“mile 1 – 7:56” do metrics help push us forwards?
Sometimes the chime helps on other days we say “kindly be quite little built in speaker” understanding how to integrate them into our workouts and measuring over a sensible time frame are key to remaining friends with them.
We’ve covered a number of area’s with fitness trackers, such as how accurate are they etc. Let’s look at what they can help (or hinder us with.
Steps, 10k a day, awesome devices for this, many can be set to remind us to get a few steps in, whether that be hourly, after the last bout of them or at regular user defined intervals.
There can be the annoyance of the beep or vibrate when sat in a meeting, the car or at some point that we can’t immediately drop everything and jump up in to a step frenzy.
Overall, being nudged to get some steps in and get moving is a good thing, providing we have the reminders set to our liking and that we can allow the times we can’t get to it to pass until we can. If we can’t then perhaps turning these off would allow a little more freedom to explore and measure ourselves throughout the day.
Stairs/Flights climbed, another nice reminder to use the stairs at work or to get a little bit of extra movement in if we are working from home, same pro’s and cons as the step count.
For both of the above providing we can balance the reminders with our daily flow I personally think they are a good thing, after all a little nudge can help to get some extra done.
Exercise reminders, having a daily target for exercise can make sense, it can offer a handy breakdown, for example undertaking a 15 minute walk everyday. Often the more you hit those goals the more the device wants you to do. Unfortunately progress just ins’t that linear, neither is our available time to exercise!
The other side to this when we workout say 3 times a week, completion of the goals aren’t as easy on the ‘off’ or rest days, Sure we could go for a walk or do some active recovery but this doesn’t always fit and can again lead to the upward creep of the daily goal.
Sounds like I’m being negative, I actually really like wearables, I have one and its homed in to my activity schedule, the key is to understand how they are going to drive behaviour and help with healthly habit forming, rather than detract from the awesome progress of getting ourselves moving.
Last one, then I’ll leave you in peace….
The announcements, there are many:
You are x hours away from your stand goal
Last mile 7:34
Move ring closed
And any others we care to remember, they can be great, highlight our progress and spur us on to finish the days goals. A quick observation on mile/km timers, the are matter of fact, if the previous mile was slightly downhill, and the next is slightly up hill our split times will vary!
Now to balance this out, I am a massive fan of heart rate zone training, and they do this brilliantly, because this is the topography is irrelevant to the read out it’s giving, naturally our heart will be higher when we go up hill, however the device isn’t worried about up or down purely where your heart rate is at.
I always use the example of Dave Scott conditioning himself to 155bpm and dropping almost three minutes off his average min/mile time. In his book he states he had to walk up hills on his training runs to stay in zone.
How do we finish this up?
Do they help or hinder, on balance they are an impressive tool, can offer may metrics to choose from and allow us to build good habits – provided we take the time to understand what goals we want to achieve and how to use the device to match this.
Not sure what you should (or shouldn’t) be measuring? – Chat to one of the team here at SF info@spikefitness.co.uk or 07597215652.