This is episode 418 with health and human performance coach and researcher who's worked with teams like the England football team and four-time European champ, the line star rugby team, Dr. Peter Tierney.
Welcome to the Strength Running Podcast.
I'm your host, Coach Jason Fitzgerald. I'm a former cross-country and track athlete for Connecticut College.
I've been coaching runners since 2010, and I used to write for Trail Runner Magazine and Runner's World.
Today, I'm the head coach of Strength Running, host of this podcast, and I work with a small handful of startups in the running space.
You can learn more about me and Strength Running at strengthrunning.com.
Now, huge thanks to our brand partners who helped make this podcast possible.
If you get value from the show, please consider supporting them so I can keep on publishing episodes.
Thank you, Prevenex, for offering 15% off your first purchase at Prevenex.com with code Jason15.
And a big announcement. Prevonex is now offering international shipping.
So if you live in the UK, Canada, Australia, or anywhere around the world, you can try Prevonex as well.
They are a unique and different supplement company that holds itself to standards that the rest of the industry doesn't.
Their latest product is Muscle Health Plus, a unique combination of amino acids, creatine, and ingredients that aid protein synthesis and the absorption of amino acids.
So this is your anti-sorness supplement, helping you prevent muscle damage, muscle loss, and helping you recover faster after hard workouts.
Just perfect for anybody over 40. Now, Prevonex adheres to the highest of standards.
Their ingredients are clinically proven to do what they say they're going to do.
So yes, Muscle Health Plus does have ingredients that are clinically proven to improve protein synthesis and the absorption of amino acids, critical for helping promote lean muscle mass, strength, recovery, and better body composition.
But you don't need to hear it from me. Listen to our podcast listeners who have used our discount code Jason15.
These are real reviews. Masayo wrote, I am skeptical about any supplements.
I was curious about Muscle Health Plus since Joint Health Plus seriously helped me recently.
There is no other product like that out there.
So I tried this one as well. About a week or so into taking this, I started to notice some differences.
My body seemed to recover faster after hard workouts and the tired feeling didn't last as long as it used to.
I definitely recommend at least trying this product out and see the difference yourself.
Allison said, Aaron wrote, Aaron wrote, And finally, Catherine said, I am thankful to have found this supplement, which decreases the frequency and intensity of aches in my 44-year-old ultra runner legs.
Now, I could go on, but you sort of get the point.
Why do I love Prevonex? First, their products just work.
And second, they are so rigorous with testing and transparency.
Get yourself 15% off your first purchase with code Jason15 at checkout, now available for any international order outside of the United States.
Visit Prevenex.com, that's P-R-E-V-I-N-E-X.com.
And just remember, they offer a 30-day money-back guarantee where if you don't feel the benefits or their product just doesn't feel like it's working for you, you get your money back, no questions asked.
We are supported by Avello, the world's best smart running shoe created by a team of ex Nike engineers.
Now I'm so excited by Avello that I've been advising them for nearly two years and the market has spoken.
They raised over $100,000 on Kickstarter on their very first day because they're doing something unique.
Embedded in their bouncy, lightweight Super Trainer is a sensor that measures impact and your running form, showing you how much force your body is experiencing and when during your run your form starts deteriorating.
This gives you incredible insights into your unique form, how it changes over time, and when it breaks down, so you better understand your injury risk and when you get fatigued.
The shoes never need to be charged, and you can reuse the sensor in each pair of Avellos.
Their app gives you real-time coaching that I had a lot of input on based on your unique data.
They're still available on Kickstarter at an incredible 34% off for a very limited time, so get yours today.
Use the Kickstarter link in the description or search Kickstarter for Avello.
My guest today is Dr. Peter Tierney, a health and performance researcher, consultant, and coach who's worked with many professional sport organizations across Europe, mostly in soccer and rugby.
Peter is an expert in physiology and performance and holds a PhD from University College Dublin.
He has worked as a strength and conditioning coach for elite athletes, a sports scientist, and a performance coach.
We previously spoke in March of 2024 on the science of recovery.
Today, he joins us to discuss wearables.
We're exploring both hardware and metrics, the actual devices that are available today, the wearable stack that Peter recommends, as well as the most important metrics to focus on and how to think about them from a long-term perspective.
Without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Dr. Peter Tierney.
All right, Peter, welcome back to the podcast.
Jason, thanks for having me back for the second time.
I know, like you said earlier offline, a repeat customer.
Yeah, so I hope that's a positive, positive thing.
It absolutely is a positive thing. I think I first had you on the show a little over a year ago.
We talked about recovery and the big five strategies around that.
It ended up being a really popular episode.
So for our listeners, I hope you check that out.
It was published in March of 2024. And honestly, it was one of my favorites.
I love the idea of recovery because it's the flip side of training.
It's the other side of the same coin. And so, you know, understanding both, I think, is necessary for best results.
Now, this year, you're back and we get to pick your brain on wearables.
And I do say we because I did crowdsource a whole variety of questions from threads and Twitter.
So a big thanks to our podcast listeners on those platforms.
Now, Peter, I think this conversation can be divided into two parts. the wearable itself, the hardware, what we're talking about with what actually a wearable is, and then what to look for, what to know about the wearable, what to avoid, but then also what specific metrics that the wearable tracks which ones are important regardless of the device that they might be on.
So Peter, since you're the expert on this, do you want to talk first about the wearables themselves and maybe start there?
Or do you want to start with the metrics?
I think let's start with the wearables. And even like you've mentioned some ways of like bucketing the conversation or different things to do with wearables.
One of the ways that I've done that before from like a technology perspective, and I think I've shared some visuals on this before, is with wearables generally.
And I'll speak, I guess, more specifically to wearables. like the podcast listeners so I assume everybody listening is running in some capacity I hope and exercising and obviously there might be some other people as well different activities but generally speaking we're probably focusing the conversation towards that but I do like to think of like wearables for like I guess three use cases with overlap and some context which we can definitely get into the details of but one would be for sleep tracking sleep and recovery tracking so overnight being the first like bucket and The second being exercise tracking.
So obviously things that all of the listeners will be familiar with, heart rate, pace, elevation, segments, all the things that feed into Strava and everything else that people are very familiar with.
And the third one I think is like smart technology features.
Now for some people, it will completely depend on the person.
These are less important than for others.
So for me personally, I don't use much of the smart tech features in terms of like messaging or connection to my phone.
I use like the stopwatch when I'm coaching other people.
It's probably the extent of it. I know in other watches that I've used before, I've listened to music.
So I book at those things sort of separately than the overnight and the exercise technology.
So that's maybe one way for people to think about it.
But the reason I start with that is because the question that I get and what you may have gotten is like, which wearable would you recommend?
And, or like some variety of that question.
But for me, it actually starts with like, well, what do you want to measure?
Like, what are you, what's your goal? What are you trying to achieve?
And for the most part, I do think we're able to fit into, um, supporting, I guess you on your journey towards the goal, but it's not going to tell you exactly what to do.
So you still need to decide that I want to run a marathon in October.
That's still the human Jason or whoever it is saying like, I'm determining my goal.
And if you don't own a wearable, Well, maybe a wearable would be a great thing to purchase for you to help you towards your marathon goal.
So that might be from obviously tracking workouts.
It might be for monitoring sleep and recovery.
It might be because you commute into the office every day and you need to interact with your phone through your watch and things like that.
So that's that's definitely my personal starting place for most people.
Yeah, that's a good way to think about things, basically all through the frame of what the wearable does.
So it tracks your sleep. With a sleep tracker, I think probably the most common one is a WHOOP or the Oura Ring from my perspective, although I've actually never had a WHOOP or an Oura Ring.
I've never used it. I've only had your smart running watch that has some sleep tracking stuff on it.
I really had to resist the urge just to immediately ask you, Peter, okay, so what's the best wearable for all of us runners?
It does seem like the smartwatch is probably the best wearable.
And it seems like every brand now has a smartwatch.
When you think about the number one wearable for runners, is it the smartwatch?
That seems like the no-brainer. I think it is because, again, within the wearable buckets, there's a few different types of devices.
So smartwatches being your well-known Garmin, Coro, Suunto, Apple Watch, for example.
Then there's the sort of other screenless devices like Whoop or...
There's now UltraHuman. There's, I think, a Samsung have a ring.
And obviously, the market's just kind of blown up with different options, which is great for people because they get to choose what works for them.
It's tough to keep up with the amount of different products that actually come out to the market.
But they're the... I guess they're the buckets.
Then there's some other ones that aren't really like wearable.
So I guess things like an eight sleep or Chili Pad, I think they've rebranded the name as like a sort of a mattress topper where you get some physiological feedback and sleep data from those things that you don't technically wear, but are probably in that wearable bucket.
For runners, it's tough to... Sorry, I'll go back one step.
I don't know if there's one wearable in terms of device and app.
So like an ecosystem of a wearable that does everything perfectly.
And so often the conversation for me ends up being like a combination of different things.
And people might say, oh, like, hang on, you have to buy like five different things.
Well... Potentially, but I mean, even a combination of two.
And one of the examples I'll give is a combination of wearables that a lot of listeners will be interested in and probably already have is a smartwatch and a heart rate monitor.
And that is a combination of wearables. So sorry, the heart rate monitors are probably bucket into, you know, the screenless devices as well.
And for a long time, we've known that wrist heart rate can have limitations for some people.
That can be based on anatomy. It can be based on skin color.
It can influence based on temperature. It can be influenced by tattoos.
There's a whole plethora of things that can impact.
So typically, the recommendation is if you want really high quality data, particularly for... your interval-based sessions or metabolic conditioning in the gym, that type of stuff that you would wear a chest strap or an arm strap to collect heart rate data.
So that's typically, I guess, a wearable stack that a lot of users will be familiar with.
Now, I think a runner has to have a smartwatch of some degree, because that's one of the main reasons why most people will want to buy the wearable.
So if we go back to the question, if people are running and competing, they probably want some sort of in-run or during workout feedback in terms of heart rate, pace.
They probably want to be able to segment or lap certain things if you're prescribing X intervals, X pace at X heart rate.
They're all the things that you need a smartwatch for.
And so that's where some of the other wearables are limited in terms of their functionality, whereas the smartwatches will have other pieces.
Now, sometimes those other wearables... And like a Uber or a may have slightly different metrics or software tools or insights that maybe some of the smartwatch companies don't have.
And that's where I guess all of the nuance and all the things we're going to pick today come into play.
But yeah, you definitely if you're a runner and you're competing.
I say competing in any level. This isn't to say that you have to be a 220 marathoner to compete.
You can compete in a five-hour marathon.
We were speaking about this just before I got on.
So this is if you're racing or generally healthy and you have some specific goals, a smartwatch is a very good place to start.
Yeah. And even though, you know, I currently wear the Coros Apex 2 Pro, and I also have their armband heart rate monitor.
So that's my personal tech stack right now for my running, even though. every day I swear I'm going to go back to like a Timex stopwatch and just kind of estimate a lot of things and just kind of go by feel.
I think there was an interesting study recently that showed perceived effort and just subjective feeling is one of the best ways to judge fatigue and your effort overall.
So it kind of hints back at that. But, um, It sounds like, you know, there's almost not a right answer to that question.
You know, like, what is the best wearable for runners?
From my perspective, it seems that pretty much any smartwatch is going to get you 98% of the way there right now.
You know, it's not 2013 anymore. Most brands, like you mentioned, Suunto, Coros, Garmin, etc., They're all really good and they all do what they say they're going to do.
I don't really have a particular affinity for one brand over the other.
Do you look at the landscape and find that there are certain brands that are better than others, brands to avoid, brands that you definitely recommend?
Because from my perspective, they all seem pretty good.
Yeah, like... I find I personally try test a few and I get sent some from different companies to test and I typically only recommend or sorry, I only would recommend ones that I have tested and can confidently say that this data is accurate.
But I think if I step back from this in terms of like the conversation or the topic.
For the last, I guess, five to 10 years, particularly accelerated since COVID, there's been this massive acceleration in improvement in technology and actual hardware.
So sensors are getting smaller. The heart rate sensing is getting better during activity.
Apple watches some amazing heart rate sensing accuracy from the wrist, even though we said there's limitations to it.
And so do other devices. They're really getting better and better.
And we're being one that... has improved significantly from the newest device to when I tested it a couple of years ago.
So maybe version three, I think I had first or two.
So all of the hardware is getting better.
I think if we look at that in terms of the last few years, that's where the biggest strides have been made in terms of actual technology.
Now, I think actually in the next five to 10 years, the biggest strides will be made on the understanding and interpreting of the data and then the actual application and behavior change.
And so... It may not be a hardware technology sort of solution that people are looking for.
It'll become, okay, how well can companies and coaches and podcasters and everybody help people interpret the information?
And then what do I actually do with this information?
So to go back to your initial question of, you know, are all the devices, I'm sorry, this is a long way around of answering your question.
I think most devices for a few metrics, and we can get into the specific metrics that I'm talking about. are quite consistent.
Now, there might be some differences between devices.
So, for example, if you have a Whoop or a Garmin and a Coros, and I don't know, many people actually have that combination of watches.
It'd be pretty expensive and kind of unnecessary.
But they may show, for example, slightly different total sleep times.
So Coros might show seven hours and Garmin might show 7.1 hours.
And that difference, though, is consistent.
And so what my recommendation is usually if you have a device is not to compare that to other devices and sort of compare it to your normal range.
So, most of the tech from a total sleep time perspective in hours or minutes will be accurate and reliable enough to to give you feedback on how much sleep you have so when you have a bad night of sleep or you sleep less it would be able to highlight that when you have a good night's sleep and also now there's some metrics from a software perspective in terms of sleep consistency that are that are you know becoming more and more important and prevalent in terms of wearables as well so Yes, is the answer to your question.
Most of the tech is getting pretty good.
If we're talking about more buckets, we've probably segmented now to like seven different buckets.
So hopefully this is clear for people listening.
But when I think of accuracy of wearables, I also separate that out into overnight and activity.
And I think that's important. So if people remember, I spoke about the sort of three corners or buckets of wearables being smart tech, overnight tracking, so sleep and physiology, and then activity and daytime tracking.
I also think of the accuracy in those two buckets, so overnight and during activity. because a lot of the technology now is quite accurate and reliable at rest and overnight and that's because obviously we're all sleeping and mostly very stationary unless you're a restless sleeper and there's typically less like motion artifacts and errors that that come in from signaling so things like total sleep time resting heart rate heart rate variability and then some others like breathing rate temperature are typically pretty reliable from most devices Now, Peter, you touched on this, but one of the specific questions I got from our community was, you know, when I am looking at some of the numbers on my watch, whether it's HRV or your heart rate, how confident can people be that those numbers are actually accurate?
You know, are they accurate enough to trust?
Should you take it with a grain of salt?
Are they, you know, 100%? How should we think about that?
To me, the short answer is yes, they're reliable.
They're going to give you some valuable information.
And this is probably where I'm leaning towards the interpretation of that information is the crucial step. versus the actual measure.
So if I use resting heart rate as an example, because I think that's probably one of the most reliable metrics across the board in terms of any wearables that I've tested, and I think just the evidence that's out there as well, resting heart rate from different devices, some will report like lowest resting heart rate or average.
I typically will say to people, look at average resting heart rate across a full night.
And to use that as your sort of one of the main metrics that I would look at.
And the reason I say that is I think resting heart rate is one indicative of recovery, just general fitness level, illness as well.
And probably a few other things, like maybe not as sensitive as heart rate variability in terms of overtraining, but I think still sensitive from the evidence that I've seen.
And so when you think of a resting heart rate, for example, yours might be 50 beats per minute. if your typical range of resting heart rate is between 48 and 52, for the most part, your resting heart rate should be within that range, roughly speaking.
And if we're just looking at one metric, if it's within that range, I would pretty much look at it in the morning and go, great.
And then there's a few subsequent things that probably link to the recovery podcast we recorded just over a year ago.
And then I start to also include perceptual ratings and subjectiveness and all those other pieces in terms of the full picture.
If, for example, it's under that normal range, so if it drops to 45, that probably just means you're very well-rested.
Um, and usually for marathon or insurance runners, it probably just means you've taken a day off.
Um, so that's usually what I see with a lot of people is that, um, you're pretty much within this normal range and then someone takes a rest day, maybe two rest days and your heart rate is like, you know, way lower than normal.
And you're like, what's going on? Oh yeah, actually I let my body recover properly for the first time in, in three months.
And that's probably a good testimonial for the almighty taper.
Yeah. Although there's actually some conflicting opinions around tapering as well, which definitely is not for this conversation.
Yeah, that might be for another one. Maybe another one.
And sorry, for example, then if you think about resting heart rate, if you see a resting heart rate that's higher than that normal range for you, to me, that is indicative or that would prompt me to say, OK, why is it higher?
Now, maybe yesterday I did a really, really intense workout after work in the evening, and it's just taking a bit of time for my body to recover acutely from that bout of intense exercise.
Maybe I've done three or four cumulative days or consecutive days of intense training where my body is saying, oh, OK, like, you know, maybe maybe today should be an easy day or recovery day.
And or if it's significantly higher than the normal range, to me, that probably indicates an illness or some something that's a flag issue. that, you know, particularly if it's not something expected.
So obviously if you drink alcohol, you'll see this massive increase in resting heart rate.
But if, for example, I wake up tomorrow morning and I see a resting heart rate of 55, which would be very high for me, that would definitely make me reflect and think, okay, I need to change something about today because I don't, I'm not going to drink alcohol this evening.
I've trained this morning. I'm going to eat a normal meal.
So that's the sort of process that I would go through.
But definitely those metrics are, and we just use resting heart rate as an example, can be very sensitive to changes.
And so to go back to your initial question, yeah, I do think a lot of those are sensitive.
And as a rule of thumb, typically, and I shared a visual on this recently, so we can maybe point it to your listeners.
For most health metrics, so resting heart rate, heart rate variability, breathing rate, temperature, and probably total sleep time, As well.
Typically, if you think of those within your normal range and when any of those metrics are outside of your normal range, that's maybe the point when you have to question something.
The only caveat is if, for example, you have a long term illness or something that's causing something to be significantly different.
So if your normal sleep time, for example, is four hours, then there's obviously you know you should be looking to increase that number to a scientifically recommend evidence supported uh range but if you're within you know six and a half to eight hours I don't think you need to shift that significantly too much higher.
So for those kind of five or six metrics, I would typically think, okay, are they within my normal range?
If all of those things are, and all of my subjective responses are within my normal for today or what I want to do today, that's typically two green lights for me to hit go on whatever I've got planned.
It sounds very encouraging that the technology is getting better and better these days so that not only is the metrics that you're measuring pretty accurate, accurate enough that you can trust them, you can actually make decisions based on those metrics, but it seems like the other really important part of this is not just trusting the number to be accurate, but also getting a sense of your unique personal range for each one of these numbers.
And just being aware of that on either a day-to-day basis or maybe a weekly basis so that, you know, you're not falling too far outside of those ranges.
And if you are, you know why you are. Definitely.
And I think that's something I've done, I guess, personally.
And I've shared it now a couple of times just to try prompt people to do the same is just do a bit of a weekly reflection.
So whether that's on Sunday night or Monday morning or Wednesday, whatever time you can do it.
And you look back on the previous week and just check in with a couple of the metrics for your wearables and say, OK, over the last week.
You know, my resting heart rate is pretty much normal within like the example range you said.
I slept on average seven hours. One of the nights was lower, one of the nights was higher.
But again, over the last seven days, average is pretty good.
My heart rate variability is sort of stable.
It dropped significantly after a really intense workout.
That's kind of to be expected. That's fine.
And sort of go through that process like once a week.
I say once a week, not that you can't do that every day, but I don't want people to be obsessive over every small deviation in every single metric that they see in a wearable because I don't think anybody would ever exercise again or do any sort of tough workout.
But as a weekly practice, I think it's really good to reflect because I would hope that a lot of your... listeners and and people you know who who sign up to your program for example might spend a couple of minutes even a minute just thinking back oh how did my workouts go last week you know you probably encourage that to a lot of people and um okay did i feel you know did i was i did i feel full of energy did i feel well did did this workout you know align with your what you expected me to do that day and then next week oh that one was really easy i might actually bump up the the intensity for this or i felt really flat in this one so it's all that reflective practice and i think it brings me to a point of saying and you kind of like alluded to i guess some of the questions you got around like oh is the data replacing my feel and we and you mentioned around like you know rp and perceived exertion and and all that being you know really sensitive to fatigue To me, I don't think it's ever, it should never be a conversation of data or perception.
It has to be both. And I think that's like, if anybody listening to this takes one thing away from this, it's like, it should be to monitor anything for health and performance, to improve your recovery, to improve your performance, anything.
It should be a combination of objective data and perception or subjective data as well.
Yeah, I think that's a really important point.
And I've always encouraged runners to reflect back on their training.
I think that's where a lot of the learning comes from.
One of the reasons why I think having a hard copy training journal can be so important, just because you're there physically engaging with your training and writing in little subjective notes.
And I think over time, you really get to know what led to a good workout, what led to a bad workout.
And then if you're also layering on this kind of data, knowing your resting heart rate, knowing perhaps your HRV, some of these other metrics that are important for recovery, it's the trend or the pattern over time that I think is the most important aspect to this.
And you'll then be able to almost match your subjective feeling with the some of the more objective measures.
And I think that's like the holy grail, you know, nirvana place to be is actually almost guessing the objective numbers pretty accurately based on your subjective feeling.
It's almost like the runner who can get on the track and just perfectly execute certain paces without looking at their watch because they're so finely tuned and understand the art of pacing.
This is the same thing except with some of your physiology.
Definitely. And I think even on the pacing point, the more experienced you become as a runner, as a trainer, as someone who goes to the gym, in any context, even in terms of using wearables, you definitely need this sort of feedback.
I don't want to say less and less, but it definitely becomes more attuned.
So, for example, the reason I say that is because this is what actually I think the true benefit of the wearable technology is.
If you told me to go out and run, you know, a kilometer at whatever pace, I'm pretty comfortable.
It might be a few seconds plus or minus, but once I settle into a rhythm, I'm pretty confident I can run at a certain pace that I had planned to, even without looking at my watch, because you get a good feel for it.
I'd imagine a lot of your listeners, when they start out on a plan, they might need to check it quite significantly every 30 seconds to be all right, to slow down, speed up.
But as you go through a full marathon build, for example, you'll become much less reliant on checking it every so often.
But one of the really... I think really strong use cases for wearables during exercise, and then I'll give another example for recovery, is if, for example, I go outside and run, I'm running a tempo, doing a tempo workout or whatever it is, and I know that, okay, typically for that pace in that workout, my heart rate response is around 70%.
This is completely random numbers, but stay with me.
If on a day, for example, tomorrow, I go out and do my Wednesday workout and my heart rate is now at 85%. and I'm looking, I'm running the same pace that I should be, I'm looking at my watch and my heart rate's higher, that to me is probably a sign that, okay, I haven't maybe fully recovered from previous sort of, I guess, like stimulus, or there's something going on that after that workout, or maybe during it, it should prompt me to go, hmm, okay, let me have a quick check-in.
Do I need to reduce the pace so that I don't dig myself a huge hole that I can't get out of tomorrow?
Um, or maybe I can, I know I can survive through the session, but actually after the session, I need to message Jason or whoever my coach is and say, like, I did a workout today.
It was, you know, my heart rate was through the roof.
Maybe we should tweak tomorrow. So that's, I think like a really valuable, um, Use case for a lot of the technology for a lot of your listeners.
And the other example I'll give for that is if you wake up in the morning and you see something that's just like off, even though you feel like you slept really well, you feel recovered, that can just be an early indicator.
And the example I'll give for that is like a really easy one during COVID when you would see these spikes in temperature or breathing rate, maybe a day or two before symptoms occur. sort of onset.
And so that's where I think the technology, when it sort of almost disagrees with the expected, that's when it should really prompt you to go into it.
If it agrees for the most part, it's kind of check, check, fine, move on, carry on as planned for today.
But those cases where it's disagreeing with sort of your perception or how you feel, they're the cases where I'm going to stop and go, okay, what's happening there?
A huge thanks to Avello, the world's best smart running shoe, for their support.
Created by a team of ex-Nike designers and engineers, Avello measures impact in your unique form, giving you invaluable insights on your technique and when your form starts to break down.
For a very limited time, their Kickstarter is offering a 34% discount, so get your pair today.
I personally bought my own, and I can't wait to rock a pair of smart shoes at the next group run.
Use the link in the episode description to get your pair on their Kickstarter, or you can learn more at AvelloRunning.com.
Hey, just a short break for our partner Prevonex, the only supplement company that I trust.
They've just released their new product, Muscle Health Plus.
This is your anti-sorness supplement, a combination of creatine, branched chain, and essential amino acids, as well as ingredients to aid protein synthesis and absorption.
Use code Jason15 for 15% off your first order at Prevonex.com.
Now, if you're a master's runner, you want to build some muscle, or if you're particularly injury prone, Muscle Health Plus is going to help you hold onto your muscle and rebound faster from those workouts and long runs.
See all the details at Prevonex.com and be sure to use code Jason15 to save 15% off your first purchase.
Yeah, it's such an interesting kind of way of thinking about all this data.
Maybe we can talk a little bit more about the specific metrics that are really beneficial for runners to track.
And obviously, there's the distance you ran, the overall time it took, perhaps your average pace, individual mile splits or kilometer splits.
A lot of the things that smart devices track are physiological, a little bit more based on what's going on inside your body, not the work that you're performing.
What do you think are the most important metrics to track for a runner besides some of those basics?
So aside from the volume or intensity metrics, like you said, distance, elevation, paces, splits, aside from those, I do think there's value in, again, with a coach or over trends over time, looking at accumulation of time spent in different heart rate zones.
I think there's plenty of evidence supporting that, and I think that can give you quite a good... gauge again as a trend over time okay am i still operating at different intensities am i training across that spectrum of you know we see this debate online all the time and i like i'm definitely not here to talk about which zone is the best or which which this should you be training but i do think obviously you need to sprinkle in some intensity and i think sometimes people can get scared of that or shy away from it so sometimes um irrespective of the pacing um Sometimes you can use heart rate to make sure that you're getting sort of a little bit of exposure and time at those higher intensities.
So I think that's one on top of the pace and the elevation, et cetera.
And then I think the other one's pretty flipped to the overnight variables for me.
And if I had to hang my hat on variables for people, it would definitely be total sleep time. resting heart rate, heart rate variability, and then I think temperature and breathing rate as well.
Now, some devices don't offer those last two, temperature and breathing rate.
So that's where some of the screenless ones might offer some more metrics than some of the other ones, for example.
Temperature and respiratory rate or breathing rate, definitely from an illness detection perspective.
Um, there's also with aura ring and whoop and a few others, um, menstrual tracking with the temperature can be very sensitive across the menstrual cycle and within an individual, um, um, can show like, I guess, similar trends from cycle to cycle.
And so that can help people sort of manage symptoms, but also potentially manage the training around that as well.
So that they're probably two that I would also say are maybe less from a day to day.
Like, I don't think your breathing rate will change day to day unless you are sick or maybe you go from up to altitude, potentially you'll see an increase.
So they're ones, I guess, from a flag perspective, but There's probably, you know, in a wearable device, there's probably 500 or at least 100, 200 metrics that you could look at.
But there's probably only, I think I listed five there overnight that I would really sort of hang my hat on and to try and interpret with a little bit of care and caution.
Quick scan on a day-to-day and then obviously that weekly or monthly sort of reflection to look back on those.
And one of the things you said actually a few minutes ago, which I just remembered, You had described the sort of holy grail of, you know, just encouraging people to use a physical paper diary or journal.
And I think that goes for endurance runners.
I think that goes for like powerlifters.
I've done work in Olympic weightlifting and rugby and like a lot of people still like that.
And that is one area that wearables have not done well.
The linking of subjective things. reports or notes or insights, or sorry, to produce insights with the objective data.
The one that I do think has done the best of this is actually Whoop.
One of the reasons I think they, like everyone complains about the pricing model and the subscription, but the subscription is really paying for the insights that you get and the use of the journal.
It's not actually paying for the technology.
So in terms of technology, it's the same tech as most other wearables, but what they do really well is is they encourage you to fill out a journal every day.
And that might be on your behaviors yesterday.
Did you drink alcohol? Did you work late?
You can kind of self-select a lot of different choices you have.
You can make up your own journal, customize it.
And after a few weeks and every month, they give you a report to say, hey, these are the biggest contributors to your recovery and these are the biggest negative contributors to your recovery.
Now, what I would love to see I would love to see them do that with the actual values versus the recovery score.
That would be my note to whoop. Instead of saying that these things impact your recovery score, I would love to see these things impact your resting heart rate or these things impact your total sleep time.
But like I said, at the moment, that's probably one that does that better.
And it's probably for later in the conversation, But I'm sure you're going to ask me, so if you had to pick a wearable, what would it be?
I can share my ideal stack, but that's one that I think that they do well versus other companies who maybe don't have some of those app or software features incorporated into their technology.
Yeah, let's hit on some of those metrics that you mentioned.
I think you mentioned resting heart rate, total sleep time.
You mentioned heart rate variability or HRV.
Let's focus on those just for a second. So total sleep time is... you know, I think most runners are probably getting seven to eight hours.
Some of us can sleep a little bit less than that.
Some of us, you know, I don't know who they are, but they get eight and a half, nine hours of sleep every night.
I'd like to steal the amount of time that they're finding in the day for that.
That sounds amazing. But it also sounds like this is individual and as long as you are feeling pretty good getting kind of in that average you know seven to eight hours you're probably okay um i'm hesitant to say that more is better when it comes to total sleep time because that's only true up to a certain point and then you can certainly sleep too much and and then it's it's not actually beneficial um do i have anything wrong on that No, I think that's pretty spot on.
The thing maybe I'd add is like this sort of growing evidence base around the sleep regularity or sleep consistency. so outside of yeah if you are sleeping on average between six six and a half hours and eight hours like i think you're you're pretty well set from uh and that's from a recovery point of view but also just a general health point of view and particularly for a lot of people who listen to this who are very active um i wouldn't want them to add so if someone's sleeping seven hours for example I wouldn't want them to add on another 30 minutes of sleep if it sacrifices them exercising more.
And I maybe have a different view to some people on this, but I think it's based on evidence that I've seen in that exercise is actually the, in my opinion, the most important of the triangle of exercise, nutrition and sleep. a lot of people will put sleep at the top of that i would put exercise nutrition and then sleep and obviously not sleeping four hours but in terms of mortality risk even when you sleep less but you exercise sufficiently and have a good diet and you are technically you're like statistically um at a lower risk of mortality than if you sleep more and actually less so that's a side note for for the health conversation but yeah just to add would be the sleep regularity so that's basically just going to bed at the same time and waking up at the same time I say the same time, it's within a 30 minute, maybe 60 minute window.
Travel weekends, different social plans will obviously hinder that.
And again, I say to people like for the most part, look back on the last month and if you've been consistent within 30, 45 minutes, 28 or 30 days, I think that's, you can be pretty confident that you're a regular sleeper.
So that'd be the thing I'd add on top of the duration.
There's a couple of other metrics within it that I think are definitely worth mentioning.
Within it, I say the wearable space. Sleep quality is one which is basically just a percentage of the time you're actually in bed and asleep versus some of the time that you're awake.
I think for the most part, unless you're a really bad sleeper, it tends to just be above, you know, people use an arbitrary threshold of 85%.
And I think that's one which is pretty sensitive to, I guess, illness.
So if you're sick, you'll tend to just spend a lot of time awake at night and that will show up.
Another one would be movement. So I guess restlessness during sleep.
Some of the wearables are pretty good at picking up like motion during sleep and they'll sort of show that as the number of times you've moved or, you know, how much you've moved.
I don't think they're perfect, but certainly broadly speaking, it's good enough to say that, you know, this was a restless sleep or restful sleep.
This was a restless sleep and this was an extremely restless sleep.
And then I definitely have to mention like the sleep stages because they're probably the thing that people get very hung up on.
So people are very comfortable in the other metrics, which we'll obviously get into in a second as well.
But for some reason, sleep stages, somebody sees like a low deep sleep value and they freak out and they think, oh, my muscles aren't recovering.
I need to do this and take this supplement.
And then... I've seen this before on a recovery day.
So they take a day off of activity. On that day, they do like an ice bath, a sauna.
They take all these different supplements.
They eat really well. Or sorry, they eat like treats.
And they've probably just gotten into a caloric balance.
So that with ice bath, sauna, day off of activity, everything else.
And then the next day, they might see this huge bump in deep sleep, for example.
And they go, oh, it's because of And then they have to list out all these 10 different things that they've done yesterday to elicit that change.
But for sleep stages, the variance between devices is huge.
And so if you have a Coros on and I've got a Whoop on and someone else has a Garmin, there's no way we should be comparing those metrics.
I do think in certain contexts, they're sensitive to detect changes in an individual.
So for example... I've shared this out before, and again, I can link it to you afterwards.
For me, a couple of years ago, I was using Oura Ring, and I still use it.
But when I logged sort of alcohol intake across maybe a year or so, and as my alcohol intake increased, my percentage of REM sleep decreased. on my OR.
And that trend is enough for me to say, okay, that is sensitive to the type changes for me, but also that change in a percentage of REM sleep is supported by the evidence.
That is the expected trend. So in the literature, REM sleep does decrease with alcohol intake.
So that's a use case where, you know, you can see changes in sleep stages for yourself, but So, you know, it's quite an individual thing and it takes a bit of nuance to interpret some of that.
So for most people, I'd say have a look at it.
If you see massive changes from what's normal for you, that's probably some sort of a change, but they're not perfect in any capacity.
Yeah, that's the aspect of sleep tracking that I'm probably most suspicious about.
And I don't really put a lot of stock into sleep.
REM sleep, deep sleep, light sleep. For me, if I'm getting that seven and a half, eight hours, then I know I'm going to feel pretty good.
And yeah, I would love maybe playing around with a whoop just to get some perhaps more accurate sleep data than what I currently get from my Coros watch.
But very interesting aspect of sleep tracking.
Now, when it comes to resting heart rate, here is where I think lower is probably better until you're maybe at 50 or anything lower than that.
And beyond that, I feel like it's just maybe personal variability.
Do you think there's a number that runners should be shooting for when it comes to resting heart rate?
Does this value change with age? You know, how do you think about that and whether or not you kind of want to keep driving it down? yeah this is really interesting and i've had this conversation quite a bit with people it's probably the one that lower like you said i do agree with what you said lower is typically better um and i mean that absolutely speaking so with other things usually i'm saying like oh relative or like individual with resting heart rate the evidence is quite clear that it's representative of a lower mortality risk and like you said when you start getting below 40
Um, I think there's just some extreme cases and make some really, really like incredibly fit people, but there's also probably some other factors that, that go into that as well.
Um, so I wouldn't be, you know, if you're resting heart rate, I just keep using you and I keep saying 50 as an example, if you're resting heart rate is 50 beats per minute.
If I was supporting you or educating or working with you, I wouldn't be encouraging you to be all, you have to get it below 40.
Like there's this big, um, you know, significant change in your health by doing that.
I think the evidence is quite clear that if you get it, you know, lower is typically better.
Age is definitely a factor, but I think the most important factor is fitness level.
And I think that's why you're seeing, you know, you'll see this trend of, okay, population averages are, average heart rate does increase as you get older.
But I think when you subset endurance athletes or just athletes in general, you'll see that increase way, way slower.
And I do think that's something that people can be mindful of is like for that longer term tracking from a health perspective. trying to maintain a lower resting heart rate and that's usually representative of like better cardiovascular fitness um and again like i said reduce mortality risk so definitely that's one that i think lower can be better but from a i guess from a day-to-day perspective you're not going to see that lower like one beat per minute per day so that's a that's definitely a longer term thing so you know in a specific use case here someone in a marathon block I do think that normal range is the way to interpret this.
And if you see a lower, like I said, it's probably just indicative that you're well recovered from something.
If you see it creep, as in maybe a couple of consecutive days outside that normal range, that's probably, like I said, cause for a conversation with your coach or maybe a hard reset of a day off or changing of intensity of work. of running as well.
And for resting heart rate, definitely sensitive to illness and alcohol, like I said.
So if you have a bug or flu or anything, you will definitely see an increase in resting heart rate above that sort of normal range for you.
So Peter, when I was in college, I was a weirdo and I went to sleep with my chest strap heart rate monitor on because I wanted to see what my absolute lowest heart rate was overnight.
And it did measure a 38 beat per minute low heart rate.
And take this for what it's worth, but last night, just based on the wrist sensor on my watch, it gave me a value of 44 as the overnight low on my watch.
So I'd say I'm doing okay. I've heard people with overnight lows of 30 beats per minute, which...
Maybe they're just a large person. Do bigger people have lower heart rates?
Is it sort of like the hummingbird versus elephant heart rate example where bigger creatures just tend to have lower heart rates?
It's a good question. Typically, for humans, so if I remove all the other animals and creatures, I would typically expect it to be the other way because...
I guess like in some capacities, like size is related to fitness level or potentially like there's other contributors like body fat percentage and lean mass and endurance.
So there's all those other factors that I guess like heart rate represents.
But so, I mean, if you're in the, if you're in the forties, that's, I don't give anything to be concerned about from it being high, but also from it being, you know, excessively low either.
Yeah, okay. I won't start worrying just yet.
Now, one of the metrics that I think is a little bit new, a lot of runners are into it these days, is HRV or heart rate variability, which from my understanding is the fact that your heart rate should be a little bit variable.
It's a good thing. It's a sign of high fitness levels.
And when your heart rate variability is lower, it means you might be under more stress or not as recovered or not as fit.
But I'll be the first to admit, I do not have kind of an expert's grasp on HRV and how to implement in training.
One of my biases is that I'm not sure if you should use HRV to kind of plan your training.
I can just imagine my coach's face when I was in college if I went to practice one day and was like, sorry, coach, my HRV is low today.
I'm not running the workout. He might just like kick me off the team.
So like, can you give us like your overview on HRV?
Is it a good thing to plan training around?
What are your thoughts on this? Yeah, so you've described it well initially.
It's typically measured in milliseconds.
This is like the figure or the number that people will see.
And it's measuring the time between successive heartbeats.
And typically, people say that when your autonomic nervous system is in balance or is in a good place... you'll see typically higher values.
And if you're maybe stressed and your sympathetic nervous system is in place too often, chronic stress, you'll typically see lower values.
The big caveat to that is there's a huge genetic component to heart rate variability.
And even within people of the same fitness level.
So for example, I've seen a data set um of you know i think it's over 900 people or at least samples who have a resting heart rate of 40 beats per minute and the ranges of heart rate variability that i've seen in that go from 40 or even maybe 38 40 right the way up to 150 milliseconds um and so that that's that's the variability in heart rate variability that people would get confused of and i think one thing i would say to people is if you see somebody with a heart rate variability that's 150 milliseconds and that's not something you should attain to do if your heart rate variability is 50 for example because you can see you can definitely see um small improvements in your heart variability like month on month year on year and i think that's something that people can consider as part of health But you won't see these large scale, massive changes unless you've had unless you are like chronically low and you've had chronic stress and illness and everything else.
And you've gotten to a point where you've completely changed and eradicated a lot of that.
That's where you'll see a huge change. And I definitely also want to signpost like three people that are. experts like specifically in heart rate variability two definitely and also a third who shares some really good stuff one uh dr marco altini so he's made his own app called hrv for training and he's consulted with a couple of wearable companies as well um and he's done a ton of research and shares a lot so he's definitely somebody who i i learned a lot from and i think if you want to delve into some specifics and details i would definitely go towards his um socials and substack um Same with Dr. Andrew Flatt.
So another HRV researcher who's worked in kind of health and sport.
Again, just share some really good snippets and use cases on Twitter, or sorry, on X and online as well.
And then I think Brady Holman does a good job of sharing and distilling and translating some of the research.
So maybe three people that I would definitely point people towards if they want to go into the depths of heart rate variability, specifically for training.
Because one of the differences in what we'll speak about today from wearables and maybe a lot of the traditional research in heart rate variability is that wearables are obviously measuring heart rate variability overnight.
And for the most part, there have been different ways that companies have done this.
Some did heart rate variability during deep sleep before, some did it the last four hours of sleep, some did it, you know, all these different kind of parameters.
I think most companies now have settled on an average heart rate variability across the whole night.
And that's sort of representative of, I guess, your autonomic nervous system state overnight.
For a scale is typically related to what has been mostly researched in morning readings of heart rate variability.
So this, a lot of the research previously, and this is obviously predated to the wearable technology, where, you know, if you're in a team sport setting or you're an endurance athlete, you would wake up, yeah, you might go to the toilet, sit down or settle down for a minute, and then you would take a minute or a three minute or a five minute heart rate variability reading, and you would use that one single measure as sort of your autonomic nervous state that day and that might help guide training decisions.
I just want to acknowledge there's two differences in that.
Most of the research and the evidence is there, That's not to say that the overnight readings from wearables are invaluable or not valuable, because I think the research will come out showing, and it is coming out now, showing a lot more data from overnight from wearables.
But there may be sort of a decoupling between taking a measurement in the morning and overnight.
So this gets into some of the detail, and Andrew Flatt does a really good job of sharing a lot of this.
So I don't know how much detail you want to go into on this, but sometimes...
From a lot of his work, he'll say that a morning reading might be a little bit more sensitive to make decisions on training that day versus the overnight reading.
So that's just one important signpost to sort of mention to the listeners here.
Yeah, I would be very interested in seeing that. both being tracked at the same time, getting those overnight readings as well as getting the morning reading using that protocol and then just kind of comparing them over maybe a two to four week time period and seeing what you learn from that.
Yeah, so Andrew shared quite a bit of that.
So I would definitely check out some of his blogs and stuff.
And I think Marco as well. And it's been used in, you know, rugby sevens, for example, Olympic cycle, different different team sports as well would use it.
The reason I think I lean towards, unless it's like specific individuals or cases, it's like one more thing you don't have to do if you use a wearable in the morning.
And I know that might seem like, oh, if you're really serious about training, you should do this.
Like for a lot of athletes that I've worked with, they just simply don't want to.
They get really fed up with the reading.
You know, there can be errors in the reading in the morning.
You might take another one and people get frustrated.
So there are definitely limitations, I guess, to both.
I think for most people, you can use the heart rate variability with the resting heart rate from your wearable device to sort of give you a general indication of, okay, my system is ready for what I've got planned today.
That's kind of how I try to simplify it.
And again, for heart rate variability, similar to what we've talked about for resting heart rate, a normal range for you is typically good.
And so Marco Altini will be somebody who I would agree with when he says this, that we should be preaching normal is good, not high is good.
Because for you, within your normal range, that typically means my body is functioning normally.
That's a good place to be. Normal is green.
Normal is good. Sometimes if you see low heart rate variabilities, particularly consecutive days, that will be maybe when I would make a change in something.
So You'll probably see from a lot of the work that I share and the people that I speak to and even probably from this conversation that I don't tend to make too many decisions on like one change or one variable unless it's an extremely large deviation.
And usually when you see that, it's more than one metric.
And if, though, for example, I start to see two or three consecutive days of something outside of a normal range.
So let's use heart rate variability in this example.
If I see a lower heart rate variability for two or three days in a row, that would definitely make me that would make me stop and think, OK, something is like I'm either not recovering properly, something stressing my system.
I'm going to instead of doing my workout today or hard workout I'm going to change that for an easy run or a cycle or even just take a circuit breaker sort of recovery day and see if that brings me back into my normal range if it does then the next day I'll do said workout just a day later and I think that's the use case that most people can use it for I know there's another camp in the endurance world where they will use HRV sort of guided or almost like prescriptive training where if it's low, you will do completely easy stuff.
And I think Brady shared an article on this before where, you know, I don't like to use like two extremes.
I think it's just, you can learn things from that approach.
You also still sometimes need to do the work.
And sometimes people think, oh, low heart rate variability means I can't perform.
And that's definitely not the case. There's a lot of research in powerlifting team sports where heart rate variability the morning of competition will actually be suppressed.
But that's not a bad thing. That just means that you have a level of anxiety for performance that actually might mean that you perform optimally.
So that's a different way to think about it than maybe a lot of the wearable companies have sort of presented the information to people.
I think that's like the million dollar learning right there about HRV is that if it is slightly depressed and lower than your quote unquote average morning of a hard workout or especially a race, it might be just because of your anxiety going into that race.
You know, I know everyone who has run the Boston Marathon sets their alarm for 4 a.m.
They're also waking up at 3 a.m. worried that they're going to miss their alarm.
Their body's just on high alert. I'm sure their HRV when they actually get up at 4 in the morning after six hours of broken sleep is not good.
Can you imagine if the entire field of the Boston Marathon walked off of the starting line in Hopkinton because their HRV was a little low?
It strikes you as a little bit humorous.
And I like what you said too earlier about they may not always be accurate.
And so from my coach's perspective, I would want to then tell my athletes, if it's ever giving you a number you don't like, a one-off, Let's just imagine that it's a mistake.
Let's only believe it. If it's a couple days in a row, you start seeing that trend.
I'm a big fan of maybe lying to yourself a little bit, you know, in this way of being like, oh, it's just because I'm really excited to race today.
And that's why my HRV is lower. And you kind of just need to move on with with your athletic journey.
Right. Yeah. Yeah. I do think like the consecutive rule, like two days in a row or something, I think that that that's when I'm having a conversation or if I'm an athlete, I'm asking my coach a question.
But if it's one day, like I said, it's typically it might just be a bit of variability.
The other point we have to make around, though, is I guess for me, like performing is slightly different to adaptation training.
That's the only slight caveat to the suppressed heart rate on race day.
Absolutely, you need a level of arousal for any sport or competition to perform optimally.
That level of arousal might be different for different individuals as well.
Some people need to be super hyped up for techno music, everything.
When I was playing rugby, I'm not that person.
I need a little bit of arousal. I don't want the... extreme like screaming and slapping and everything else so that's an individual thing as well but um in a training context for example and you said okay for you know if you wake up and you've got a hard workout planned your hrv is a little suppressed that doesn't mean you can't perform the workout to what's prescribed it doesn't mean that you won't reach that output potentially it might mean that your recovery is a little bit slower off the other side of it It's potentially, and again, I say this as an asterisk, but that's how I think about it.
So I still want people to do the work. You still got to train hard to elicit any change of fitness or performance or have any benefit, but potentially...
If the next morning you also see that suppressed hydra V, you've already in your mind gone, actually, you know what?
I know yesterday's session is going to take me a little bit longer to recover today.
I'm going to take today even easier than we had in plan.
And that's sort of those situations that I want people to think about when they're using this technology to sort of guide training.
It is a combination of some rules that you put in place from the objective data, layered with some subjectiveness, layered with your coach as well.
Like you said, it's Your coach is going to know what is coming in the next week and two weeks.
And so, for example, I might want to overload you this week.
I might want this to be a peak week. And for example, I might expect a lower or suppressed heart rate variability during a peak week.
But I know that in the next two weeks, you're tapering the volume and we might see a change and a balance.
So that's the sort of nuance that happens.
I mean, I feel for wearable companies because they can't apply that to everybody because they don't have that context.
And that's where, like I said, the strides moving forward will be the nuance and the interpretation and the application of all of the data we're speaking about now.
Peter, I think I could make this a three-hour long podcast if I really wanted to, but both for our listeners' sanity and my editor's sanity, we'll start wrapping up soon.
One final question. Let's put a bow on this.
You mentioned this earlier. What is your ideal wearable stack of Let's talk about for Dr. Peter Tierney, but then also maybe a general recommendation for the endurance runner.
Everyone can just skip forward to this point to hear, what does he actually recommend?
Yeah, I know. Okay, again, I'll caveat because I think it's important.
Like I said, I wear different devices because I've tested some, I've bought some previously, I compare them.
I use myself as a guinea pig. I don't recommend people do that because I'm very good at dissociating from numbers because I've done so much testing.
And, you know, if I see different numbers from five different wearables, which I have seen, that does not weigh on me whatsoever.
I will look at it. I'll type it in or I'll log it in whatever capacity of doing it.
And I'll forget about it. So if, if people are, you know, are using two wearables, I try and encourage them, like don't get caught up in the comparison game because you can do this forever.
And again, if that's taking your energy away from other things in training or performance or even just health and life in general like that's not what you want to spend your time doing so that's the caveat that i'll say as well so i have quite a lot and i still wear some for consistency because i think the long-term game is the one that i'm playing personally um This is a unique combination that I don't think people know about or do often enough.
And again, it's probably biased because this is what I use at the moment.
But from a smartwatch, if I'm a runner, and again, we say this in the context of your listeners, I like Chorus.
I use it I know some of the guys in the company.
I think they're really good. They're really open to listening to challenges, to evolutions, iterations.
And I like their tech. Their tech is good.
And for me, the reason I say Khoros is...
From an activity tracking perspective, it gives me everything that I need.
I personally, like I said earlier in the episode, I don't use the smart tech features.
I disable messaging, notifications. I just don't want any of that.
And whilst I do have the Coros armband, If you have the money and the interest and the insight to get a whoop band, I would pair a whoop with a chorus.
And this is at the moment. So my opinion might change.
I don't think this is my opinion six months ago, five months ago.
And it might change in five or six months.
Not drastically. But the reason I say that chorus for all the race, the activity running the battery life is amazing.
I love it. The simplicity, all those pieces, I think is really, really good for running, even for cycling and other endurance feats.
For the WHOOP, I still think at the moment, the insights you get from a health and recovery and behavior standpoint are better than other devices or companies at the moment.
And the reason I pair that with this and the one asterisk to WHOOP is get WHOOP with a you can basically use the WHOOP as an arm strap heart rate monitor synced up to your chorus.
And so you can use it as an accurate heart rate monitor during activity, like everybody does with A Coros heart rate monitor, an arm strap, there's a polar option as well.
But you can broadcast your heart rate from your Whoop to your Coros.
And in that way, I think you've covered with those two devices, all of your bases in terms of the sleep and overnight tracking.
Again, the data from Coros, total sleep time is consistent and reliable compared to Whoop and Aura and other devices.
So if you really only need one device, I think that's a great option. um it the chorus doesn't currently offer temperature tracking on the apex it might have it on a different device i'll have to double check that statement and for spiritual breathing rate and there are things that whoop does have and like i said we've got some other features versus of course that don't have so um that would be a combination that i lean towards at the moment and i think people maybe haven't considered using the whoop as an arm strap during periods of activity when they want you know really accurate heart rate heart rate data What a unique stack.
Thank you, Peter. That was really interesting and something I'll have to think about too, because I'm getting more interested in some of the more general health features in addition to the sports specific tracking features that Kouros is really good at.
You know, like I mentioned, I personally have a Kouros as well.
Peter, thanks so much for such an interesting conversation.
I know you're very deep in the world of wearables and metrics and more importantly, how to think about all this stuff, because like you said earlier the data isn't enough it's then interpreting the data knowing what to do with the data and that's where an expert like yourself a coach someone who can really provide that context around the data and how it relates to you personally is so critically important um i'm definitely going to encourage folks to follow you on instagram i really love you know some of the um data visualizations that you post on Instagram with regard to not just wearables, but also recovery.
And you do a great job of kind of putting everything into almost a grading system of What's really effective?
What might be very expensive? What's inexpensive yet effective and different ways of thinking about how to prioritize things in your training.
So I think there's a lot of value there.
Is there anywhere else, Peter, that you'd like to point folks to?
I think that's a good place. And I appreciate the kind words as well.
Instagram is a good place. And I think from there, there's a couple of links that will signpost people to, you know, if they want to get in touch on an individual basis or companies or even I have a resource that I will get out soon.
I need to share that maybe by the time this podcast is out, a wearable resource that might help. you know present some of this in a sort of an ebook or that type of fashion as well so that might be something that some listeners will find valuable um and yeah i think the other maybe i'll point you to two other people as well because i think they do quite a lot of the data comparisons and things like that as well whereas i probably straddle the that side but also like very much the application and the interpretation and that side of things and the quantified scientist on on youtube shares some really good like um device comparisons and he ranks them for sort of like sleep stages and sleep quality versus a dream headset, which is like a, I guess a more accurate way of determining sleep stages.
He'll compare heart rate during exercise, et cetera, for different devices.
So he's worth following. It's quite, there's a bit of numbers and data interpretation there.
So it can be a little bit heavy for some people.
And then also DC Rainmaker, I think everybody knows, like reviews pretty much every piece of tech that you can think of.
So I definitely point you to those two people as well from a true like testing technology perspective.
Really interesting. Yeah, I've been following DC Rainmaker for 15 years, I think.
If you're looking for a review on any piece of technology, he's the guy to follow.
Peter, thanks so much for your time. I so appreciate it.
All right. Thanks for having me again. Those reviews are incredibly impactful and helpful for this small business.
If you have questions about your running, feel free to email me at support at strengthrunning.com or you can search our website at strengthrunning.com.
For more digestible tips, videos, memes, and more, follow me on Instagram at jasonfits1.
We'll be in touch.
