Metrics That Matter
Fitness tracking leads to improvement, but make sure you're tracking the right metrics to achieve your goals
When it comes to health and fitness, I track and record just about everything. It helps me understand how my decisions, both good and bad, impact my body and my ability to perform. It’s perhaps not something that everyone is comfortable with, given privacy concerns and the fact that all of this data lives on my device and in the cloud, but understanding trends over time is an important part of my fitness journey.
When I started writing this newsletter almost a year ago, I was a little obsessed with streaks. Okay, maybe I was more than a little obsessed. Closing my rings X number of days in a row. Working out to get the that checkmark in the Peloton app. They’re things that, at the end of the day are not helping me achieve my fitness goals. Some of this behavior stems from how these platforms are set up. In the case of my Apple Watch, I’m not rewarded or encouraged to take rest days. There’s no button to say you’re sick or taking the day off. And while Peloton instructors will dutifully tell you that recovery and rest are important aspects of your overall fitness well-being, I’ve never earned a badge for resting.
This is not to say that streaks or other similar metrics don’t have a place in the fitness journey. They can be motivating and provide a sense of accomplishment. But the metrics that you should be paying attention to are the ones that support your daily, weekly, monthly and annual goals. As you progress, the metrics you pay the most attention to may change, but they should always support what you are working toward.
Beginners
If you’re just starting out or early on in your fitness journey, establishing a habit is perhaps the most important thing to pay attention to. Whether you use a fitness tracker, some other platform or just plain old pen and paper, you should at the very least track the days you are working out. Metrics like pace or miles can help establish a baseline for your fitness, but if your goal starting out is to work out 3 days or 5 days per week, I wouldn’t worry about any other metrics.
As you establish a routine, you can work in other goals. I’m not going to pretend for example that I don’t care about closing my Apple Watch rings on the days that I exercise (and in fact, it is a goal of mine on the days I work out). If that’s something that is important to you, make sure you are setting realistic targets, especially in the beginning, that help support the formation of your fitness habit.
Intermediate/Advanced
I have a relatively simple goal which is to stay “fit.” How I define “fit” dictates the metrics that I pay the most attention to. I think of the goal (to stay fit) as my strategy and everything that I do or don’t do on a daily basis as my tactics for achieving that goal. Here’s a bit more detail about how I think about it.
Goal = Stay Fit
Exercise 6 days per week
4 days of strength training, 6 days of cardio (cardio is present, but less intense on strength training days)
Sleep 6-7 hours per night - Yes, I wish this could be more, but during the week, this is as good as it gets
Nutrition - I loosely follow the macronutrient approach, focusing on my percentage of protein, carbs and essential fat intake. I say loosely because I’m not directly tracking my protein, carbohydrate and fat intake, nor am I counting calories, though both have been things that I’ve done in the past.
In July of last year, I wrote a post called MIME your way back to fitness. Feel free to revisit the piece, but MIME stands for Motivation, Intent, Mindset and Execution. The above outline provides me with my motivation. Intent occurs when I schedule my workout for the day. I probably reference scheduling workouts almost every time I write, but when I’m figuring out my workout plan for the day, I’m also taking into account my goal (staying fit) and metrics that are relevant to achieving that goal to set my workout plan for the day. At this point, you might be saying, well, Chris, staying fit can mean almost anything. And I would say that you’re not wrong, except that I break that down further to ensure that I’m measuring the things that are important to my fitness journey.
Goal = Stay Fit
Maintain a weight range
Maintain a fit physique (A bit subjective to be sure)
Close my Activity, Exercise and Stand rings on the days that I intend to workout
Maintain the level of cardio fitness that I’ve achieved
To ensure that I stay on the right path, I pay attention to these metrics more closely than others.
Sleep - I track my sleep each night using my Apple Watch. The watch tracks my time in bed, time to fall asleep, sleep stages, heart rate, and temperature. While Apple natively tracks sleep, there are third-party apps that take this data in aggregate to formulate a sleep score and a readiness score (there’s science behind this, which I won’t bore you with in this post). At a glance, it gives me a good picture of not just how well or poorly I slept the night before, but also calculates what level of fitness I can handle on a given day. I don’t use the information to determine whether or not I should work out, but I will use it to determine the intensity level of the exercise I plan to do on a given day.
Weight - I’m at a weight that is comfortable for me so I weigh in a few times per month to ensure I’m maintaining my weight. I received a smart scale for Christmas that, in theory, determines my body makeup (fat, muscle, water weight) and while I would never rely on those specific metrics, they can provide directional information that I can use if necessary during my annual physical exams.
Apple Watch Rings - I mentioned at the outset of this post that I was a little obsessed with streaks. I’ve gotten past that, but it’s still important for me to close my rings, but only on the days that I intend to workout. This helps me determine the ideal amount of time and intensity of my exercise session to ensure that I can close my rings. After collecting years worth of data, I have a very good sense of how my time and how intense my workouts need to be close my rings.
Running pace - I’m running a 5K in a couple of weeks and I do in fact have a time-based goal that I want to hit. I track my running pace, combined with my heart rate to ensure that most of my running is done in the aerobic zone. On days when I’m training at race pace, it helps me ensure that I’m pushing into the anaerobic zone.
There are boatloads of other metrics that are captured, but by focusing on the ones that matter most to my goals ensures that I’m able to achieve my fitness goals.