I’m an ex-kickboxer, and I wish this smart heart-rate sensing mouthguard had been invented years ago

Before I spent all my free time running, doing yoga and resistance training, and adopting all the other healthy habits we’re told to do to keep an aging body healthy, I trained in a different way. Once upon a time, four times a week, I would strap on a pair of heavy 14lbs gloves and go kickboxing.

It’s hard on the hips, the shins, the knees (and the repeated head impacts are probably not good for your brain in the long-term either) but I was a lithe 21-year-old in the best shape of my life, and I was absolutely certain I was going to live like this forever.

Of course, any time I strap on the gloves now, it’s considerably harder. For one thing, I’m eleven years older, less fit, and very out of practice. For another, even the best smartwatch can prove inconvenient: I was testing a chunky running watch during a boxercise class recently, and kept accidentally pausing the tracked workout inside of my cuff.

Smart rings are one solution, but they’re not for everyone; and if you’re doing a combat sport like jiujitsu or rugby, wearing jewelry is out of the question. Surely, I thought, as I unpaused my workout for the sixth time as I switched gloves for pads, there’s a better wearable you can use to track your health during combat sports – and the Orb Sport Smart Mouthguard is just the thing I was looking for.

The Smart Mouthguard is a conventional-looking mouthguard that hides an array of sensors that are designed to monitor not just your heart rate and calorie burn, but your movements too. Like the best smart rings, it’s based around a ‘set and forget’ style of tracking: just pop it in after setup and away you go. Just like with…