If you’ve gotten into fitness and working out over the last few years, you’ve likely seen a lot about the benefits of tracking everything from your sleep to your blood pressure to your recovery rate. Whether you want to keep up with a healthy pet or just get in better shape, tracking your fitness is key.
There have been many new options and cool technology built over the last few years. It’s critical to understand how your body is reacting and recovering to your workouts, and everyday stresses in life. If you’re not recovered, working out too hard can lead to injury, and over time it’s necessary to optimize rest days to how your body is actually responding, rather than rigid plans that don’t take live data into account.
From the research we did, there are two main wearables that do the job and are continuing to add features and expand their capabilities. We broke them down.
Whoop:
Whoop is a stylish wrist band that is worn around the clock to give you real-time data on everything from steps to heart rate to general sleep and muscle recovery. It’s comfortable to wear, and they have a chargeable battery that attaches to the band directly to recharge it without having to remove it. It analyzes resting heart rate and spits out a daily recovery score that accounts for everything into a single output to let you know where your body is at from day to day.
They have an amazing app with all of your analytics you can monitor in real-time as long as you are wearing your Whoop. They’re always adding new metrics and they recently started tracking blood oxygen levels and skin temperature to ensure they have the full picture of your health and recovery.
It has all kinds of amazing features that improve your daily routine as well. By tracking your recovery score, Whoop knows the ideal time for you to wake up in the morning. It will adjust your wake-up time by gently vibrating within a window around your goal wake-up time. So if you need to wake up before 7, it will find the optimal window in the half-hour or so before then so you wake up feeling more refreshed and try to avoid getting jolted awake between sleep cycles.
If you’re interested in learning more about your general fitness levels and overall recovery on a daily basis, check out Whoop and give it a shot!
Oura Ring:
Oura Ring is a next-generation way to track your fitness, sleep, and recovery through a small ring that you wear around the clock. It provides three core metrics including sleep, activity, and readiness. Oura Ring has three enhanced sensors, and a single charge will last you four to seven days, with a full charge taking right around an hour.
Oura’s technology shows it is able to extract better data from the finger in order to get optimal data and provide the most up-to-date and accurate information. It will even track each sleep stage (Light, Deep, REM Sleep) in order to establish your total recovery and how well you slept overall. Over time Oura will learn how you sleep, what factors during the day impact you the most, and share tips and guidance on how and when to wind down at night in order to maximize your sleep quality.
It breaks down your heart rate into resting, active, and recovery in order to optimize your score and let you know how your body is doing after certain workouts and on a day-to-day basis.
Oura offers incredible, next-generation tracking and tips, and if you’re looking to optimize your sleep, health, and exercise, they’re a great place to get started.