If you felt wearables are just a fad and doesn’t add much value other than being a fashion accessory, it’s time you seriously reconsider your opinion. There is proof from an ultra-marathon runner, who holds a British record for 100 kms distance, who swears by his Garmin Watch for the way he consistently developed and has now become a highly successful sportsman in his own right.
Steve Way, the athlete says, "A huge amount of my motivation in the first few years of my running was the statistics I was getting out of my smartwatch, so I lived by the improvement curves I was seeing on Garmin Connect and that's what turned me into the athlete I am”.
Some features quite useful
One of the features in wearables, particularly in the sports category is known as ‘Performance Condition’. This shows the settings for the heartbeat rate and how stressed the person is. These parameters are quite useful for the athletes and their trainers to monitor and then make those fine adjustments to bring about improvements. Ultimately, many of these sportspersons are training to compete in national and international events and even fractions of a second variation in timing could mean defeat or victory. That’s how competitive the sport is.
Some of the other features, like tracking your diet and monitoring sleep are also put to adequate use in the overall training module. It is not as if these were not thought of earlier, but they were done manually and the chances for human error were high. Now, there is a device that records all these activities and also presents in the precise format needed for the training to be evaluated and corrective steps initiated.
If you have plans of becoming a professional runner or even an amateur weekend runner, get yourself a suitable smartwatch and there are also specialised apps that guide you through the process of preparing yourself and monitoring the progress you make. Some of these apps can produce some excellent reports on spreadsheets and so on to make it absolutely easy for you to keep making progress and emerge a great runner.