Turning Data Obsession Into Better Health – Wearable Tech | Peter Tierney | S3EP.09

0:00Dr. Peter Tierney, welcome to the Without Emits podcast. Thanks, Ollie.

0:04Peter Tierney:I always find it funny when someone says doctor. Well, I actually wanted to pick up on that before we kick off. What qualifies you as a doctor? My dad's going to be very happy when I tell him I had a doctor on the podcast. I did a PhD, so I'm not a medical doctor. Very specific mention, I have to say that. Not a medical doctor. I did my PhD when I was working in rugby. And what was your PhD in? I was in maximizing performance through like a sports science lens in rugby. So I worked in Leinster rugby for just over five years and was fortunate to be able to do my PhD whilst I was working full time at the same time.

0:36Peter Tierney:So kind of fed a lot of the practice that we did and then the practice informed the research as well. So very cool, busy, busy couple of years, a really cool experience. I mean, maximizing sports performance is going to be something that I think the listeners will perk their interest. And I think that sets the scene very much for this podcast. We're going to talk about a number of different things. And I kind of pre-framed you before that I'd like to focus a lot of it on wearable technology. It's something that's very relevant to the conversation we've had offline about some of the work we're looking to achieve with March on.

1:04But I think it's also very relevant, broadly speaking, in the fitness industry. Everyone's tracking. Everyone's looking at data. Everyone's trying to distill that data and then use it into actionable steps and interventions that they can put into their life. Some people don't know the validity and credibility of that data. There's different types of wearables. there's maybe a chance of over-indexing on wearable data and forgetting how you truly feel based on you know just the connection to yourself so I think we can unpack all of that stuff but what I'd really like to do as well and I've had various different specialists on the podcast is maybe then start to look at okay what data should we be looking at and then what does that data help us do in terms of interventions and practices that we can put in and maybe we can touch on common things like sleep recovery nutrition and training because at the end of the day you're a strength conditioning coach you're a sports scientist and you're someone that's got a large experience in the kind of academia and the research so we'll touch on all of those things before we do all that I'll ask all guests what without limits means to them oh I did actually

2:02Peter Tierney:hear this yesterday and I was thinking I should really prepare something and I forgot so I think it's just being able to do what you want to do that's like a really short answer but if I want to do if that's a physical challenge like a marathon or some sort of activity if it's a project in work or if it's just somewhere where you want to travel um i think to me it's just being able to do those things so no limits yeah i love it uh again someone who is an academic but also you're in the field we spoke before about the 50k ultras you've done like you're someone who does genuinely look to explore and test on yourself uh as well as then advise for other people.

2:42And again, just to set the scene, you've worked with some of the best athletes on the planet from rugby. Are you working in football as well for a period of time and working with everyday people as well? So I think there's a really nice thing that we can look at. What is elite sport and what the practice is there? And then how do we distill that down for the everyday fitness consumer, which the large portion of this audience will be. And we're going to talk largely about wearable technology, but I think we need to define kind of what it is. And I think it's gone through this rapid change where it used to be, you know, we're tracking steps to now all of a sudden we're trying to track a number of different things so what is wearable technology and why is

3:13Peter Tierney:it important for the modern day fitness consumer so in general wearable technology is like quite literally just a piece of tech that you'll wear and for the most part it will be worn for most of the day if not all of the day and typically the metrics or the things that they're trying to measure or feedback to you are based on physiology so that would be things like heart rate temperature breathing rate, heart rate variability, but also from a, I guess, an output or a physical sense, it'll be metrics like distance, pace, cadence, for example. Now, that list of metrics, I've given a few examples, that list has grown exponentially over the last five to 10 years.

3:50Peter Tierney:And now there are sort of different composite scores that companies create. In good faith, I think they want to try distill information down into one or two or five metrics to make it easier for people uh we can discuss the ins and outs of some of the positives and some of the limitations of some of those metrics but in essence it's really just giving you a snippet of um what your body is going through that maybe you can't see or feel and you you alluded to at the start i think there's a there's a balancing act between um the data and your own perception as well which we can unpick a little bit yeah and so you know in in sport i remember wearing this or gps vest and that would be in the back and it would track you know how many meters you've ran in a session or in game at the speed in which you're running it and that could then guide kind of load throughout the week and when you know when maybe someone was overreaching etc and I kind of understood it in that in that sense in in kind of professional sport now in modern days because I'm talking sort of 10 years ago my experience of it what sort of things are you tracking um and how is that relevant for those types of athletes yeah so it not much has changed or sorry maybe a lot has changed but in terms of the technology the technology is still there so GPS technology is still used I would say in every team or field-based sport so rugby or football for example being the two and they'll also maybe use some element of heart rate tracking so historically that has been maybe a separate system but now I think with some of the wearable devices there's the option for athletes to to sort of wear that off their own accord the challenge and I've spoken to a few practitioners working in different team sports is when a team or an organization has a system so So, for example, a GPS technology, maybe a heart rate tracking technology, and then their own sort of questionnaire or whatever that might be.

5:35Peter Tierney:So their own athlete management system. The athlete or athletes within that system are then going externally to purchase or buy or they have relationships or affiliates with wearable companies. and there's a there's often this situation which is a challenge for practitioners where their own internal system is managing or is suggesting that oh this athlete is ready to perform today and then the wearable technology is saying oh take it easy today and that that situation is coming up more and more the challenge for some of the wearable companies is they don't maybe have the context of the time of the season that they're in the focus of training the plan And for the rest of the week, they're looking at sort of how this person is today without that context.

6:18Peter Tierney:So I think the what you'll find for me is I usually sit in the middle of things. So instead of being one extreme or the other, I think the practitioners now in sport and also just coaches like yourself have to account for people using this technology alongside programming, periodization to then have the best outcome for the athlete or the person training as well. Yeah, and I suppose as a practitioner, what actually perked your interest, you maybe touched on it there, is the fact that there's kind of this fight between the fact that you've got an internal system inside the club and then you've got this, you know, the popularity of wearable technology, maybe some commercial arrangement with athletes and that company, and then the inability to have that consistency and good conversation with athletes.

6:57So is that what kind of perked your interest? Because it's fair to say you've gone down quite a bit of a rabbit hole and we'll come on to some of the testing you do on yourself here and the lengths you've gone to with all the different brands. That's quite niche.

7:09Peter Tierney:Yeah, I think it maybe sounds quite niche, but I think that that situation is more common than people would think. Like I've had a lot of conversations with athletes in sport, in different organizations that I don't work for, but also with practitioners in those situations. And I think the challenge is also because there's commercial components and there's sometimes an athlete might feel that they're not getting a level of individual support because one, you know, a handful of practitioners might be looking after 30 players, 40 players in a rugby team. And so somebody says like, hey, I think I need a bit more.

7:42Peter Tierney:I want to lock into my my own recovery or my own sleep. if they're not getting that support from the practitioner. So if you're a practitioner, you've got to sit back and reflect and go, okay, if 12 of my athletes are going seeking this wearable technology and I haven't recommended it, are they missing something from the program that I'm offering? And if they do, it's also seen as a positive because if you go and get a wearable device or you're tracking sleep or logging food, to me, it's like, okay, you're interested in these things. Like, let me work with you to get to the best place possible as opposed to being like me or a practitioner versus technology companies.

8:19Peter Tierney:I just think it should be this one system where as a practitioner or a coach, I will account for my own system. I'll account for the technology you want to use and the individual things that you want to get through and then make the best decisions for you. Yeah, very good. I think that's the hallmark of a great coach. So we've discussed kind of like what it is. I get asked regularly, for example, if I post and my garment is showing in it or if I post and it was an Apple or a Coros or recently people have seen the ring on my finger, is that an Aura ring? And so people are like, what is it like?

8:51Should I get it? Is it better than X? Is it better than Y? So I suppose we need to kind of answer the questions like why is it important? Why should someone invest? Because we're not talking about small amounts of money. This is a big investment, not only just to buy the equipment, but then also to appreciate the data and start to make changes. So why should someone take note of wearable technology? Why would they use it?

9:12Peter Tierney:Yeah, I think that's the most important question that people often skip so people will their people's first question is which wearable should i buy versus do like why do i need a wearable device um and so if people start in that place the question that you've asked that's step one i think for a lot of people um it's it's often we're in a deaf we're definitely in a different world now where athletes and general population are there's more data available to people and i think as people and athletes and people competing or just trying to get fitter and healthier, we want a little bit more information than we previously would have had.

9:49Peter Tierney:And I think sometimes for me, I see the data there as to challenge your perception. So it's not, everyone always wants, you know, the data to perfectly align with how I feel, but often that isn't the case. And in a situation where if I wake up in the morning and I feel great, but I see a very large change in my physiology, to me that's the most interesting situation because it's there's a mismatch between my perception and the data and that's something then for me that'll prompt me to reflect on okay why is that changing did something happen last night did i drink alcohol or did i eat later or am i coming down with something so i'll go back to your question because you asked why so much would want a wearable device one i think if you have a specific reason for i guess if it's like a fitness reason or health reason um that would be a good reason i guess to to get a device that would support your decision making and getting you to your end goal um i use this gonna be a long answer no it's good i use um the analogy that wearable devices are like google maps and so if you need help navigating a journey to where you're going you would use google maps to find the most efficient route it's the same with wearable technology if i have a goal i want to run a three-hour marathon okay I might use wearable technology to help give me feedback on pacing on my recovery on my sleep and it's not going to tell you what your goal is because you've decided that that's your that's your fitness goal but it will flag things that maybe you don't see so for example if I was trying to get here this morning I looked up the best way to get here on Google Maps and you might not need to do that from London because you've done it you know four times a week for the last 10 years.

11:34Peter Tierney:But I still think it's worthwhile you checking Google Maps before you leave because Google Maps might highlight that a train is broken down or there's an accident on the road or there's something that you don't know. So even though you know the route to where you're going, it will highlight some differences. And that's what wearable technology can be used really, really useful for, in my opinion. So specifically, we'll probably get into health and fitness in wearable devices. But the piece that I think people forget about is illness detection and that's one of the real values in technology I think it was accelerated during COVID when people sort of obviously didn't want to be spread didn't want to be catching anything but didn't want to be spreading it as well and often some of the wearable devices were able to highlight I guess a potential illness before symptoms onset and that's I think a really important piece of technology that can be useful and I've heard so many stories from people who've said oh this caught my flu before i had symptoms so i was able to make a decision to not train tomorrow morning or to not travel or to not see an older relative for example so really good answer now i know this next question is a little bit nuanced because i'm going to ask what should people be tracking and now it's obviously dependent if they're running a marathon they might want to be tracking their paces kids etc but let's go back to sort of first principles of what everyone should be doing exercise and fitness for is just like general well-being longevity and health and you reference there the ability to detect maybe early onset of illness what are those key data points we should be looking at um because i do think people you know they see someone in shape or running particular times or lifting particular weights wearing a piece of wearable and i want to look and feel and do what they do i'm going to wear the tech but if i think if we take a step back and actually look at like the fundamentals here what are the key data points and why would i buy the watch or buy the whoop or buy the aura yeah i think there's there's probably like somewhere between five and ten metrics that are i think of real value um for for pretty much everybody there's obviously more as you get into specific situations if you're an elite endurance runner or marathon runner versus somebody else um so things like total sleep time resting heart rate heart rate variability temperature and like breathing rate or respiratory rate they would be five that i would always refer to as they're pretty commonplace amongst most wearable devices and they're also quite common in terms of conversation with people so people understand somewhat what those five metrics are i should have yeah can we just dig into each one of those a little bit so so what it is and why why it's important definitely so i'll go through those five and there's maybe a few other ones that we get into off the back of that but uh one i would say total sleep time is typically one that i think is worthwhile tracking for everybody i would say most people um or maybe a lot of people don't get enough sleep and so total sleep time is literally just accumulating or counting the amount of hours or minutes that you sleep every night.

14:25Peter Tierney:There's some other metrics that wearable technology is getting much better at, and that will also track alongside total sleep time. So things like efficiency, it's getting a little bit better tracking that. So that's the quality of your sleep or how much of the time you're in bed that you actually spend asleep. Sleep regularity, so trying to go to bed at roughly the same time every night and wake up roughly the same time every morning, that's definitely gaining a bit more attention and probably a bit more research supporting the importance of that metric as well and then there's a few things and a few data points are in sleep stages and I think a lot of wearable technology is not good at doing this there are some devices that are decent and they're probably at a level now where they're good enough to determine sort of your own individual variance within a certain sleep stage but I definitely wouldn't hang my hat on some of those metrics so i would more so focus on the total hours slept and the sleep regularity and then maybe there's some nuanced situations where i've explored sleep stages with some people um but that would be from a sleep uh tracking point of view how much am i sleeping how regular is my sleep and then how how good a quality is my sleep i um don't want to hijack each question and start to talk about specific brands but i don't know we need to sort of tag this in so if when it comes to sleep maybe you could tell me this is premature but when it comes to sleep is there a piece of wearable or what would you recommend and maybe we can do some recommendations so someone's like shit my sleep is terrible um i'd appreciate like your sleep might be the thing that someone needs to fix but they maybe want to buy a wearable that kind of covers all things with like a broad brush and it's fairly good so maybe this is premature but it'd be good to start to give people the recommendations and these are just like general recommendations based on your testing and feedback and like we said we're talking about large parts uh portions of money here that people need to invest yeah i would say most wearables are pretty good at measuring total or estimating total sleep time so if and i'm saying that's one of the most important metrics so for me most most wearables can do that fairly accurately so the things you've got to consider in terms of different companies or devices are around the other pieces so if every company or device can measure total sleep time you've got to think about things like comfort cost like some people don't like wearing watches at nighttime.

16:42Peter Tierney:So then maybe an Oura ring or a Whoop is a little bit more comfortable to wear at nighttime. Some people have an Apple watch and they need to charge it overnight. So that's a battery life or a technology consideration that they don't like. I know somebody who doesn't like wearing rings at night, so he wears a Whoop or a watch instead, which is funny because I find a ring pretty seamless and I wouldn't even feel it. So I think for the most part, total sleep time, most devices are pretty good at so if you have anything from apple watch whoop or uh and fitbit total sleep time is pretty solid i think the two that i tend to suggest for sleep specifically would be ordering or whoop um and i think we can get to this probably after we've spoken through the different metrics i think so around the information is consistent from a lot of apps and devices but actually it's like the insight and interpretation is now what's more important so the technology from everybody has been elevated over the last few years now it's really okay how can i get people to change behavior based on the information that i'm feeding back to them yeah okay let's go to number two so total sleep time number one resting heart rate i think for me is like the second one um for me this is like one of the most well-researched health metrics um and i think it's applicable to everybody so general population professional athletes um it will be sensitive to detect change or illness it'll be sensitive to training load it will represent your globally speaking your fitness and it will be linked to recovery so I think it's one of those ones and it's also very reliable from wearable technology at the moment particularly at rest or overnight so that would be one that I would say everybody who has a wearable device should pay some attention to and my advice for this and for all of the five metrics that I sort of highlight and pretty much most metrics is staying within a normal range for you.

18:34Peter Tierney:So for example, if your resting heart rate is 50 beats per minute, there will naturally be day-to-day fluctuation, maybe one to two beats per minute, depending on training or travel or things like that. And if you're within that range of plus or minus two beats per minute, I would say there's not really anything you have to action or do or change. But if it starts to go above that range, that's when I would start to I guess reflect on the previous day or reflect on today's workout or schedule and say okay are there things do I feel okay are there things that happened yesterday that have caused this massive spike in my resting heart rate if there are do I need to change anything today so if I wake up in my Garmin and I go to do my run and my Garmin says rest it's usually then pulling that data from total sleep time and resting heart rate and if been elevated or that that sleep window has been shortened that's going to be two I guess hallmark ways of my watch assimilating that I could probably do with the rest of that day.

19:33Peter Tierney:Typically yeah the challenge with some of the I guess like like we talked about those composite scores or sort of own company metrics is there's a little bit of a lack of understanding and transparency into what makes up that score. So for example if you're talking about Garmin or RUBO they all have a different score and it'll be usually out of a hundred to try make it easy for somebody but if for example your recovery on an app says 90 or 65 and it's usually somewhere between 85 and 100 the challenge for you is that you don't know what has caused the change in that score you have to then go back and look at okay is my total seat time down is my resting heart rate down is my hrv elevated or suppressed and then you have so you always have to go back to what the actual input that it is so i think some of those scores like i said they can be good to to challenge but i think um we have to start thinking about those scores should be normal is good lower is potentially bad or or cause for concern and then even potentially too high above a normal range is like oh is there something else going on so you know you see like a red amber green of low medium high i almost think the amber or the normal should be green in all those apps and then the really low one should be maybe red or orange and then the really high one should be a different color that doesn't you know doesn't associate with excellent because normal is good that's typically what i would suggest to people yeah fair okay number three so we've got total sleep time and resting heart rate yeah uh heart rate variability i think this gets spoken about a lot and there's still some potential limitations with some of the wearable technology.

21:15Peter Tierney:It's a really well-researched metric that's been around for years. So this isn't a new thing, but it's been popularized by a lot of the devices and companies and obviously people speaking about it. So Hary variability now is captured overnight and most devices are pretty good at measuring this at rest. The challenge is that a lot of the research is actually on measurement when someone is awake or first thing in the morning. And that tends to be the most sensitive time to detect changes in heart rate variability. So a lot of prominent researchers in this area would suggest or recommend taking a heart rate variability reading first thing in the morning.

21:56Peter Tierney:So if you go to the toilet, you wake up, you sit down or stand up and do this reading, and that's the marker of heart rate variability you should use to action changes in your training. So that's probably, I guess, specifically within like an endurance or a sporting context. And now what companies have done is they've taken this metric overnight and obviously given that feedback. So typically they're related, but they can be different. And sometimes some of the research that I know will say that the morning reading is a bit more sensitive to like changes in training load or fatigue than the overnight metric.

22:28Peter Tierney:So that's a bit of a complex one, which I'm conscious is like almost not even linked to wearables. but I do think some of the wearables should offer an option to take a morning reading for some people that really want to dial in training around heart rate variability. Can you just give a quick sort of description of what heart rate variability is? Because I know some people get a little bit confused. When I show mine, like mine usually like bad for me is like 100 and something, whereas some people bad for them is like 30 or 40. Yeah, so heart rate variability is basically the time between successive heartbeats.

22:57Peter Tierney:so that time might be it might be one second it might be it's it's it's going to vary and that variance is typically seen as a positive thing so it's your it's i guess it's showing it's reflecting your autonomic nervous system which is sort of showing your ability of how much stress you can tolerate and so the typically the higher the variance the the better it's seen as and the caveat i'll say to that is that it's higher in respect to your own range so a lot of it is genetic A lot of it is, you know, I don't think I could, you know, compare my heart rate variability to yours unless the only caveat is like if it's exceptionally low, as in below 15, 20 milliseconds, I think that's maybe there's some indications that that might lead to an increased mortality risk.

23:41Peter Tierney:So, you know, my range, my normal range, and it goes back to this normal range, and you'll hear me say that probably 50 times today, but it goes back to that. So your normal range might be between 100 and 150. Mine might be between 50 and 70. And what's low for me is obviously lower than my normal range. What's low for you is less lower than your normal range. And that's the comparison we should be making as opposed to saying, oh, mine's 70 and yours is 150. So that means you're twice as good as I am. That's not how HRV works. So is there any way and there's no merit then in trying to train your normal range to push the threshold higher?

24:19Peter Tierney:So you can definitely shift it a little bit higher. And that's probably the scope, I think, to improve. if people think they have a low or suppressed heart rate variability usually that's because of certain health behaviors so if you increase fitness you might see a small increase in heart rate variability particularly through high intensity interval training you'll see a small uptick if you are more active during the day and you increase your daily step count and movement you might see an increase in hrv and also one thing from i guess like a sporting world that's important to note here is typically you'll see less variance in fitter people and what that means or what i mean by that is for someone like yourself who's extremely fit you'll typically see less day-to-day variation in hrv for people that are less fit you'll see bigger swings of like up higher lower higher lower and i think what that represents and what researchers are concluding is that fitter people are better able to tolerate sort of stress and and that stress can be mostly in an athletic population obviously exercise running gym work but in other people who are fitter and the suggestion is that they can tolerate global stress a little bit better yeah nice okay so we've done the first three what's number four number four i would say is temperature um and most devices now are just giving you readings of deviation of temperature So as opposed to 35 degrees Celsius, they'll just give you plus 0.5 degrees or minus 0.5 degrees.

25:52Peter Tierney:So one of the reasons I say this is important is for that illness detection piece. Typically, if you're ill, you will see a massive increase in your temperature. You can feel it as well. So that's the perception piece. But typically, it will be highlighted in skin temperature on a wearable device. The other piece to that is around menstrual tracking. and there's a lot of good data from Aura and Wupu are publishing and sharing some things around menstrual tracking and if people aren't using contraception if females aren't using contraception you will typically see a temperature pattern through a cycle and that can help predict when period onset might be so I think in terms of again that's general population for females whether that's managing their own training their own energy their nutrition there's definitely some pieces around the wearable devices supporting that now that's a whole other conversation around are there you know should you be recommending differences in training for a menstrual cycle so I don't think that's the topic of conversation today typically the evidence is you manage the individual not the the phase so you know for for 20 females who are tracking the menstrual cycle there's no global recommendation to say oh on this day or this phase you should do this type of training but obviously you manage then by symptoms and the wearable technology can help identify and track maybe when someone's symptoms are typically on an onset really good number five number five then i would say is breathing rate there's probably a few these are all sorry just for clarity as well these are all metrics uh overnight so there are some things during the day which we can touch on as well but overnight uh breathing rate again very sensitive to i would say like illness as well and so the example being COVID or the flu or cough you'll see a massive spike in breathing rate and that's I guess indicating that your body's under a little bit of stress so it has to breathe more frequently to support recovery for your system so that one I think is pretty well established it's pretty sensitive for illness detection and usually if you're not sick and you're not menstruating you'll see pretty stable temperature and breathing rate and if they change they're typically ones that i would say okay there's there's something worth looking at or maybe changing training based on on some of those metrics okay so we rounded out the kind of the big five the most important we've discussed what they are why they're important and how they're tracked during the night and that most wearables should track those five things fairly accurately yeah there's some variants in hrv and depending there's a few things like skin color uh even some tattoos can impact sleeping position and things like that but yeah globally speaking those five things tech should be able to and can can measure yeah and most of those things lead back to sort of illness detection but it may be you know a lack of so under under recovered or over trained um and so like tracking and being aware of those five points is obviously the first step but what can people then do to and it's very obvious you know work on sleep hygiene sleep a little bit longer you know the caffeine thing all that kind of stuff but how do we move beyond just measuring those five things is there anything that's like one to three things you would suggest like prioritize if those things are um irregular consistently that are just big wins uh i think i shared this recently i think physical activity is one of the things that people don't talk about in terms of sleep and recovery and all of the health metrics is that people sometimes will start wearing a tracker they might see oh i'm not sleeping enough So they'll just put all their attention around, you know, pre-bed routine and sleep environment and everything.

29:26Peter Tierney:And they're important. I don't want to diminish the importance of those pieces. But often I've seen with people, they just don't exercise enough. So physical activity will support sleep. It will also improve and support resting heart rate, breathing rate, like all of those factors. So for me personally, I would always start with physical activity. Even though it sounds counterintuitive, people say, what, that doesn't really make sense. But I would also say that the evidence, and this is slightly away from wearables, but the evidence, if you think of the triad for health being physical activity, sleep and nutrition, I've asked people this before and I say, which is the most important?

30:06Peter Tierney:And to me, it's physical activity. That's the one I prioritize. And the evidence is that that's just not my opinion. The evidence is there to support that, that people have a lower mortality risk when they exercise sufficiently. sufficiently so uh two strengthening sessions a week and you know the the sort of government guidelines of moderate to vigorous physical activity when they do those and when they achieve those guidelines even when they sleep less than six and a half hours and even when their diet quality score is lower than other people they still have the lowest mortality risk now obviously an ideal setting or situation is you do all three of those things you sleep perfectly you eat perfectly and you you exercise a lot and that's the that's the you know the the north star for everybody but sometimes in a situation where something falls people say i don't have enough time to to exercise and i'm actually saying well based on the evidence potentially you can sleep a little bit less you can worry a little bit less about food but don't don't forego that that physical activity it's really interesting advice i would hazard a guess that most people listen to this don't fall short on uh physical activity but i think it's a good place to start and then if if they are you know they've got that box ticked i think it's then fairly the recommendations of are fairly common and understood.

31:18It's like prioritize good nutrition, prioritize sleep. And that should start to clean up all of those things. I suppose a level of regularity around, as you said, sleep and wake times, you know, knowing when your body, you know, knowing when's a training day, high stress, low stress, et cetera. Prioritizing good nutrition, fueling well. Okay, there's the big five. Is there any others that we should?

31:39Peter Tierney:I think they're the key ones overnight. And then obviously the wearables now that people will have are often more during the day, of course. So a couple of key things for me, I still think steps are a really important global measure. Again, I don't want people to be listening to this focusing on, if I ask you how many steps you take in a day, I would hope that your answer is above 10 ,000 or 12 ,000, 15 ,000, whatever it is. I hope somebody doesn't say to me, oh, it's 10 ,134 because the smaller amounts of steps are just not. But the wearables are good for showing you, okay, are you globally active, very active, active or sedentary during a day?

32:14Peter Tierney:and that's what that steps measure is but i think there's plenty of evidence to suggest that the more active you are the healthier you'll be so that'll be one during the day and then again it's probably specific around your your training goals um for people who are in sort of or training in the sort of cardiovascular sense so like running rowing cycling whatever it is i think heart rate and pace are typically good measures from wearable technology um and they're again depending on where you wear them there's a few nuances in terms of the accuracy of the heart rate during those exercise in those different situations and then with strength training wearables are probably at their youngest in terms of being able to track and tell you things because it can't tell you like a wearable cannot describe muscle disorders they cannot measure it and there are some pieces of technology that aren't really wearables that can measure bar speed or tonnage but they're not yet integrated into the wearable system.

33:13Peter Tierney:So that's probably an area that I think a lot of people and companies will start to focus on moving forward. It's like, how do we account for people who go to the gym, which is hopefully everybody, and probably everybody listening to this is going to the gym, maybe doing a training program from you. So how do you account for that in the sort of recovery recommendations? Because a side note to this as well, a situation that I've had so many times is when a wearable device will tell you that, okay, Ollie, today you're 95 % recovered based on your heart rate, your HRV, your sleep. But you've done a really heavy leg session yesterday and your soreness is that eight out of 10.

33:52Peter Tierney:And you're looking at that going, it can't be, like I can barely walk today. And this is telling me to, I'm peaking today and go for max intensity. So there's definitely that mismatch happens and it happens a lot in sport as well because typically soreness peaks 48 hours after an intense bout of exercise so rugby match a big gym session the high rocks competition for example or even a marathon um but then typically you see a rebound in heart physiology maybe 48 to 72 hours afterwards so when when your heart variability peaks your soreness actually also peaks and then that's the mismatch that people get confused by i mean one of my questions was how well do wearables adapt to different styles of training strength versus endurance but i think because i've certainly found that you know they're optimized for more endurance-based training, heart rate, cadence, speed, etc.

34:39So that covers that nicely. Is there a risk here then? Are we outsourcing, and I sort of mentioned this at the top, are we outsourcing too much of our thoughts and feelings to what we should be doing on any given day from the data and being detached a little bit from how we actually feel? Are we overtracking or would you say not?

34:56Peter Tierney:I think there is, there are a population of people who are overtracking and are definitely over-aligned on the data. And there also may be a population of people who are a little bit resistant to technology. And again, for me, I sit very much in the middle. I don't see why you have to be either or. I think you can be somebody who collects data relatively seamlessly for long-term tracking. Most of the time, if my metrics aren't out of massive alignment of what I expect every day, I don't do anything. I just look at it first thing in the morning and then go, okay, nothing's alarming. And then I put it down and put it away.

35:32Peter Tierney:But the benefit for me is like long-term tracking and seeing trends or identifying patterns and things like that but I'm also quite intuitive with my body so if I run there's often like and people get better at training and and understanding how they feel but I have a pretty good barometer of my pace even without looking at my watch all the time so unless it's like a very specific one and sometimes if it's hot I'll look and my pace is slower and then my heart rate's higher and that's where you've got to on the fly sort of understand okay I'm still listening to myself but actually I'm looking at my pace my heart rate I'm going okay I might have to change something and that's the nuance with like just getting more experience with training and with data but it's also that with sleep and sometimes sometimes people will wake up and say oh I feel like I slept terribly because they woke up once 40 minutes before they actually wanted to get up and that's the immediate thing in their mind is like oh I slept terribly but sometimes then the wearable device can reassure somebody that actually you slept really well apart from like that one wake up at six o 'clock and so sometimes you can use the data to like sort of challenge your negative perception to reinforce the positive sort of confidence from some of the data but I definitely think there's people in those two extremes of I don't want to look at data like it's pointless and then there's people who are like I have to listen to every single recommendation from data and I really think you should sit in the middle of both of those things yeah very good advice um i want to start to talk specifics now about some of those bits of data feel free to if you're unhappy to talk about the actual names you're not affiliated with anyone are you no okay cool i think we can i know i know some people in different wearable companies and i have some conversations all the time so i have good relationships so i'll say that like i do speak to i've spoken to people in whoop and aura koros um i and ultra human i know some people so um but i always try and i say this to a company as well well if someone like i've been sent some products for free to try and like we joked about previously we caught up like sometimes i'm wearing like four different devices going to bed and it's a bit of a you know it's a funny look but um i always say to them if they send me something to test like i will be brutally honest um and when i share something if i share my thoughts online expect that it's going to be the truth and again my experience of working with those companies is that they're, they want that.

37:50Peter Tierney:That's what they, you know, for the most part, obviously people have different experiences with different companies. But my experience has been like, if they've, someone has sent me something, that's, I say, look, the caveat, if you send me this, I'm going to, I'm going to rinse it or I'm going to praise it. But so that's just the sort of, something to mention to everybody listening. It's a nice, it's a nice pre-frame. Let's touch firstly, because you mentioned there in the data points we might track during the day, a kind of heart rate, speed, et cetera. So there's three options. I think we've discussed them.