7 Comments
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Anabel Capalbo's avatar

Wonderful perspective on the importance of showing up, even when everything is not perfect.

Kyle Shepard's avatar

I know the data has their place and can be helpful in many instances, but your post beautifully explains why I don’t use wearables in any way. Great stuff

Brad Stulberg's avatar

Thank you so much, Kyle! That's exactly the needle I was trying to thread, and I'm glad it came across that way for you.

Kyle Shepard's avatar

Its a great modern example of objective data being useful but our own subjective assessment, discipline, and resilience being more important. I’m not interested in a robot telling me I’m under-recovered because of my child’s sleep regression, minor illness, changing work schedule, etc. I’ll lean on my subjective assessment of how I feel during a warm-up or early stages of a workout and adjust perceived exertion accordingly. I often don’t feel like getting after it even when I’m well recovered. Resistance always present. How can we develop systems to show up in some capacity despite any circumstance both for our exertion and recovery without needing objective data as a continuous guide? Lot of skill opportunities regarding reflection, self-assessment, self-command, etc when we lean on the subjective.

All that being said, the robots still have their place and can be a useful guide as someone is developing those skills assuming they don’t have access to a human mentor/coach instead. Need initial discipline prior to developing self-discipline.

Karl Rysted's avatar

I just closed my Garmin Connect app. When I see the readiness score, I always tell myself it doesn't matter. But I wonder. If it didn't matter, why did I have the app open all the time?

Bro Saeed's avatar

As I'm listening to this and thinking to myself, these numbers can be either foil OR friend. It depends on how you frame the number. If you get a low number, do you treat it as a prediction OR a challenge. Obviously, this can't be done recklessly, but how you personally interpret that score can have as much OR more to do with how it affects you than the actual number itself. Just a random thought as I continue to consider this idea.

Shafa Yahya's avatar

I am so glad I don't use these wearable devices. Never liked the idea of every step I take being tracked. It's too stressful.