Active Overwatch 022

Here’s your weekly roundup of news, trends, and stories in the health & fitness space. A list of what’s happening, new innovations, interesting finds, and more.

Weekly roundup

Oura unveils 4th gen ring. The biggest edition being Smart Sensing technology. Making the ring adapt to your unique finger physiology and improving the accuracy of its metric tracking.

• The tracking accuracy of wearables has always been up in the air, so seeing the major improvements here is promising. Though the improvements were so high (blood oxygen sensing improved by 120%) that it raises a red flag in my head of how accurate the ring was before…

Hyperice launches Normatec Premier. Their first ever fully wireless Normatec product. It has no external hose or unit controls and instead just has a slim control unit attached to the outer thigh.

• If you’ve ever used Normatec compression sleeves, you know they can be somewhat clunky. You had to plug into an outlet and connect a big unit control system with hoses to each leg. Making them fully wireless is a major upgrade.

Supernatural VR adds group fitness. Calling it “Supernatural Together”, this new feature allows users to join private rooms with up to two friends for a group workout.

• I was never super bullish on VR fitness. Mainly because I don’t think people want to workout alone in their house with a tech headset on. But incorporating a group component makes it seem more possible that this has a place in this future.

PepsiCo acquires Siete Foods. In a definitive agreement to acquire the brand for $1.2 billion. With aims to bring Siete’s better-for-you food products to more people.

• When this came out, most people were talking about how this might affect the Siete product. But that’s not where my mind went. My mind went to how big this is for the healthy food category and its future. There is a lot of opportunity to take popular foods and make healthy alternatives, and this acquisition shows the potential money to be made here.

Kohler x Remedy Place luxury ice bath. Available for pre-order now at a hefty price of $15,000. It’s ergonomically engineered and has a sleek dark finish.

• This is the first major appliance corporation to release an ice bath for home use. And ya the ice bath looks sweet, but my first reaction was that if Kohler is doing this, then I think more major appliance brands are going to follow suit. Cold plunging might just become an appliance every household in the future has…

Mezcla gets a rebrand. The plant based protein bars now have packaging that highlights the bold flavors, hand drawn illustrations, and more white space to highlight the value props.

• I love this rebrand. I actually just bought one of these bars for the first time last week and I thought the flavors were really fun but the packaging didn’t really highlight them effectively. Well, now the packaging does.

Outside launches Activity Feed. A new social feed on the Outside app to share your outdoor adventures, discover new routes, and connect with brands in the space.

• A lot of apps roll out a social feed for the sake of having a social feed. And it doesn’t always make sense. Does Outdoor need one? I don’t use the app, so I can’t say for sure. My only advice to them would be to look at how Strava runs their social feed and do the opposite.

Athletic Greens in new Starbuck’s drink? Though no official announcement has come out, there are photos circulating of drinks at Starbucks featuring Athletic Greens.

• Whether it’s true or not, this might just be the spark Athletic Greens needs right now. They have had a tough time in the news recently. With backlash on their product marketing and Bryan Johnson calling them out. But brands that land in Starbucks often reap major rewards, so this could weather the storm for AG1.