Be Smart

Your aerobic exercise routine may not be a bust, but it will be more efficient and productive if you monitor your heart rate and keep it in the target zone that’s right for you. But those chest straps that measure electrical voltages from your heart . . . so ugly and geeky. And using a wrist-only device to measure your pulse instead just doesn’t work as well.

But suppose they made a pre-wired sports bra with tiny electrodes knitted right into the fabric, electrodes that could sense your heart’s electrical signals? Suppose a tiny transmitter, snapped into a small pocket in the front of the bra, radioed readings from the electrodes to a digital heart-rate monitor/watch on your wrist? And suppose this wired device looked pretty much like a regular sports bra?

That’s what NuMetrex has done with a sports bra wired to send your heart-rate data to a digital readout for real-time monitoring. Prices for the bra alone start at $49, not much more than a wire-free brand-name sports bra. An entry-level package featuring bra plus transmitter and watch (with time, date, stopwatch, alarm, and heart rate limits) is $99.

OK, now the crucial question. A sweaty sports bra can get funky pretty fast. Is this, miracle of miracles, a washable electronic device? Yes. And you don’t even have to hand-wash; machine will do fine. The company says you can rack up 100 machine washings with no effect on performance, and even after that their electronic boob job continues to work with only slight error readings. Order one in red or a pretty deep pink called razzleberry before the end of February, and NuMetrex will send $5 to the American Heart Association.