Fitness Wearables: Stop Overlooking Your Need For A Fitness Tracker

A look at 4 Fitness Trackers that I have used over the last 10 years

For years I walked around with no form of fitness tracker in my life. I literally ran on feel alone. I had no metrics or data to ping my activities off of. I had no way of understanding what my workout was achieving or how I was doing with my training. In other words, I had no Point A from which to plot a course to Point B.

If you’ve been here long enough then you’ve heard me discuss this concept of establishing a Point A with regards to initial assessments before beginning a training program. Normally I’m discussing this from the idea of establishing physical limitations and constraints. But there are so many more aspects of our health and longevity where we need to establish a Point A.

Establishing a Point A for our metabolic health and the health of our overall internal systems via blood tests is something we all should be doing regularly. We should know our cholesterol levels, insulin levels, etc and that’s usually done with our doctor.

When we are attempting to establish a Point A for all the peripheral things that contribute to our overall health though, we need something to measure that and we need accurate information.

There are many tools out there that we can use for a variety of metrics and I have used 4 tracking tools over the past 10 years to do this at varying levels.

We’ll start with my very first experience with a fitness tracker and that was using a Fitbit. I began using a Fitbit around 2014 and initially I liked it. It gave me some data like steps and it had very basic functions. I won’t say too much about the device itself as it’s been nearly 10 years since I’ve engaged with it. Since it’s been bought by Google, I have not experienced any of the changes that have been made to the tool.

All I can say is that it didn’t provide me what I really needed overall. The newer models look sleek, and for the price point it may be worth a shot if you’re just starting out in tracking your fitness and activity. So I would say, if you’re just beginning and you want a low bar to entry, investigate the Fitbit a bit more.

In 2019 I was introduced to WHOOP, which has been a complete game changer in the way I connect with my health and fitness. At the time I was debating between WHOOP and the Oura Ring, but inevitably thought that I didn’t need another ring on another finger other than my wedding ring. I also found that the WHOOP was not only going to give me way more data, but that the interface was much easier to understand, read and engage with.

Key features of WHOOP that I like:

The App: the WHOOP app is very easy to understand and it has explanations for things that you may have questions about. It also has a feature where you can ask WHOOP a question and get answers or directed to assistance.

The first page is an overview page that consolidates information from the next 3 pages (Sleep, Recovery, Strain). It’s a great place to get an overview of things, but if you want to go deeper, everything is clickable and the next 3 pages go into more depth.

Page two contains Sleep performance.

It shows you how long you slept versus how much sleep you needed. It includes things like “time in bed”, “amount of restorative sleep and more. You can dive deeper into things like how much REM sleep you had and how much time you spent awake or were disturbed during the night which allows you to make adjustments to your sleep habits.

Page three contains overall Recovery score

Recovery score is based on numerous factors, including Sleep, Resting Heart Rate, HRV, and respiratory rate all as it relates to previous day Strain.

Page four is focused on Strain which is calculated based on activities done over the course of the day. This is one of my favorite pages because I like to challenge myself to hit specific total strain numbers.

Page four contains your Strain level

Strain is a measure of your activity level on any specific day. It includes all of your activities that you do in the day. When your heart rate elevates and you haven’t chosen an activity, don’t worry you can record the activity afterwards. Once Whoop has an understanding of your activities and the types of efforts you put into them, it will begin to ask if you’d like to record an activity where you may have forgotten to.

I really enjoy the fact that it connects with my Apple Watch in order to retrieve activity information automatically if I’m using my Apple watch to record the activity.

One Con for me: I would say that the main drawback is that because it is a wrist tracker, the heart rate numbers are less accurate than a chest strap and are often delayed. So if you’re trying to maintain a specific heart rate, you will want to use a chest strap like I do. More on my chest strap below

WHOOP takes a couple weeks or so to start to learn about you and your activities. I’ve worn mine for years so it knows me quite well. How do I know? Well just before I got Covid a couple years back, my respiratory rate spiked super high. I had no symptoms like cough or anything. My HRV was low, but nothing too out of the ordinary. I decided to go for a run and my Heart Rate spiked really high on my normal Zone 2 pace. My wife suggested maybe I should take a Covid test and sure enough it was positive. My symptoms didn’t arrive until a day later and they were light as compared to other people I knew.

I say all this to say that I really enjoy my WHOOP because it’s one of the few trackers I can wear 24/7 due to it’s low profile. This means I don’t have to take it off when I sleep. The battery life is a few days so unlike the Apple Watch I don’t have to take it off at night. The battery pack is also separate so you can keep your battery charged and then attach to your WHOOP and charge while it’s still mounted on your arm.

You can also connect with other users and run competitions and for coaches you can create a team in order to monitor various key indicators of your athletes. I don’t know any other tracker that provides this level of connection.

If you’re interested in giving WHOOP a try, get One Month FREE here.

One tracker is not enough for me though.

WHOOP doesn’t have a watch feature, nor does it count steps or have other features like the ability to answer calls and sent texts.

For that I’ve got my Apple Watch.

Pros and Cons for my Apple Watch

I love my Apple Watch. Not only is it just a sexy looking watch, but the ability to change watch faces digitally is dope. Also I love the ability to change the straps to fit the mode I’m in. Am I in sport mode or am I going out for a classy night.

But we aren’t here to talk about the looks of the watch, phone call or text abilities. Let’s talk about the fitness related features and why they’re cool to use.

I’ve found my apple watch to be much more stable and accurate with the recording of my heart rate during my runs. As a matter of fact my Polar Chest strap seems to give a fairly similar reading so when I forget my chest strap at home, I think my watch gives me a somewhat accurate Heart Rate number.

If I had to choose between my watch and WHOOP I’d choose WHOOP because it gives me many more pieces of data that are important to me like Sleep, Strain, a more accurate HRV (Heart Rate Variability) and Recovery score. Apple watch takes HRV in the morning whereas WHOOP takes your HRV throughout the night giving a more accurate picture from what I’ve read. I don’t wear my Apple Watch at night either because it’s charging and it’s too bulky on the wrist for sleep.

The battery life doesn’t give you enough time to wear overnight anyway.

What I love about the apple watch is the gamification of your daily goals into rings to close.

Setting Goals

I initially went with the default goals set by Apple and after successfully closing all my rings daily for weeks on end I figured I better set my goals higher. I set my goals at the high end for exercise at 60 minutes per day. I set my MOVE Calories at 700, which surprisingly doesn’t happen unless I absolutely do an hour of activity.

I like this feature because it gives me a daily metric to strive for. It is exciting to feel accomplished and when I want to hold myself accountable, all I have to do is look down at my watch.

Awards

There are tons of awards and achievements to unlock. Unlocking achievements gives you a collection of badges and awards. It’s nice to look and see how many times you’ve accomplished a 5K for example. It’s cool to get a little award for closing all your rings for 7 straight days.

Hitting 200% of your Move Goal, having a Move Goal streak or getting special awards for completing a Limited Edition Goal for Black History Month, Earth Day or International Women’s Day are all cool little trophies.

At the end of the day, not every tracker is for everyone. I personally love having data. The more information that I have, the more I know what to do. I can assess, reassess, set goals and have information to base it on. The Apple Watch gives me ways to do all of this. And if you’re the type of person that loves getting your step count in, this is a great way to track it. Your phone tracks steps, but your phone isn’t always on your person. My step count totals went up by a few thousand steps on average based on having my watch track.

This has shaped up to be a long post, but I didn’t want to leave off without at least a mention of my chest strap. I will keep it brief. If you are interested in Zone Training and especially want to track Zone 2 efficiently, then you’ll need a chest strap. Chest straps are the most accurate wearable we have available as far as my knowledge and the delay in heart rate is not as great as a wrist wearable.

There are tons to choose from out there on the market, but I just go with the good old long time producer of Heart Rate monitors, Polar.

I hope you found this informative.

Would love to hear from you with a comment and be to check out WHOOP and get 1 Month FREE