How Wearable Tech is Revolutionising Training
Wearable technology is changing the way we live. It is revolutionising health and wellness by providing new insights into how we can live healthier lives. These insights are helping to generate self-awareness when it comes to training so we can understand our bodies better.
In the past, wearable tech was primarily used by athletes and fitness enthusiasts. Nowadays, it is becoming increasingly popular no matter where you are on your fitness journey, so we’ve partnered with Myzone to give you a run down on how you can optimise and track your training.
Myzone is a wearable fitness tracker and online social platform that shows and rewards effort when your work out. It displays real-time heart rate, calories and intensity. It has a simple rewards based metric called MEPs (Myzone Effort Points) that align with the World Health Organisation’s guidelines for physical activity.
Myzone breaks the percentage of estimated maximum heart rate into the five colour-coded zones so you can see how much effort you are putting into your workouts. Training in each of these zones will put different demands on your cardiovascular system.
Generally speaking, the lower the intensity of your exercise, the longer you can keep going. The higher the intensity or the harder you’re working, the less time you can maintain that level of activity. The fitter you are, the longer you will be able to train at a certain intensity.
Endurance athletes typically train in the lower intensity zones for longer periods of time, while explosive power athletes train at a higher intensity for a shorter duration.
Myzone’s grey zone (50-59 per cent of your max heart rate) is very low intensity. Essentially this is light activity or recovery and something you can do all day.
The blue zone is moderate intensity (60-69% of max heart rate). Endurance athletes will stay in this zone for one to four hours at a time when training for long-distance races or events. If you’re new to exercise, you’ll quickly pass through the blue zone as your heart rate rises to adjust to the new activity. If you’ve been training for some time, you’ll have to put in more effort to get up to the higher intensity zones.
The green zone (70-79% of max heart rate) is a moderately high-intensity training zone and if you’re used to exercising, you can stay in this zone from 90 minutes to two hours. The green zone is considered the ideal zone for improving your fitness with a comfortable effort.
The yellow zone (80-89% of max heart rate) is a high-intensity zone which is race pace for most people. The bottom of the yellow zone is where muscle fatigue begins to set in from strength training exercises, while the upper end is where aerobic exercise begins to shift to anaerobic exercise. If you’re just starting out, you will spend most of your training session in the yellow zone, but you’ll really have to put in the extra effort to stay in this zone if you’ve been training for a while.
The red zone (90-100% of max heart rate) is the highest of Myzone’s five zones and you can only safely stay in this zone for a short time. When you’re in the red zone you will be working close to your maximum, so training in this zone intermittently during your workout will benefit you most.
Fatigue will set in more quickly when training at this intensity, so focus on technique to reduce the chance of injury. If you’re strength training, the red zone represents the tail end of an exercise or interval and should be very short in duration or for as long as you can hold your technique.
When it comes to endurance exercise, you can stay in the red zone for slightly longer because of the lower risk of endurance exercise movement patterns.
Wearable tech is a great tool to help raise the bar with your training, providing insights on how you are progressing towards your goal, as well as assisting with accountability and motivation. The future of wearable tech is limitless and we can expect to see more advancements in this field that complement a holistic approach to health and wellness.
Collaboration with Myzone – myzone.org
