Put your phone away at the gym! Why exactly?

Here’s a poster at a gym advising people to put their phone away while working out. The assumption made in the poster is that looking at your mobile is a distraction and can be detrimental to your health and fitness goals. Isn’t this somewhat outdated? What exactly is someone meant to do while resting between sets – stare blankly at the wall? What if someone is using an app that tracks the number of calories burned during the workout? Is that person meant to finish working out when they think they’ve hit their target, and then check their phone to see if they made it or not? To an extent, it makes some sense to keep focus while working out. Doing a set of bench press and then spending 10 minutes watching reels probably isn’t an effective use of your time. But tech is such a big part of people’s fitness routines that it’s way off target to make a poster with a blanket message to put your phone away. Even if you’re just recording the number of reps achieved for each set, you still need your phone to input the number into an app or note-taking app.