The wearable fitness technology industry has become widespread and is quickly growing, according to an August 2012 study by IM Research, stating that wearable technology is project to be a $6 billion industry by 2016.

After the Nike FuelBand debuted in February 2012, Nike's equipment division had an 18 percent rise in profits according to Nike's income statement. The band boasts a variety of tracking features including the number of steps a user takes and number of calories burned during a workout. Similarly, Garmin fitness sales went up 2 percent in the recent quarter. At the recent Consumer Electronics Show held on Jan. 9, dozens of companies presented new fitness and health technologies.

These upward trends demonstrate an increased appeal of wearable fitness technologies in the most recent calendar year, and project a likely chance of growth in the future.

Jeff Contract, head trainer at Sport&Health Gym in Washington D.C., said although exercise technology can't replace the versatility of a trainer, these serve as important motivational tools.

"Any toy or gimmick that gets people moving is good." Contract said. "It doesn't matter too much what the app or gimmick or technology thing is doing or what it measuring. At the end of the day, more people need to spend more time moving and less time sitting."

Companies are trying to take advantage of this growing market opportunity through developing new and innovative products meant to help individuals track and motivate themselves to workout. These new technologies include everything from GPS running watches and color-changing shirts to heart rate monitors and portable music players. Although some consumers are buying into the trend, others are far from impressed.

Weinberg sophomore Jason Riddle, member of the Northwestern Triathlon Team, said technology is a necessity when trying to measure your progress. Riddle uses several different types of wearable technology including a fitness watch and heart rate monitor.

"It really helps you to see how much you've improved and figure out if you should be running faster or slower." Riddle said. "It actually really helps."

Other consumers choose to workout only with music. Communication junior Andy Garden said although the Nike FuelBand has some interesting features, he doesn't think it's worth the price.

"Its $150 for a watch that doesn't look like a watch," Garden said. "It is selling a healthy lifestyle for $150. Students aren't as concerned about fuel count as they are about telling time."

Garden wore the watch during Northwestern University Dance Marathon, but only used it as a watch. He said its other features distract him while running. Garden uses only an iPod when working out.

Communication junior Mitch Johnson invested in the FuelBand after seeing someone wearing it on the 'L.' Johnson said he was working 40 hours a week and did not realize his lack of activity.

"I would leave work and realize I didn't do anything," Johnston says. "The FuelBand would motivate me. I used it pretty consistently over the summer."

He said the FuelBand served as his impetus to becoming more active despite the time constraints of a job.

Weinberg sophomore Kaitlin Barr, a member of the Northwestern University Soccer Team said although her coach tried to initiate the use of heart rate monitors during their season, their purpose was never made clear and nothing was ever done with the data recorded.

However, as more fitness technology products are developed, these student's viewpoints may be considered anomalies. The field of fitness technology is continuing to grow in popularity and is likely to increase exponentially over the next several years, Contract said.

"Most people, when they go work out, don't have a plan. They don't really know how to accomplish the goals they set for themselves," Contract said. "They develop a routine that's comfortable for them, not based on what they need. Everyone needs to know if they're working out effectively or not and make sure they're doing things the right way, and technology could help with that."

With over 50,000 apps in the health and fitness section of the app store, it is often difficult to choose the most effective one for you. Whether you're a professional athlete, or just trying to motivate yourself to workout, there is likely an app that will fit your needs. The eleven apps to the right can help to make the decision easier, with fitness apps ranging from Zombie apocalypse chases to strict schedules guiding you on how to run your first 5K.

Search "exercise" in the iTunes store and you'll be scrolling through a blindingly huge list of a wide array of apps that all claim to help improve your exercise regiment. Gamification of exercise isn't new, but with the recent advanced technology of mobile apps, there's a spike in the sprint for creating the best app for fitness.

An age-old concept, gamification can be seen from basic everyday structures like ranks within the military to more complex renderings in contexts like an app that motivates people to exercise through incentives.

Casper Harteveld, an assistant professor of game design at Northeastern University, explains that gamificaiton can take on many forms. "It's often associated with scores or badges or achievements, but those are not necessarily the only game elements you can recognize," Harteveld says. "There are many more game elements of how you engage players, what players do inside games that you could harness outside of a game context."

On the fitness front, Fitocracy is a popular app that recently surpassed a million users. "I came up with the idea to turn fitness into a game because there are so many parallels between fitness and video games," says Richard Talens, co-founder of Fitocracy. "For example, you're always trying to beat your previous best, you're always trying to level yourself up."

Within the app, users earn points by submitting exercises. "The way that we think about points is that it gives them that instant dopamine hit," Talens says. He compares this to a regular exercise regiment with an app, in which the subject would not see actual physical results for weeks. "If we can give them that hit earlier, they're more likely to stay on Fitocracy and create that positive feedback loop around fitness."

Users can also interact with their friends by using Fitocracy as a social network. "We've done a lot of digging with our numbers, and the things that we see over and over again are that people who really make life-changing transformations on Fitocracy are the users that are more social," Talens says. He believes that this engagement with the app through its native social network helps the users not think of exercise as a chore, but more of an engaging hobby.

Harteveld believes there's also more in-depth ways to really make an impact. "It could be thinking more about intrinsically-motivating goals, not just 'you run for five miles and you get a thousand points,'" Harteveld says. "The connection between you running and a thousand points, you could find that important to yourself but it's basically an abstract number… For the longer term, you would need to think about other types of mechanisms to help sustain people to be engaged with it."

According to Harteveld, intrinsic motivation may be the key to successful gamification. "That is something that you want to achieve," he explains. "It could be that you decide yourself what kind of goals you have. You set your own targets." Harteveld points to a number examples, from the basic drive to know the ending of a crime novel to a more clear-cut example of self-set goals. One manifestation of the latter is Mint, an online app that helps people manage their financial accounts through self-set budgets.

Because gamification sometimes draws on principles of behaviorism, says Harteveld, often times these game mechanisms can be ineffective because some apps do a poor job of translating these behaviorism concepts into a game context. "So far many have especially relied on behaviorism for understandable reasons because you want to influence peoples' behavior," Harteveld says. "But there's also research on persuasion and all kinds of other theories that people have not tapped into. I would say that there's a huge opportunity to do so."

As for Fitocracy, its current model of personalized exercise regiments with built-in facts about nutrition is working well. The app just surpassed a million users and many use it on a regular basis. "There's this perception that getting out and getting moving is extremely difficult," says Talens. "But if there was some way to turn it into a game, that friction would be a lot lower."

In 2012, 47 percent of adults met the physical activity guidelines for aerobic physical activity, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This number decreased from 48.4 percent in 2011, showing a more than 1 percentage point drop over the course of one year.

The field of exercise technology is quickly expanding as developers see the need for a wider array of products to encourage physical activity in both adults and children across the country. A variety of companies are broadening their focuses by developing new and innovative wearable gadgets and applications geared toward increasing the amount of exercise individuals perform. Exercise games are also becoming increasingly popular as developers try to give people more tangible motivation to work out.

Although not everyone is ready for the change, it is apparent that fitness technology is becoming increasingly common. As more people realize the purposes of different types of products, growth is likely, according to consumer statistics.

Trainers and developers alike agree on the importance of these elements in successfully encouraging people to engage in the necessary amount of physical activity.

With developments ranging from apps immersing the runner in a post-apocalyptic Zombie chase, to GPS watches, to color-changing shirts, to fitness games, more people are being encouraged to begin working out. These different types of technology appeal to multiple types of people, from those trying to shed a few pounds to professional athletes.

While the field of fitness technology continues to grow in popularity, it's important people remember their main fitness goals though, trainer Jeff Contract said. He said although some forms of technology may not always be completely accurate, if they encourage someone to start moving, they are serving their purpose.