Technology is an incredible tool with seemingly endless applications to make our lives easier. It is practically inescapable these days and there are many devices out there to help you along your fitness journey. Smart watches in particular, such as Apple Watches, Fitbits, etc. have an abundance of helpful features, however, it’s important we remind ourselves to view them as tools and not a quick fix to our struggles. 

 I personally have an Apple Watch and I love all of the capabilities it has when it comes to tracking my workouts, my walks, and other fitness-related data. However, it’s important we don’t rely on these devices too heavily, as many of the features don’t work as we think they do at first glance. 

  A concept of health we talk about frequently is moving more outside of your scheduled workout. Creating a step goal is an excellent way to help you achieve this and smart watches are fairly accurate when it comes to tracking your daily step count. Remaining active, especially through the mode of walking, provides immense benefits to our health, and is not something that should be overlooked as too simple. Your wearable fitness tracker is a great tool to compile your data and keep you accountable to your goal. 

  Tracking your heart rate can be a crucial data point for your workouts, especially if you’re training for a cardiovascular event or have a history of a heart condition.      

  Many smart watches or other wearable devices such as chest straps do a great job of tracking your heart rate during your workout and relaying the information to you in real time. Using one of these devices can make tracking your heart rate easier than tracking it manually or using a cardio machine, because you may not have access to one. These devices can also help you track your heart rate response to different types of exercise, compile data over time, and your heart rate recovery.

   One of the most highly sought after pieces of information in relation to our workouts is the number of calories burned. Please note that while your device will keep track of your calories burned, this number is oftentimes highly inaccurate. Although the number won’t match the true number of calories you’ve burned, you can use this feature to keep track of and compare your calories burned from one workout to the next. If today’s workout says 300 calories were burned while yesterday’s says 200, we can feel confident that we burned more today. What’s important to remember is the chances of it being exactly 100 calories more is very slim. Please use this feature only to compare to yourself and not to others, as the number of calories we each burn varies based on our sex, height, weight, type of exercise, and how trained we are. 

 There are many incredible fitness technology tools that we can use to help us move toward health. Find what forms of tracking your workouts work for you and stay consistent so you can see your progress over time.