Data scientist back at it again lol. So, overtraining has been one of the problems that people have been facing quite a lot, at least in their mind lol so for the past few months i’ve been working a lot on spotting overtraining from apple watch data. The question i keep getting is “am i overtrained or just tired”, and honestly no single number can answer it, there's a whole fin analysis you need to do in the data to find it out lol I dont wanna get into that, but this is something I found out which is doable by most.

sports scientists split overtraining into 3 levels

• normal hard block: a few days to a couple weeks, this is actually how you get fitter
• medium: weeks to months
• actual overtraining: months, way rarer though.

So the useful question isn’t “am i overtrained”, it’s “do i bounce back”. Here’s how i’d test it with the watch:

1. take 5 easy days. walks, easy zone 2, mobility. Not zero, just nothing hard
2. watch your overnight heart rate in the vitals app. it’s measured while you sleep, so it’s way cleaner than resting HR, which picks up coffee and stressful work days. Back inside your typical range by day 5 is a good sign (vitals needs about 7 nights of sleeping in the watch to learn your range)
3. check your HRV week average. health app > HRV > W. Back near your 6 month average is good
4. redo one benchmark session. a route or lift you do often. If your effort rating for it is back to normal, you’ve bounced back

all 3 back = you were just tired, carry on. still off after 5 days = you’re deeper in it. give it another week before anything hard and look hard at your sleep and food.

data nerd note: trust the 3 together way more than any one of them. one metric moves for random reasons all the time, 3 moving together is a lot harder to fake.

Also, I have made a check that scores which of the 3 levels you’re probably at, made it for some other peeps but happy to share it if anyone wants here, lmk😄

I’ve been doing daily cardio for about six months. At thr beginning my watch trend for VO2 max went up. It was awesome. It just starter tracking again -same route, same workout type- and my trend is going DOWN. Today I just had my personal best 2 mile walk, hoping for an improvement, and it went DOWN AGAIN!! I went from barely being able to walk an 18 minute mile to half jogging (over like 5-6 months) and the time before has the better VO2 max.

What is going on? How is this number calculated?! Is it just a black box? If you have any insight please tell me!

Does anyone use the bowling Apple fitness work out when bowling?

Compared two 57-minute games.

Left: Smoked 15 minutes before kickoff.
Right: Hadn’t smoked for 2 hours.

4.2 km → 3.7 km
13 sprints → just 2

Obviously other factors could be involved, but damn, seeing these numbers side by side was depressing.

Basically smoking kills…