So you want to be able to start tracking your workouts when you put on your gloves? Yep, you can do it.
Tracking your heart rate, calories burned, and recovery can significantly help you get the most out of your boxing sessions (at home, in a class, or with a private coach).
My top choice for the best fitness tracker for boxing is the WHOOP 4.0 because of its stellar health-tracking accuracy and variety of wearing options alongside its ANY-WEAR clothing. You don’t have to wear it on your wrist!
In this article, I’ll give you the best options available for boxing. Then I’ll also tell you about the key things you should consider before choosing.
Table of Contents
Best personal health fitness trackers for boxing
Here’s my selection of the best fitness tracking options for boxing, which focus on tracking YOUR health signals during your workouts.
Let’s take a snapshot look at each of my recommendations you’ll find here:
- WHOOP 4.0: My top choice for best tracking data & wearing versatility
- Polar H10: Best budget option with a chest strap that doesn’t get in the way with gloves
- Fitbit Charge 5: Slim and lightweight and can be moved up the arm while wearing gloves
- Apple Watch Series 8: Decent tracking on health but at a premium
And for a bit more in-depth breakdown of each option, keep reading!
WHOOP 4.0
A sleek device that can be worn on the wrist or inside compatible clothing, enabling use during martial arts or any other workout and offers the highest grade of fitness, sleep, and health tracking.
- Device can be "free" with a subscription when bought via WHOOP
- Highly advanced, accurate fitness tracking
- Sleep cycles, sleep debt, sleep quality
- Strain score to know when to push or rest
- HRV, resting heart rate, daily recovery score
- Blood oxygen, temperature, full health analysis
- Wearable without wrist strap inside ANY WEAR clothing
- Regularly improving app experience
- Free upgrades to new hardware
- Subscription-only fitness tracker, but can pay upfront
- Alternate color options are extra cost
The selection of WHOOP fitness tracking options is often at the top of my list because of A) their high-level tracking capabilities and B) the range of wearable options.
The latter means it makes this tracking option possible for various martial arts. So that when you want to make sure to track your boxing workout accurately, and you can’t fit the strap around your wrist (because the gloves get in the way), then you have other options!
You can achieve this with their WHOOP BODY clothing. It’s a selection of clothing options for men and women with a WHOOP 4.0 compatible secret pocket to enable continuous health data tracking.
Options are available for training attire and an ‘intimates’ collection for underwear that enables round-the-clock tracking of your health and sleep signals.
Polar H10
Straps around your chest snugly and offers excellent health tracking on a budget for wrestling, Jiu-Jitsu, boxing, and kickboxing.
- The most affordable option for features
- Supremely accurate heart rate monitoring
- Compatible with iOS, Android, Garmin, Polar
- Allows two simultaneous Bluetooth connections (e.g. smart watch and an app on your phone)
- Comfortable enough to be worn during various martial arts
- Waterproof for those sweaty sessions
- Free Polar Beat app to collect data
- Potentially gets in the way during grappling with any pressure on your chest
- Free app is limited in design and features, but you can use your data in other apps
The Polar H10 is one of the greats in tracking your heart rate during workouts with a simple chest strap. A chest strap option is typically ideal for boxing because it won’t get in the way.
What’s also great about this chest strap is that you’re not locked into any particular app or another device, as the H10 hooks up to many smartwatches or phones via Bluetooth.
It’s simply a tool to collect your heart rate data during workouts with supreme accuracy. You can choose whether to use the free Polar Beat app to see your data or just sync it with another compatible device/app.
Polar H10 is generally a great option for other martial arts, making it a decent and affordable option for many.
Fitbit Charge 5
I've used the Fitbit Charge 5 successfully in various martial arts, including boxing, kickboxing, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, by using the larger strap and found it comfortable enough.
This device offers a reliable high degree of fitness data tracking and is comfortable/slim enough to wear in various martial arts (plus a reasonable price!).
- Heart rate tracking, variability, ECG & irregular rhythm apps
- Automatic fitness/activity tracking
- Sleep stage tracking, with score & analysis
- Daily readiness score & stress management score
- Water resistant
- Smart wake alarm
- Very comfortable to wear for long periods
- Reasonable price for the level of features
- Free 6-month subscription to Premium
- Once the free Premium subscription runs out, health data analysis becomes more basic
- Not the ideal option to wear during some martial arts
I’ve somewhat successfully worn my Fitbit Charge 5 with boxing gloves by using the second (larger) strap, which allows you to wear it higher up the forearm during boxing training.
The tracking isn’t always perfect this way, mind you. Occasionally, the monitoring can drop out because sweat moves the device’s positioning around your forearm. So don’t be surprised if you lose a few blocks of your fitness tracking.
You could also wear a snug-size strap (you are given two strap options to find your ideal size) and wear the Fitbit directly underneath your boxing glove. This way, it won’t move around much at all, and it’ll be tightly in place.
But in my experience, it feels pretty uncomfortable to train like that, and I couldn’t ignore it enough during a few workouts that I ended up just ripping it off halfway through a class and throwing it into my gym bag.
I still like the Fitbit Charge 5 because it offers one of the most competitive price ranges for the level of advanced tracking it can provide across heart rate, workouts, sleep, and more.
Apple Watch
An industry leader in wearable health tracking tech. Logs heart rate, blood oxygen, temperature, and sleep.
- Always-On Retina OLED display
- Automatic activity tracking
- Heart rate monitor
- Sleep tracking
- Blood oxygen & temperature levels
- Top level experience when combined with other Apple products
- High price for fitness tracker when compared with other options
- Requires being locked into the Apple product ecosystem to get the full benefit
One of the most popular health-tracking watches on the planet, the Apple Watch, has to be mentioned, although I don’t consider it one of the greater options.
As this list focuses on fitness trackers for boxing, one which only works properly around your wrist makes it trickier to use while wearing boxing gloves.
You need to be sure that you can loosen your strap enough around your wrist to move the watch higher up your forearm or still wear it under the glove comfortably (which it isn’t, the Apple Watch is too bulky).
Despite this major flaw for boxing purposes, the Apple Watch Series 8 does offer a high level of health tracking data.
The Apple Watch Series 8 has temperature sensing, sleep tracking, bloody oxygen measurements, and a fitness app that accurately tracks your workouts and heart rate zones.
Best punching tracker for boxing
This selection covers trackers that collect and analyze your punching data like force, power, and effectiveness.
They also can include health fitness tracking but not always to the same degree as the previous selection (above) in health fitness trackers.
Corner Boxing Tracker
High-end punching force trackers that slot into simple wrist wraps. They're useful at home, or the gym, no matter what bag or gloves you wear. Just a bit of an expensive option!
The Corner Boxing Tracker offers a unique ability to measure your punching power and speed. Even the GB Olympic team has used this technology to train and improve their ability.
It’s a small device that slots into Corner-compatible wrist straps, giving you the measurements on every punch.
You can even combine this with a heart rate monitor like the Polar H10 to combine the data between your punches and your cardio for a whole overview of progress.
Occasionally these can have issues being reliable with recording every punch.
Combat Force Tracker
A reasonably priced option for tracking your punching power and speed by attaching this device to the bottom of your heavy bag to get extra detail on your performance.
This punching tracker is a small device designed to attach under the base of your heavy bag.
With every hit, the device tracks the force and speed and calculates your endurance level based on the consistency of your punches.
The accompanying app only works for iOS, so this is a device suited for Apple iPhone users. And even then, there are some usability issues with the app, and it needs some work.
The device is still one of the more affordable punching tracking options on this list.
Punch Lab App
Punch Lab offers a unique way to track your hits against a heavy bag using nothing but the phone you already have.
The Punch Lab App is a phone app that gives you boxing workouts you can do just about anywhere, with or without a heavy bag.
You can use the phone or cast to your TV, or try using the Punch Lab strap (order from within the app) to secure your phone to your heavy bag and collect even more punching data during your workout.
The app offers three different subscription levels and integrates with your Apple Health or Google Fit. It has offline downloadable workouts and leaderboards with group classes.
A good option for a lot of people who want just to get started with some boxing classes and build up into analyzing their punching later.
FightCamp Trackers
Once known as Hykso punch trackers, the FightCamp brand is one of the leading boxing workout and tracking toolsets.
You can join the FightCamp program with the essential option of trackers with quick wraps for your wrists, a heart rate monitor, and a jump rope. Or you can go one further by getting your FightCamp freestanding bag. On either option, you can wear your own boxing gloves.
FightCamp specializes in the app experience, offering thousands of video workouts with professional trainers. On top of that, you get access to the progress and leaderboards experience to develop yourself.
Common questions about tracking boxing workouts
Before we finish up, I’ll answer a few of the most common questions I hear around this topic of using fitness trackers to log your boxing workouts.
Can you wear a fitness watch while boxing?
You can wear a fitness watch while boxing by using a longer strap using one of the last/longest size holes and moving the fitness watch further up your arm.
This method doesn’t always work out to be the best option, and a chest strap fitness tracker is more stable. Don’t be surprised if your fitness watch keeps spinning around your forearm due to your body sweat or missing periods of tracking altogether because it can’t reliably monitor your workout and heart rate.
Can Fitbit track boxing?
A Fitbit can track boxing automatically when worn correctly. The device will pick up your heart rate and start logging a workout session. Then, when you’re finished, you can open the Fitbit app and change the workout category to Kickboxing.
How do you track boxing?
You can track boxing power and speed by using a punching tracker device. Using a tool like the Corner Boxing Tracker, you can place small devices into your wrist wraps to track every punch and give you a post-workout analysis.
Can I add boxing to my Garmin?
You can add boxing to your Garmin fitness watch by adding a custom sports widget to your Activities list when using the app and naming it Boxing. When Garmin picks up your workout, you can change the type to your new Activity to log it.
Final say on fitness trackers for boxing
When starting to progress in boxing beyond just the basics, tracking your cardiovascular fitness can be a massive help in understanding your peak performance ability and knowing when you need to rest.
Boxing is powerful at boosting your cardio, but if you’re not taking adequate recovery time (and at the right time), you can gradually slip backward and hit burnout.
That’s why I recommend grabbing a fitness tracker that you can regularly wear throughout boxing (and other) workouts comfortably. My favorite option is the WHOOP 4.0 for the peak experience, but the Polar H10 is also a good affordable backup.
If I then want to track my punching power and speed over time, then something simple like the Punch Lab App can be really useful.
What to read next
Now that you’ve got a good overview of the best fitness tracker options for boxing, try these articles out:
