CONNECT: March 28, 2014

Dive on in, the data feels fine....

Spoiler Summary: You are what you track? Sort of....add a splash of "what gets measured gets done" and you're on to something.

A week ago, I learned to listen.....again.  Admittedly, it's a lesson I relearn here and there - but this time it was a lesson in listening to my body's warning signs.  I won't bore you with the details (see Pro-Activity's Facebook or Twitter feeds if you're just DYING to know), but the basic lesson was that while ramping up training to get ready for a late-July triathlon I pushed a little too hard. It was not the first time and not the end of the world.  Thankfully, experience helped me to catch it early and avoid a major setback.....but if I had relied on objective information (data) and not solely intuition, I'm confident that I would have avoided it all together......and before I knew it I was traveling back in time.

Did you ever have one of those little scales used to measure proper meal portions?  Growing up we did.  I can still picture it sitting there on the counter, owned by my mom who by then had easily earned a PhD in Nutritional Science from the University of Curious Minds or the College of Find-Your-Own-Answers.  It was a painstaking effort (I'm sure) to manually translate "intake" into objective information, but the mini-scale was the technology of the day and it worked. It helped many people understand both what they were doing right and where the gaps were - and for some, it still does.

Fast forward a few years and pedometers and accelerometers were bursting onto the scene, helping folks begin to understand their movement (or lack thereof) patterns.  Bring the time-machine to the present and we have GPS enabled devices, some with continuous heart rate monitoring, designed not only to assist in translating all that MOVE data into a body-stress value, but provide insight into the FUEL and rest required to ensure we RECOVER fully.  Add this to the wealth of information that can be grabbed from just a few drops of blood and building your own unique control panel is doable....but this might be just the beginning.  

In the world of collegiate and professional athletics, athletes are being continuously monitored during games and practices which is having an impact on training approaches to minimize injury and maximize performance....and plenty of assumptions and long-held practices are being challenged.....but it's not just in elite athletes.  Did you know that a Canadian company is promising to deliver a device that uses light-technology to analyze your blood-flow and therefore the quality of your nutrition? A host of activity and sleep-trackers already exist and recently stories have leaked that Apple is creating a "health book" app on the next generation i-devices. Maybe the future is now.

It's not without some concern of course.  Where is all that data going? Who has access to it? For how long? Is it anonymous? Could it somehow get into the wrong hands? No one really knows, which makes some (rightfully) a bit queasy; but when it comes to health, it seems to have the makings of an incredibly important set of tools in assisting those with goals to get-there faster or more efficiently if used properly. Maybe not surprisingly to those who appreciate our geekier-side, we've been watching closely for a few years and wading in a little further each day.....testing first on ourselves and then inviting others to join in.....and although we don't always listen closely enough, what we're learning is very, very interesting.

So what about you, have you done it yet?  Have you tried tracking and translating yourself into bits and bytes? Have you tried to make changes based on trend-spotting your personal data? Have you dabbled in the quantified self? Do you use data to help guide your decisions and aide your attempt to ENDURE?

If not, it might be a good time to learn more. There's more to come here, but if you've got a geekier side too we hope you'll reach out and ask questions; we hope you'll get involved in the discussion; we hope you'll CONNECT the data - and the dots - it might just be the edge you need to achieve at a level you weren't sure you could.

Now go do something extraordinary,

Mike Eisenhart, PT

Managing Partner, Pro-Activity