Gadgetwise Blog: Training From a Difficult Digital Coach

FX-Sport VR1 Programmable Personal Trainer Headphones are a smart concept — a pair of headphones that have a built-in coach. But the coach could be easier to work with.

The FX-Sport is an on-the-ear-style headphone with a springy wire that runs behind the neck and curls up for storage. You can buy an accessory silicone cover to use the headphones when swimming as well.

The FX-Sport can be used in a few ways: to play music stored on its eight-megabyte internal drive; to allow a user to run against a virtual opponent while listening to music; or to set up audible instructions, say for interval training, for when to sprint and when to rest.

The value of racing a pretend competitor is pretty well established. In a test in England, cyclists exceeded their previous limits when faced with a virtual opponent.

Because the virtual opponent runs against the clock — there is no GPS —  it can spur increased effort even on treadmills and stationary bikes.

The idea is terrific, but the setup had problems.

To use the headphones you have to download software for them to work with an Apple computer or PC. I used a Mac, and the software was easy enough to download.

On my test unit, music came preloaded. And it worked well. But I found it difficult to load my own music because each song must be selected individually from a music library. For me, sorting through 10,000 songs for the 100 or so I might want would take too much work. If you have a group of songs listed consecutively, you can grab them as a group and move them to the device.

Once I had loaded some of my music, I had some trouble playing it. Duncan Walsh of Mi-Sport Global, the company behind the FX-Sport, said the problem might have been with a song in my folder — that it was either corrupted or copy-protected. “The only digital music files that cannot be played on the FX-Sport are DRM-protected files,” said Mr. Walsh, referring to files that cannot be copied.

The “race mode” was easy enough to set up. I entered my name and that of an imaginary competitor, then set the range of time for the competitor’s finish. The competitor can change speeds, so he could challenge a comfortable lead with a sprint finish. I set it slightly faster and slightly slower than my typical finish. The program would pick a random finish time within that range. You tap the headphone control to hear your opponent’s progress.

In “pace mode,” you choose a finish time for the opponent, who plods at a steady speed to the finish at that exact time.

The programmable trainer lets you write custom messages that a computerized voice reads back at the times you set. So you can have it tell you “go” for a 20-second sprint, followed by “rest” for 10 seconds over a four-minute period, for instance. It worked, but required a couple of tries to get right.

At a price of $190, the headphone may be in the race, but it has to improve its performance for a podium finish.