What are the best apps and tools to personalize your fitness tracker data and goals?

As a professional strength athlete, I say that fitness apps and wearables still have a ways to go before they can be useful. As someone who’s developed fitness wearables for a living, I've found that many of their workout features still lack the necessary accuracy. However, for strength athletes seeking to utilize wearables, prioritize a fitness wearable that provides precise heart rate monitoring. Specifically, heart rate monitoring and sleep tracking features, including derived values like HRV (heart rate variability), tend to demonstrate greater accuracy compared to various other metrics available in these devices. No need to pay too much attention to the calories burned or activity tracking features as they aren’t that accurate.

I've found that applications like Fitbit provide thorough goal-setting and tracking. They integrate with a variety of fitness trackers, offering an accurate picture of your health and well-being. I use the Apple Watch as a productivity tool and for its fitness tracking capabilities (Vo2Max, zone workouts and strength training), Oura Ring for sleep, Abbott CGM for glucose control, smart scale for body fat and muscle mass. Apple Health is another useful tool that collects data from multiple applications and wearables and allows you to personalise your health goals depending on your overall health profile. Experimenting with different apps and tools can help you find the perfect combination that aligns with your personal fitness journey.

As a wearable technology researcher, I've seen how extensive physical activity can affect the accuracy of data from fitness trackers. The key challenge lies in the variability of the signals during intense workouts. This variability can lead to inaccuracies in estimating crucial metrics like SpO2, sleep monitoring, and heart rate variability (HRV). Motion artifacts, caused by vigorous movements, significantly distort signals. Thus, improving wearables should focus on minimizing these artifacts to enhance reliability. Advanced filtering algorithms and multi-sensor integration can play an important role here.

To personalize fitness tracker data and goals effectively, consider using "Google Fit" as a central hub. Its API allows you to aggregate health data from various sources, enabling users to set personalized fitness goals based on metrics like heart rate and steps. Another excellent option is "Strava" (really easy to integrate into you own app), which excels in tracking outdoor activities and offers community challenges that motivate users to push their limits and connect with others. Integrating Headspace or Calm can enhance the experience by allowing users to track mental wellness goals alongside their physical activity, promoting a holistic approach to fitness that emphasizes both body and mind.

Back to basics in this step: your dashboard must prioritize the most important information, starting with your sleep score. Following that, you can examine data such as calories burned, goals, VO2, stress level, minutes of workout intensity, and others. It is crucial to consider which information will have a more significant impact on your day. If you can't have a good night of sleep, all other information in the dashboard will be affected. Similarly, if you experience a high level of stress during your day or work, it will likely impact your nightly exercise performance.

Before choosing a wearable device, it is key to do an assessment of your current health and set your goals straight. This includes knowing and understanding which biomarkers are key to follow if you want to improve your short-term and long-term health. Once, you've set your goals and you know what biomarkers you should follow, do your research about what each company is good at, e.g. WHOOP for Recovery, Oura for Sleep, Evvy for Women's health, etc. Wearable technology is great but it is still far away from what it needs to be and each company excels in a different set of biomarkers. So to summarize: 1. Assess your current status; 2. Set your goals; 3. Choose biomarkers to follow; 4. Research which wearable excels in those; 5. Enjoy

Setting personalized goals with your fitness tracker is an excellent way to tailor your fitness journey. You can target steps, calories, or activity minutes daily, weekly, or monthly, and even specify activities like running or yoga. Adjust and challenge yourself as you progress, fostering motivation and improvement. Some apps allow custom goals like hydration, meditation, or reading. Start with tiny tiny goals, so easy, that they almost seem ridiculous. Trust me. It works.

Many fitness trackers on the market lack essential features, often presenting the same metrics to professional athletes as they do to more sedentary individuals. Additionally, they fail to account for variability between genders and the relevance of specific metrics for each user. In my opinion a strong focus on personalized data and metrics relevant to each individual is crucial for the future of wearable devices :)