Technology in fitness is nothing new. People have been wearing heart rate monitors, tracking their steps and paying attention to their sleep patterns for decades. Our watches can tell us everything from how many steps we have taken and the heart rate zones we are in, to how well we slept and wether or not we are recovered enough for another day of training.
Should we believe it though?
Our trackers monitor a few different data points and plug them into an equation to tell you how to feel. This is typically going to come from your Heart Rate Variability, Resting Heart Rate, training load and sleep scores. These numbers can all be helpful in tracking your health and fitness to see how your training is affecting you.
Some would argue over the ability of the monitors to get accurate numbers. Not all wearable tech is created equal and there are certainly advantages and disadvantages based on where these monitors are taking their measurements E.g. wrist, finger, chest, etc. These can still be beneficial numbers. We can take this information with a grain of salt and look for trends over time. Seeing monthly or even quarterly improvements in things like our resting heart rate and our HRV can be a great goal for many people.
We can also use these monitors to see how things like alcohol, going to bed too late or eating a poor diet negatively affect us day to day. We can utilize this data to modify our workouts, recovery practices, eating/drinking habits and sleep hygiene to help us feel our best.
This is where in our opinion, we need to start being careful. Many people will wake up and look at their data on how they slept, what their recovery is “supposed” to feel like, and decide what their effort should be for the day when they first wake up. This is a mistake.
While this data can be helpful, it cannot tell you the full story of how you are feeling. Ideally, you should get up, get moving, drink a glass of water, probably some coffee too, and then see how your body feels. If you train in the morning, start getting into your warm-up.
Once you have moved a bit, see how you feel. Do you feel recovered, ready to hit your workout? Now check your phone. Sure, your monitor may say you are under recovered, but those have been some of my best training days. It also may say you are 100 percent recovered but you may feel something off. Listen to your body before your watch.
You may find you start to make a lot more progress if you start to ignore the day to day data, listen to your body and start watching the monthly trends instead.
