep, athletic feats and other human activities [see: Alfred Kinsey] for centuries. But the QS movement has swelled in popularity over the last five years, now with active Meetup groups in more than 60 cities around the world. This is due in part to increasingly smarter and smaller technology.

A slew of new gadgets have made self-discovery and self-improvement much easier, and even more fun. Things like time spent working, time spent sleeping and changes in emotional state are now all effortlessly measurable to a high degree of accuracy. While its focus is broader than sport, the QS movement has also made it easier for the weekend warrior to set challenges, track progress and celebrate achievements. So if you really want to live like an Olympian, now all you need is a few relatively inexpensive gadgets…and seriously lowered expectations.


A great example of a QS-inspired device is Hind Hobeika’s Butterfleye (price TBD). Hobeika, who describes herself as a “self-tracking engineer”, developed the Butterfleye so swimmers could visually monitor their heart rate while in the pool.

“The swimmer places Butterfleye on their goggle’s strap. They can set the target heart rate using the buttons. Butterfleye's sensor measures the heart rate from the temporal artery, and depending on the difference between the measured and the target heart rate, a color is reflected indirectly into the lens: green if on target, red if they should slow down and yellow if they should go faster.”