Stats & my relationship with running tracking technology…
After sharing my recent thoughts about Garmin with Viliuso, he encouraged me to write a blog/post, for anyone else that might be feeling the same way.
I believe that fitness tracking can be hugely beneficial and severely detrimental at the same time…
It can significantly improve our mental health by showing progress, building hope, “healthy” competition, motivation and excitement. On the other hand, it can create a negative, “unhealthy”, obsessive relationship with fitness and exercise.
I remember how annoyed Vilius would get with my Garmin watch. I would come home from a long run and an hour later my watch would buzzzz telling me to MOVE. A seemingly healthy nudge to prevent long periods of sedentary behaviour. Unbeknown to the watch, I had a severely unhealthy relationship with moving my body. I could use Garmin to justify moving. I am being healthy whilst also grasping onto control. Using exercise to numb feelings, judge my sense of productivity and worth based on my running mileage for a given week, prove to myself that I am strong/disciplined and the list goes on.
The beginning: I started tracking my heart rate and running sessions around 8 or 9 years ago. Heart rate data is my favourite, I’m a huge dweeb and really enjoy seeing fluctuations with my heart rate from stress, peace, periods etc. I’ve always really enjoyed tracking it all. Alongside tracking my heart rate, I’ve tracked most of my running/cycling/swimming session. It’s helped me in so many ways, mostly developing a real intuitive communication between myself and my body. This sounds counterintuitive because you would think that tracking your stats might decrease your natural ability to read your body, that it might make you rely on technology to pace yourself etc. For me, I’ve learned to tune into how I feel and what pace I’m running from tracking it. I started off by watching my watch, looking at the pace, post run stats etc etc, (in an overly obsessive way). Fast forward to now, from years of tracking I can run certain pages without glancing at my watch. Tracking my pace gave me a baseline, it allowed me to understand and then slowly become less reliant on technology and more in tune with myself.
So that’s the positive, it allows you to tune in with yourself.
The middle: Grappling with my relationship with exercise. In 2014, my relationship with running and exercise changed. I had an awful achilles injury that forced me to stop running. This pause ended up being the biggest catalyst for change in my life. I left for Orkney that summer and my life was never the same.
However, the months before Orkney, slowing down and living without running was painful. I have talked about it in the past, in combination with other things it forced to me to sit with and explore how I was truly feeling. Before I delved into exploring what was really going on, I was filled guilt, shame and a real sense of ANGST. I didn’t have my outlet for stress and overwhelm and I didn’t have data to weirdly obsess over and feel good about. The worst thing that Garmin did for my obsessive brain at that point was highlight that I was DETRAINING. It was an awful. It may not seem awful to people who have never had a complex relationship with running or don’t have something that they pour all there energy into. The injury forced me to stop and it felt completely out of my control.
After a few weeks into my injury recovery, I switched the Garmin off. I realised seeing the words detraining and noticing a different in my rest heart rate etc was adding to my existing angst and overwhelm. (This is not to say everyone should turn tech off, it’s just to say that I think it’s important we look at our relationship to technology/things outside of us and see how it makes us truly feel).
The present moment: 24th of March, 2022; 10.55am, (it’s scorching outside and I’m on the train to Edinburgh)
DETRAINING, UNPRODUCTIVE, those words that come up instantly after you finish an exercise session still impact me. Thankfully no where near as much as they used to. But I truly believe that Garmin shouldn’t have that feature. Yes it allows you to track progress but at what mental cost?! Having pace/heart rate data is wonderful and we can use that data, alongside checking in with ourselves to work out if we are over/under training. WE do NOT need these words to pop up and let us know if we are UNPRODUCTIVE or not. It’s like Garmin doesn’t understand rest.
In sum, I don’t believe fitness tracking is all negative. I think it has worth and I still use Garmin regularly to track my exercise, resting heart rate, sleep, HRV etc. However, I do believe we need to recognise that fitness tech could be contributing to unhealthy relationships with exercise. STRESSING over how much we exercise can literally cancel out the benefits we would get from exercise.
Like everything balance is key.
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