In 2016, 61 million wearable fitness devices—fitness trackers, activity, and sports trackers—were sold. Wearable tech is making its mark, especially when it comes to human performance. And it will continue to play a bigger role in our lives in the years to come.
The Value of Measuring Advanced Data
Fitness trackers measure a variety of standard data points, including calories burned, pulse, heart rate variability, body temperature, and steps taken. They can also measure advanced data like strain and recovery needs so you can “unlock human performance,” as Will Ahmed, CEO of Whoop states. I like that last feature as a central premise of a fitness tracker because learning how to live with optimal energy levels is the primary objective of Performance Lifestyle. To maintain optimal energy levels, you must understand how to manage stress and recovery.
In the athletic world, recovery means a return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength.
Recuperation or regeneration are broader terms that include recovery, but also encompass the energy you need to restore or replenish to function and perform at capacity. Restoring human energy must take place systematically and regularly, in healthy ways, so you don’t get caught up in addictive and unhealthy lifestyle habits to try and keep pace with a busy life. And that is only possible when performance is a way of life.
The Impact of Fatigue
Athletes are more in tune with a performance lifestyle approach because they regularly prepare for events where officials, the media, and the public judge the results of their preparation. They can’t cover up their fatigue the way many non-athletes attempt to do because it will show in their performance in an accentuated way.
But you don’t need to be a sports or fitness enthusiast to recognize how fatigue impacts performance. It’s true for all of us. You can’t cover up fatigue for long.
Restoring Your Energy
Even in athletics, there is still a bias toward focusing more on sophisticated training systems than on the one thing that powers the results they are training to achieve—replenishing energy. Energy restoration guides the regeneration of all human capacities, from memory to muscle repair and more.
To get better results with your fitness tracker or sports tracker, you must sufficiently recuperate. Even the most sophisticated fitness tracker won’t do squat for you unless you have enough energy. Without adequate energy, you’ll just be the smartest person still suffering from the hidden lifestyle challenge of fatigue
This is why it’s of the utmost importance to track daily strain and recovery needs over all other metrics.
The New Big Thing
Performance Lifestyle Advisor Ian Jennings, renowned strength and conditioning coach and author of Coaches’ Guide to Enhancing Recovery in Athletes: A Multidimensional Approach to Developing a “Performance Lifestyle” states that “fitness-fatigue theory is the basis of performance lifestyle training.”
He goes on to say, “Under-recovery will always compromise performance, and to be effective, any performance-enhancement program must ensure that recovery is as well-planned and programmed as the athletes training.”
This statement is true whether you’re into sports or not. You are always spending your life force energy and recuperating; it’s a never-ending process. And this is why I think measuring daily strain and recovery is the new big thing.
Getting Results with a Fitness Tracker
So what’s the one way to get better results with your fitness tracker? Optimize your lifestyle to make the behavioral changes you need to perform better. If you want the numbers to improve on your fitness tracker, this is the way to do it. You won’t see the progress you want unless you have enough energy to support your goals.
Fitness, sports, and activity trackers require changes in lifestyle and training to be effective. You need to leverage the data to make lifestyle changes that result in increased energy, health, and performance. Just knowing that you are taking 10,000 steps is probably the most common way to use a fitness tracker. But walking in and of itself is not a hard practice to master.
It’s the pulse rate, strain, recovery, and training metrics that require the biggest changes. Resolving the factors that result in excess strain and lack of recovery can be challenging because so many of us are performance addicted. The simple act of getting more sleep and managing recovery requires training so you know how to create boundaries and change your priorities to avoid incessant activity and make more time for recuperation.
With 123 million fitness trackers, activity trackers, and sports trackers expected to be sold by/in 2020, the march is on to do something with all this self-quantified data and knowledge about our behavior patterns. That something is performance lifestyle training and coaching.
Do you know what needs to change to alter the numbers and results in your life?
Combining Your Fitness Tracker with a Performance Lifestyle
A
performance lifestyle is all about optimizing your lifestyle to look, feel, and perform better. The emphasis is on the regular, systematic recuperation required in today’s performance culture so you can live with the optimal energy levels that make all three of those outcomes possible.
Every principle, practice, and strategy in a performance lifestyle is health-promoting as a given, not the end goal. This creates the framework you need to focus on your life goals without being distracted or held back by hidden lifestyle challenges.
One practical application for the data from your fitness tracker is to use it to guide the lifestyle optimizations you learn about in Performance Lifestyle training. Once you measure your performance using the credible and useful stats provided by wearable fitness trackers like Whoop or Fitbit; Performance Lifestyle training can help you move the needle and improve your numbers.
Human performance is not just a function of willpower and the psychological strength to get things done. It’s about knowing what powers the body and brain and employing the essential lifestyle skills to perform and succeed in a way that’s balanced and healthy.
Getting Started
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To do that, you must master the primary requirement of human health and performance—regenerating your life force energy. Learn how to harness, maintain, manage, and sustain the vital performance energy that is consumed by stress throughout the day.
Fitness trackers typically give you a better understanding of what you’re doing with all your energy. But what are you doing to make sure you have enough energy? This is the reason we love Whoop as much as we do.
If you have a fitness tracker, get the most out of your wearable fitness device by signing up for Performance Lifestyle training. If you don’t have an activity tracker yet, you can get the tracker and the training together. With this combination, you have a powerful solution for successfully making changes in your lifestyle and “unlocking human performance.”
