Some of you are probably using smartwatches and fitness sensors for long standing exercise routines or perhaps new routines that began with a resolution a few days ago. Since regular exercise is considered one of the most powerful and safest medicines known, anything that encourages it can be a terrific investment. There's evidence that competition with yourself or others based on feedback from these devices is motivational for some people.
But what do the readings mean?
Regular exercise is great, but no one knows how much is enough or even too much as there's variation from person to person and careful studies are very difficult. Even the understanding of metabolism is general - it is important to forget the concept of a total energy budget (calories eaten - calories burned) as that requires very careful lab measurements. What is known is a few hours a week at moderate intensity is a great start. A heart rate monitor can give feedback on intensity, but there are other effective non-technical methods too. As the ad says - just do it using whatever works for you. But what if you are an amateur or professional athlete - do these technical aides give an edge?
For four hundred dollars a smartwatch gives you information it would have cost thousands of dollars twenty years ago. The problem is you need to understand what it's reporting in context. For most of us that's somewhere between very difficult and impossible. An elite runner or cyclist might have access a to multi-million dollar support effort with specialists who try to understand information from a variety of sources in context for that elusive one percent performance gain, but even then they regularly fail. Generally these tools are most successful used in training as the complexity of understanding the information changes during competition. In recent years telemetry from athletes in team sports became possible. A coach could see the condition of each of their players on the field as well as track how much and how fast they moved. It became popular in football, soccer, rugby and a few other sports, but is being set aside by many as understanding context during competition difficult and it had led to some dramatic coaching errors.
Besides wearables video analysis can make a big difference for amateurs. Usually a coach or trainer who understands what they're watching and how to make changes is needed - you're not going to find great personalized information on youtube. A few sports like baseball, golf, tennis and gymnastics are making use of motion capture. I'm guessing we'll see that make its way to smartphones one of these days (there have been a couple of so-so efforts already).
I'll cut it short as probably only a few of you are interested in diving in (for those that are feel free to get in touch - I have an interest in sports science and sports tech) For everyone else the message is use whatever it takes to find the motivation for regular exercise. It may be a smartwatch or fitness tracker, but you're probably in the minority if those work over the long term. Find what works for you. And if you're an amateur athlete the lowest hanging fruit may well be a few hours with a trainer working on form. There's a tendency to use tech for that one percent where a simple change in form might buy much more. And an added befit of a few sessions with a trainer is they might be able to spot and correct bad habits that might lead to injury.
There's a message for anyone who relies on numbers for their work. Where did they come from and what exactly do they mean? Perfect understanding is rarely possible, but understanding what is good enough and how to find and understand context is essential. One of the reasons why much of what is being done with big data and machine learning frightens me. They can inspire false confidence.
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