Your Watch, Wristband, Wearable, or whatever it is that tracks your fitness and biometrics might seem like it is a worthwhile investment.
For about 90% of users who track and care about the data and insights it tracks, it probably is.
Fitness and its progress are a numbers game. You simply cannot make reasonable gains in any field by just winging it for too long.
Sure, newbies can make significant progress when trying out something new and tracking almost nothing, but if you want to lock in on a particular facet of fitness, tracking is imperative.
Recognizing this, companies have swooped in to control the tracking narrative.
From Whoop to Oura, to Garmin, Apple, and Samsung alike, these fitness tech behemoths are on a mission not only to help improve your personal health but to improve the care connection you can have to the medical system, as recently reported by The New York Times.
Each of these companies has a noble mission that, at face value, is empowering to their users: to encourage better health habits by giving actionable data in a user-friendly, streak-provoking way.
But… the data is imperfect, in a way.
Most of the metrics have flaws that make some of the readings non-absolute, to say the least.
Consider the Apple Watch, which uses “rings” to determine a wearer’s movement progress throughout the day.
The calorie-tracking ring (which has been disputed by many users as overestimating total calorie burn) uses only photoplethysmography, a light-flicker technology tracking blood volume changes in wrist veins, and heart rate as its north stars for calorie expense guesstimation.
This misguided understanding of calorie output can stall weight loss goals for some, leaving them to wonder why they’ve plateaued when, in reality, their watch isn’t accurately gauging their calorie burn.
And that’s not the only flaw in Apple’s design — some sedentary users have even reported logging miles of steps despite being seated throughout the day, simply because Apple’s tech measures the slightest arm movements as a “step.”
Where other trackers make up for accuracy in steps, heart rate and calories, they might lack in providing accurate, real-time feedback about performance.
Garmin, for example, is regarded as the gold standard for endurance athletes like runners, cyclists, and the like because of its many settings catered toward dynamic athletic performance.
But many users talk about how, after a subjectively impressive workout, Garmin’s feedback is that their workout was “unproductive,” or that performance “decreased,” and no significant gains in fitness were made.
What the Wearable Industry Still Has Yet To Address
I stumbled across this post from Jordan Feigenbaum yesterday, which addresses the exact problem I’m talking about:
The type of user that wearable device brands attract — performance-driven, high-achieving, maybe even slightly neurotic people — might have heightened anxiety from their wearable device feedback that could do more harm than good.
Feigenbaum mentioned a research paper that asked 10 of the 14 large wearable makers what in their proprietary algorithms determined certain “scores” like Sleep, Training Readiness, and Activity Balances.
Beyond deducing these scores from baseline measurements of resting heart rate (RHR), HRV, sleep depth, and daily activity, they wouldn’t reveal the exact calculations.
This might trouble some people in the health and wellness/medical fields who understand that human biometrics are incredibly dynamic, and what is “good” and “bad” will vary extensively from person to person.
It’s probably not a good idea to let the outcome of your day be determined by a device that might imperfectly read your body’s signals, especially if you subjectively feel fine.
For competitive achievers (like myself) who want to make the most of their body’s output, it’s possible to leave progress on the table by opting not to train on a day when their sleep score is off by a few points.
More studies need to be done on the impact of training through fatigue and tiredness, but here are a couple of examples of why it might not matter as much as the wearables say:
Steve Prefontaine reportedly only slept for ONE HOUR the night before ripping an 8-minute and 28-second two-mile race.
Prefontaine had more than one such instance of sleepless nights before heroic performances and may be an outlier in human capability, but one hour is diabolical.
US Olympic Shotputter Chase Ealey is no stranger to bad nights of sleep:
I’m also at the point where I know how to prepare for a bad sleep. I’ve had a bad sleep before a training session, told my coach I didn’t sleep well before showing up, and felt super anxious. But sometimes, practicing after a bad night of sleep is the reassurance I need. It shows me that I’m capable of showing up when things don’t go as I’d like. As someone who otherwise prefers 10 hours of sleep, it’s good to know that I can respond to the uncontrollable.”
You could say I’m making a false equivalency by citing world-class athletes in these examples.
But the other side of the argument is this:
Have all world-class athletes enjoyed perfect sleep, no alcohol or drugs, or completely stress-free days in their rise to world-class level? Absolutely not.
Even those who are most acutely aware of those stressors are likely able to stave off the anxiety that comes with stress as it relates to performance impact.
What I’m Building In the Hopes That Wearable Devices Can Improve
Since we are not far from a world where wearables help determine our most crucial health outcomes — like whether we need something as serious asopen-heart surgery or something as simple as routine blood work — I think it’s important that every facet of the wearable experience is tightened up before we start letting it book our doctor’s visits before us.
And that includes the performance side of things.
I’ll be damned if I let a small device on my finger tell me I’m exercising “too hard” or that a workout didn’t help me gain any fitness (and you should be, too).
