If you’ve been feeling drained recently, it could be worth looking at your body battery status. If more energy is going out than coming in, you might want to book in a rest day ASAP.
When working out whether to rest or exercise, there are a couple of things to consider. You might think about how much sleep you had last night, if you’ve got the time to exercise or whether you’ve got the mental capacity to move. There are loads of us, however, who train regardless of how we feel. That might be because we’re training for something or we know that however groggy we are, we’ll feel way better after exercising.
And that’s when tech can help. For years, I’ve been wearing a Garmin tracker to keep a tab on my runs and daily steps – believing that fitness watches should only really be consulted for gains and miles. You don’t need to track sleep to know if you’ve had a decent rest.
You may also like
Why do you feel more tired on rest days than training days?
But then I came across a feature I’d never paid attention to before: body battery. Body battery (at least on my watch) measures the amount of energy reserves you have throughout the day. The higher the number, the more charged up for an activity you are; low numbers are a sign that your internal battery is drained. Things like rest and good sleep charge your battery, while strenuous activity, high stress and late nights are going to deplete it. And interestingly, food intake has no real impact (maybe because you don’t track food on these kinds of apps).
Of course, Garmin isn’t the only company that tracks this kind of thing; Whoop, for example, tracks daily strain in relation to recovery. Sleep badly, and your daily optimum strain will be vastly reduced as you’re less capable of managing intense loads. It all sounds like quite a holistic way of going about intuitive exercise, right?
I’ve been looking at my own battery record over the past few weeks, to see how accurate it feels. Yesterday, for example, I went for a 6k run before work and then had a late night out in town – getting into bed around midnight. According to my app, my body battery “was nearly depleted”, with a charge of +55 and a drain of -89. Waking up this morning, it certainly felt like I’d depleted my resources yesterday.
The day before (Sunday), I ran a decent-paced 18k after a super-cosy night in and spent the rest of the day either relaxing in a hot bath or on the sofa. And my app reflects that weirdly accurately: “Your day had a mix of body battery charge and drain,” with a drain of -74 and a charge of +85.
If I think back to a day when I really struggled (a four-coffee day), it was Friday; I had to get up at 6.15am for a gym class, despite getting home past midnight from a night out. All day I struggled with bone-aching tiredness, eventually cancelling my evening swim. “While sometimes unavoidable, too many consecutive days like this can exhaust you. Make sure you get enough sleep after days like this,” my Garmin warned me. My body battery hadn’t been depleted that day, but had been consistently more drained than charged for the four days previous.
Is body battery worth tracking?
As far as I can see, body battery is a pretty accurate way of explaining why you might feel the way you do. If you’ve got no option but to proceed with a workout, seeing how depleted your body battery is may help inform how you recover afterwards – giving yourself permission to rest rather than keep burning the candle at both ends.
But just how much attention do the pros think we should pay to this kind of data? Natalie Voyle, a strength and conditioning coach at Third Space, tells Stylist that “we should use data to paint a bigger picture of how much we move”. While she admits that it’s hard to know how accurate some metrics are, she believes that “anything to get people moving more is a big positive”. As such, she’s a big fan of tracking her own workouts (using an Apple Watch) and daily movement and says that she recommends it for others who don’t know how much exercise they do every day.
Coach Saima, on the other hand, believes that tracking body battery is great “for ‘keen’ fitness enthusiasts, elite athletes or anyone who regularly competes and trains very hard”, but doesn’t think the everyday exerciser needs a fancy tracker. “Some trackers offer a lot of information, which for some can be quite overwhelming. I started with a very basic Fitbit years ago, and I suddenly became obsessed with my step count and tracking my workouts – so I quickly stopped using it.”
While data on how drained or charged your body is might be useful, Saima ultimately believes in listening to your body and mind. “Data is useful as it gives us guidance and figures to understand how we train. Are we training at a high intensity too much and therefore not sleeping well, for example? These figures can allow us to take a look at our lifestyle and see if what we’re putting our bodies through is healthy for us.”
Using data to stay accountable – even when it comes to resting
Data isn’t ‘gospel’, explains PT Sam McGowan. As an Oura ring wearer, she believes that we’re more likely to act on the data if we see it laid out in front of us: “If we’ve not had enough sleep and our tracker is telling us [to get more], we’re more likely to focus on this the following day. For me, it’s about holding yourself accountable to the data you probably already know about but which becomes more ‘real’ if we see it there on the screen.”
Clearly, our bodies are more advanced than any ring, watch or chest strap. That’s why McGowan recommends looking at the trends and patterns that emerge over time rather than focusing on the data from one specific day. “Over time, does the information align with how you’re performing and feeling?” she asks. “If your fitness tracker has been consistently telling you you’re under recovered and should ’take it easy’ then this may be a sign to start listening.”
And if you’re not diligent about building rest days into your week, then paying attention to your body battery may just be the thing to bring a bit more balance into your life.
For more fitness tips, visit the Strong Women Training Club.
Images: Getty
Source: Read Full Article