Want to look confident? This wearable will help by improving your walking posture

Back when I was training to be an officer in the Singapore Armed Forces, we were reminded over and over that our posture – back straight, chest puffed out, head held high – is one of the key factors that distinguish men of our rank. Not to appear arrogant, mind you, but to look poised and confident.

This is the premise of a wearable called Arki, created by Korean hardware startup Zikto. Its mission: to coach the average person to walk with good posture, thereby exuding confidence.

“Remembering good walking posture is hard and we just simply forget […] it is the leading cause of back pains, neck pains, and knee pains,” says Henry Lee, head designer at Zikto. “An average person walks about 8,000-10,000 steps a day, and it adds up to about 115,000 miles in your life time.” According to Zikto, 80 percent of people walk with incorrect posture.

The Arki coaches you by gently vibrating whenever it detects that you are adopting a poor walking posture – but this is subject to your own needs. “Arki doesn’t vibrate all the time whenever you have bad walking postures,” Lee says. “You are able to customize your haptic feedback level according to your needs.”

Your walking coach

According to a report by Harvard Medical School, these are the four things that the wearable will train you to do – and will chide you for whenever it senses that you’re misbehaving:

• Look ahead. Train your sights 10 to 20 feet ahead of you. If you need to check the ground to avoid obstacles, lower your eyes, not your head.
• Stretch your spine. Your shoulders should be level and square. Tuck your buttocks in.
• Bend your arms. Flex your elbows at close to 90-degree angles and let your arms swing at waist level.
• Take measured steps. Too long a stride throws you off balance. Concentrate on taking shorter steps, but more of them.

How exactly will the Arki detect these? What it does is to use a series of measurements – such as the swing speed of your arms and transferred vibration from your feet – to determine whether you are committing cardinal posture sins like looking at your smartphone while walking. According to Surgical Technology International, the act exerts about 27 kilograms of pressure on your back and neck.

The device also comes with a companion app that will track your progress, giving you points according to the amount of “Sound Walking” you have done.

Track your progress, and make sure you’re walking well.