Rule #1: Check in with yourself before you check in with the data. The post How to use fitness trackers to enhance performance and wellbeing—without losing touch with yourself appeared first on Precision Nutrition. While our ancestors relied on their senses to assess how they were doing, increasingly, we rely on gadgets. Today, if you’re curious enough, you can measure your heart rate, your step count, your exercise intensity, and your sleep quality—sometimes all on one sleek device. In the best cases, these devices offer a bridge between what you subjectively feel and what you can objectively measure. This is generally a really cool and amazing thing. Our subjective feelings and assessments matter, but they’re not always the most reliable. Us humans just aren’t particularly skilled at quantifying our experiences and behaviors with cold precision. Take, for example, a colleague of mine. He believed he was eating within a narrow caloric window, but after careful tracking, he learned that he was putting away a bonus 500 Calories a day—in barbecue sauce. That said, some of us are better than others. Ben Johnson, the Canadian sprinter, was reported to have been able to call out his 100 metre time within a tenth of a second of the stopwatch readout.1 That’s outlier performance, to be clear, but it still makes you wonder: How good are you at assessing yourself? And, how can you improve your accuracy through the wise use of technology—like fitness trackers—to help you make better decisions about your health? In the following article, we’ll tackle the above, plus we’ll address: How accurate are data trackers in the first place? When is tracking helpful? (And when is it not?) Can you train yourself to more accurately assess things by feel? Let’s get into it. First, how accurate are data trackers anyway? Not all data is created equal. Some brands produce better products than others. This is not just hardware but also the quality of their software and datasets. Beyond that, not all things are equally easy to quantity. For example, heart rate and step-count data are generally reliable,2 but many other types of outputs—from calories burned to movement velocity—have substantial margins for error. The below chart shows the reliability of various tracking devices. (If you’re curious, we cover the accuracy of various progress indicators in more detail here: Are Fitness Trackers Worth It?) Next, when is tracking actually helpful? The good: Tracking devices offer us more data about our behaviors and bodies than ever before. The bad: Tracking devices offer us more data about our behaviors and bodies than ever before. “What’s really remarkable,” says Samantha Kleinberg, a computer scientist who studies decision-making, “is that even a tiny amount of surplus information has a big negative effect on our decision-making.”3 That’s the paradox of tracking: Too little detail makes it tough to make the right decision, but so does too much. This can be expressed as an inverted U, with the sweet spot at the top of the curve. Today, it’s surprisingly easy to have too much information. Consider the analysis paralysis you feel after scanning hundreds of reviews from the various taco places in your neighborhood. (All you wanted was a decent el pastor, but now you don’t know which taqueria to pick!) Finding just enough information to make good decisions is an art form—especially in the world of health and fitness, where it seems like everyone is trying to outdo each other when it comes to providing more science, more customization, and more complexity. But when all that information starts to blur together with no clear path forward, what should you do? For starters, you can ask yourself a simple question: Does tracking increase my wellbeing and performance? If the answer is a clear yes or no, you know what to do. (Either continue tracking as you were, or drop the gadget and walk away.) If you’re a little fuzzy, here are three signs to watch for to help you determine if tracking is helpful—or not. Sign #1: Tracking is decreasing your stress and validating your method(s). When Zak’s coach raved about the benefits of zone 2 cardio, it sounded logical. But when the rubber on his running shoes hit the road, Zak second-guessed everything. Zak prided himself on his ability to grind, and simply didn’t trust that something that felt easy could also be effective. Yet, the data didn’t lie. As the weeks went by, Zak watched his resting heart rate drop—along with his recovery time from hard runs. With that reassurance, Zak began to relax about the process—and his resting heart rate dropped further. Zak hadn’t trusted his feelings, but he did trust the data from his heart rate monitor. Using a tracking device enabled Zak to calibrate his own perceptions so they were more accurate and realistic. If you’re a coach who has a client like Zak who’s high performing but doesn’t know it, tracking can help build confidence and reduce the anxiety that they’re “not good enough.” Here, you empower them by shining a spotlight on existing performance. Expert assurance can go a long way but can also be bolstered by reliable data. (Recently, many people have begun using continuous glucose monitors, or CGMs, in order to “optimize” their blood sugar levels. This can help “validate” certain food choices… but it can also be a waste of time. Read more: Should people without diabetes use CGMs?) Bad omen: Tracking is increasing stress or negatively affecting performance. Sometimes, data can stress you out without any upside—like when you receive poor scores about things beyond your control. Take the new parent of a newborn who gets a poor sleep quality score. Tracking has a time and a place. When scores are beyond your control or your priorities lie elsewhere, tracking can create unnecessary stress and is counterproductive. You can always revisit tracking when circumstances or priorities change. Sign #2: Clear feedback from data is enhancing your motivation and ability. For a behaviour to take place, you need three things4: Motivation: A compelling reason or desire to take action toward achieving something. This can come from external sources (your spouse is urging you to quit smoking) or internal drives (you’ve always dreamed of running a marathon). Ability: You have a combination of skills, plus opportunities to express them. (For example, you know how to do a simple resistance training routine, and you have 20 minutes a day to execute it.) This may involve overcoming constraints like time, money, mental and/or physical effort, social pressures, and changes to routine.5 Prompt: A prompt is a cue or instruction that elicits an action. (For example, when your GPS tells you to turn left, or when your restless legs “remind” you you’re due for a walk.) Critically, even with high levels of motivation and ability, you may not take action—or the right kind of action—without a prompt. Fitness trackers shine when you’ve got plenty of motivation and ability—and just lack the prompt. Take my client, Margaret. She used to have a glass of wine most nights, believing it helped her sleep better. Once she started wearing a sleep tracker though, she saw that her sleep quality was much poorer the nights she imbibed. Once she received this prompt—her sleep score—she adjusted her behavior. When you highlight important data, the right choices become clearer. When it comes to changing behaviours, sometimes all it takes is one key piece of data. As they say, “Once you see it, you can’t un-see it.” (PN’s CEO Tim Jones used the feedback he got from various lifestyle trackers to finally reduce his genetically high cholesterol levels—and built a richer, more meaningful life in the process. Read more: How This Guy Cut His Cholesterol in Half Without Drugs) Bad omen: Data collection is decreasing motivation or ability. When Jan, an avid recreational cyclist, found out he could view—then demolish—the records set on local biking trails, he set to work. But as those records were destroyed, so too was his ability to ride for enjoyment. His focus on speed left him under-recovered and eventually led to burnout. If workouts have become more about the numbers and less about technique, experience, or even enjoyment, tracking is likely no longer helpful. Sign #3: Tracking is helping you understand yourself better. The harder you work, the better your results. Right? Not necessarily. This belief tends to get grinders like Zak into trouble because they think they’re making progress—but really they’re just getting in their own way, even inhibiting performance and recovery. Meanwhile, there are also many people who chronically underestimate their effort and capacity, and would benefit from turning up the heat. Here, data can help us more accurately understand our own potential. Let’s look at high-intensity interval training (HIIT) as an example. HIIT workouts alternate fixed periods of intense effort with fixed periods of rest. However, these fixed periods of rest are just estimates of recovery times. Heart rate data can create a more individualized picture of actual recovery needs,
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