Good for your brain, good for your body

We know exercise is good for our physical and mental wellbeing, right? We know exercise helps people who are injured and physically compromised. And yet sometimes doing the same gym class, walking the same streets, following the same rehabilitation exercises can get tedious, to the point where we stop doing what’s good for us.

Meet BlazePods! Your answer to combat tediousness.

Alpha Sport sales manager and resident BlazePod expert, Dan McGuckin, says the BlazePod is the tool to bring excitement back into your exercise whether you are a beginner or a professional, a child or an adult, a sporting team or a person in rehab.

“The BlazePod is one of the most versatile exercise tools to come on the market,” Dan said. “It uses flash reflex training, which uses light sequences to increase agility, reaction time, coordination, balance and a lot more.”

BlazePods are operated through an app that works for iPhone, Android and is great for tablets. Connected via Bluetooth technology, the app offers a variety of activities for individual and team sports, home workouts, team training, partner and group competitions, and also for rehabilitation.

When it comes to using the app you can choose to subscribe or not. Without the subscription you’re still provided with basic drills and the ability to make up your own. With a subscription you get hundreds of drills and workouts already loaded with more constantly being added. 

“One of the best features about the app is the ability to watch yourself/team/patient improve,” Dan said. “You can immediately track each performance down to a millisecond and monitor improvements.

“This feature can drive people to improve and also add a healthy bit of competition between friends and team mates, and even with yourself,” he said.

BlazePods are incredibly durable and can take up to 80 kilos of weight, withstanding high-speed punches and intensive kicking as well as a medicine ball dropping on them.

With different accessories BlazePods can be attached to punching bags, mirrors, walls, pylons. They are water resistant so can sit on wet grass, great for those early morning or late evening workouts.

No matter how they’re used they will get your heart pumping as you increase your speed and agility. They can even improve your decision-making skills with faster brain processing. The workouts are fun, and there’s tons of variety offering something for everyone, including individual activities, drills for specific sports and rehabilitation.

Dan said the greatest way he has seen the BlazePod show off its versatility is through rehabilitation.

“These pods have endless possibilities to make therapy fun for patients of varying abilities and impairments like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and people with brain injuries.

“Talking to a lot of physios and exercise physiologists they are finding new ways to treat their patients from children to the elderly,” Dan said.

“I have one physio who works with elderly patients and a lot of them use gardening as a form of exercise. To get the patient to build up strength, they have them kneeling on a foam balance pad and then lay the pods out in front and as a pod randomly lights up, they have to touch it. This improves hand-eye coordination and reaction time while mimicking the action of weeding in a safe and secure setting.”

“BlazePods have been able to offer a more exciting way for children to do their rehab with flashing lights and pods to hit, increasing their attention span and improving their cognitive and physical reactions.”

Dan said one of his favourite exercises to cognitively challenge people is using four pods with two colours. “Say green is for the left hand, and red is for the right hand. As the pods light up randomly you have to think about which hand is lit up and the reaction time it takes to hit the pods plus how many you can do per drill,” he said.

“BlazePods are limitless and fun no matter who you are.”