Are Your Wearables Helping You Perform or Just Helping You Worry?
A short overview of the potential psychological impact of wearables.
Dan Lockwood
11/5/20264 min read
Last month a client told me about her watch before she'd even said hello. “Look at this,” she said. “My recovery score is 41. I’ve got my main race on Sunday and I’ve already ruined it, I'm not going to be ready.”
She hadn’t ruined anything. She’d slept reasonably well, felt fine when she woke up, and had a good week of training behind her. But a number on her wrist had told her a different story, and within minutes her mood, her confidence and her plan for the weekend had all shifted.
I hear versions of this more and more. Wearable technology has changed how people exercise. Heart rate, sleep scores, readiness ratings and training load are all there at a glance, for the elite athlete and the weekend jogger alike. I’m not here to tell you to stop using your watch and wearables, quite the opposite. Used well, it can be brilliant, but from a psychology point of view, it's also about acknowledging that it can also quietly work against you at times, especially if there are existing doubts arising.
When the number becomes the boss
In sport psychology we talk about the difference between external information and internal awareness. External information is what the device tells you whereas, internal awareness is what your body is telling you. How heavy your legs feel, how motivated you are, whether you’re actually enjoying the session, how much this all means to you.
This is not to say that one matters more or less that the other both matter, and both can be extremely valuable. However, the problems can start when we stop trusting the second of these, ourself, and hand all the authority to the first, the tech. Research on expectation effects shows that what we believe about our readiness can in turn shape how we then perform. If a screen tells you that you’re under recovered, you may well feel and perform worse, and this is not because your body has changed at all but because your expectations have, and an element of doubt has been added into your race day plan that we hadn't accounted for.
I think of it as the difference between a tool and a boss. A tool gives you information you can weigh up and decide what to do with it and how to use it, whereas, a boss tells you what to do and can have some level of control over you.
The worry loop
There’s a second issue, and it’s one I see a lot with people who are anxious about performing that the constant monitoring and availability of statistics can feed a worry loop. You check your data, you spot something that looks off, you start to worry, and the worry itself raises your heart rate and disturbs your performance, maybe even your sleep Then you check again, and the data confirms your fears.
Nothing about your fitness changed, you are still at the level you believed you were previously, but the checking created the problem.
This matters beyond performance too, for some people, tracking can slide into a rigid, anxious relationship with exercise, where a missed target feels like failure and rest days feel like a threat to everything they have built. If that sounds familiar, it’s worth taking note and considering exploring this alongside someone to build a more sustainable relationship with the stats.
So how do you use the tech well?
I’m not anti technology, I actively use it myself almost daily, so here are the habits I encourage:
Check in with yourself first. Before you look at any score, rate how you feel on a simple scale of one to ten. Then compare, if your gut feeling and your data disagree, that’s interesting information, not an emergency.
Look at trends, not single days. One low reading tells you very little. A pattern over two or three weeks tells you much more, and can allow you to take note and build on this further.
Decide your rules in advance. Agree with yourself, or with your coach, what you’ll actually do with the data. For example, “I’ll only change my plan if I feel poorly and my numbers are down for several days.” That way a single bad reading doesn’t get to make the decision in the moment.
Take data free sessions. Go for a run or a ride without recording it. It sounds small, but it can help to remind you why you started doing this in the first place.
Pay attention to your language. Notice whether you say “my watch says I’m tired” or “I feel tired, and my watch agrees.” The first hands over control whereas the second keeps you in the driving seat and in full control.
The bottom line
Technology can sharpen your understanding of your body, but it can’t replace your own sense of how you feel, and it certainly can’t measure your determination, your preparation or your love of the sport.
As for my client, we talked it through, she went out for her pre race shakeout, and she told me afterwards that she felt great and ran well that Sunday. The watch, I’m pleased to say, stayed quiet about it.
If you’d like help building a healthier relationship with performance data, or with the pressure that comes with it, I’d love to hear from you.
