This is an open ended question. How do you create continuity in how you visualize your fitness journey across devices/platforms?
For example, I have data from my Amazfit, Zepp, Google Fitness days, I currently use a Garmin 530 while cycling and a Fenix 6 Pro Solar for everything else. With Garmin+ hinting at bad things to come and the high prices of Garmin watches I'm considering a possible Polar or a Suunto next. How do you visualize your trends over time?
- do you feed your stats into a spreadsheet?
- Do you use a quantified self app like Exist that pulls data from multiple sources
Another concern of mine is winding up split between ecosystems like if I bought a Suunto watch and eventually replaced my Garmin Edge 530 with a Wahoo device.
I can't pretend that Garmin does this especially well, even when my current devices are all Garmin, but I know my watch measures recovery and readiness after the rides I do on my edge, so I'm never in the dark as to where I stand on my recovery. Using a device only for workouts seems like it would be problematic as fitness isn't just movement, but also how you eat, sleep, etc.
This is one of the pain points of fitness tracking. There is nothing that supports everything because companies try their best to lock everything down for their own subscription fees and data sale profits outside of the basics that you can go through their servers for.
Plus hyper-specific requirements per person make it difficult.
Honestly probably some app that grabs data from every service you use would be best.
Also good to note that that garmin's "recovery time" is just a random thumb in the air educated guess specifically from hard workout to hard workout, not from workout to workout, and it is not a "rest period" but a period of "less than 'intense' workouts" and they have not allowed anyone to see their algorithm or do studies correlating its accuracy. That means it is not accurate.
Very true. The recovery info from my watch is always secondary to how I feel. Often this aligns well, but sometimes it does not.