It's the worst feeling.
You get halfway through the workout and *gasp* realize you didn't start your watch! How in the world will that workout "count?" How are you supposed to know how many calories you burned?! Now your watch and soul are empty, and you want to just call it a day š
If this scenario sounds familiar, or you are someone that lives and breaths by your fitness watch, then I have some disheartening news. You may want to sit down.
Let's rip the band-aid: Wearable fitness technology is notoriously inaccurate. Most of all, there is still not a fitness watch on the market today that can reliably and 100% accurately track data on strength (hypertrophy) training.
In this blog we will discuss why fitness watches are not reliable indicators of a "good workout" for strength sessions specifically, and other ways you can incorporate your watch into your BPG workout.
"BUT I ONLY BURNED 300 CALORIES!"
We specialize in strength training at BPG. If you've done our workouts, you have probably noticed your watch doesn't show as high of a calorie burn during a BUILD day as it does for something like running, for example.
This is because (generally speaking) your heart rate will not get as high strength training, and stay consistently elevated, as it will a continuous/strenuous cardiorespiratory exercise like running. When your fitness watch is calculating calories burned, it's using your heart rate, combined with movement it senses and biometric data (age, height, weight), to estimate how many calories you've burned.
Emphasis on estimate.
So does less calorie burn on your watch mean the strength training session was less effective? Absolutely not.
In fact it's quite the opposite. Strength training is like a secret calorie assassin after your workout is complete for two reasons:
a process called Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption (EPOC), which is an intimidating science term so let's keep things simple and call it the Afterburn Effect instead. Stay with me.
over time, the building of muscle tissue increasing metabolic efficiency
Let's talk about the Afterburn Effect first. After strength training and during this afterburn state, your body is trying to recover and repair muscle tissue "damage" from exercise.
Specifically, after finishing your workout your body is:
Slowing your heart rate
Decreasing your core body temperature
Turning lactate, a by-product of exercise, into glycogen to be used later for energy
All of these processes take energy (calories) to do - especially the third process of lactate conversion. This is where strength training enters the chat because (generally speaking) it can result in more lactic acid build-up if you're pushing the right intensity. This is especially true for heavy/absolute/maximal training, like what we do on BUILD days at BPG.
More lactic acid to clear means more energy (calories) your body will need to use, which means more calories burned post exercise.
Secondly, muscle tissue is metabolically active, meaning it requires more energy (calories) to maintain than fat tissue. So quite literally, your muscle tissue needs more calories just to simply exist. The more muscle tissue you have, the more metabolically efficient you are. The more efficient your metabolism, the more calories you can burn both at rest and during activity.
Yep, you read that right. If you have a good amount of lean muscle tissue, then you're burning calories even when you're just sitting around doing nothing. Pretty cool right? š
It's these calories that are not tracked by your fitness watch, but are arguably most important for improving your health and boosting your metabolism!
USING A FITNESS WATCH FOR HYPERTROPHY
Now before you toss out your fitness watch, there are still some ways it can be useful during strength sessions. Remember though that each of these will be estimations and not 100% accurate, but still handy data nonetheless:
Rep and Set Counting - some fitness watches offer the ability to log your reps and sets based on your movement, which is a handy tool if you're a terrible rep counter.
Intensity Tracking - making sure you hit the right intensity during strength sets is important for progress, and monitoring your heart rate can help you achieve your goal intensity.
Workout Summaries - handy feature that allows you to view data all in one place and monitor over time.
Timers - if you're a solo lifter, utilizing timers for rest periods can ensure you're resting the proper amount so you can hit your next set fresh.
In sum, your fitness watch is not providing the full picture of calorie burn when it comes to strength training sessions due to processes like the Afterburn Effect and your watch's inability to account for how much lean muscle tissue you have. Fitness watches are known to be inaccurate, but they can still be a useful tool.
And most importantly, your body still "counts" every workout even if you forgot to start your watch.
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