If you’re serious about your fitness goals, whether losing, gaining, or maintaining (and if you’re really modern with your approach, “maingaining”), you should stick with just one fitness tracker or smartwatch. .
It’s not Brand A vs. Brand B or Model X vs. Model Y. Whatever your preference, it’s crucial to stick with your chosen device, whether it’s made by Apple. , HUAWEI, Samsung, Fitbit, Honor or any other manufacturer.
Why should you stick with just one fitness tracker?
I marinated that idea for a while, but never really wrote that short opinion piece or, dare I say it, advice. The idea resurfaced when I started wearing a device that I recently had overhauled while still wearing my daily Apple Watch driver.
You see, when it comes to using a fitness tracker or smartwatch, these aren’t categorized as professional fitness equipment, but more of a more amateurish approach. Therefore, it is not about precision, but about consistency
No fitness tracker or smartwatch is accurate
Before you stop reading, think about it for a second. Yes, they all strive to be as accurate as possible, but unless you are training in a professional lab environment with medical equipment strapped to your body, you will never know your accurate heart rate, VO2Max, your recovery times, etc.
…and that, in and of itself, is not necessarily a problem. The problem, as I mentioned, is consistency, or lack of consistency.
Wearing two smartwatches, I realized the quite significant difference between the readings. We’re talking about a 2,000 step gap between the two, which if you’re taking the recommended 10,000 a day is a 20% gap.
The same goes for heart rate. From 130bpm to 110bpm, there is a deviation of about 15%. Extrapolate that to an entire day and your full calorie burn estimate is far from complete. So now you need to adjust your calorie intake.
And, just so you know, the calories reported as burned on your device are estimated, based on several readings, one of the most important being heart rate, but it takes into account the number of steps, the size , weight, age, etc.
Not to mention that on one device I seem to have slept almost 8 hours, the other reported 6.5 hours.
Why consistency is more important than accuracy
You see, if you consider all of the above, you might say “hell they’re all extinct!”. And you may be right. However, the advantage of sticking with one device is not knowing that said device is inaccurate or believing that it is accurate. The advantage is knowing that the inaccuracy is constant.
If your watch is monitoring or under-reporting your steps, heart rate, or even calories, you can be sure it will do the same tomorrow and the day after, every day, every workout.
This is the key to properly adjusting your training intensities and durations, as well as your caloric intake, afterwards. You get rid of the variable.
It’s pretty much the same with ladders. A scale that will be off by 1 kg or about 2.2 pounds will always be off by the same amount (no, we are not talking about fluctuations on the same scale due to water intake or water retention) .
The bottom line
See Apple Watch on Amazon
See Fitbit Versa on Amazon
View HUAWEI Watch on Amazon
See Samsung Galaxy Watch on Amazon
In the end, all that matters is knowing that your device is wrong all the time, by the same magnitude factor, making it more of a consistent accuracy in its inaccuracy, rather than mixing up your devices and throw you completely off your target. , or your journey to get there.
Apple fan? Go with the watch. Fan of HUAWEI? Go with their watch. Another fan? Go with whatever your heart desires, just be sure to stick to it, knowing you can turn inaccuracy into an advantage by making it consistent.