[Maursault]

I question the validity of the application. Apple seems to be promoting physical health while simultaneously leveraging mental illness to increase revenue.

I grant that this is an actual business space, accessorizing and promoting fitness, but these computerized accessories fundamentally distract from the individual's primary goal of getting in shape, leading to reliance on computerized devices that are unnecessary to meeting fitness goals. Isn't there such a thing as tuning one's ability to know one's own limitations naturally? Run. Run hard. Run fast. Run until you can't run any longer, and discover and accept physical limitations and push against them if your drive is unsatisfied.

Is this kind of data gathering really necessary to fitness? I'm nearly certain these applications actually fall under the category of play and entertainment. Maybe watch Rocky (1976) and/or Chariots of Fire (1981) for inspiration. Note the lack of any cybernetics. I'll take a mechanical stopwatch over an Apple Watch running fitness application any day of the week and twice on Sundays. Feel free to use an Apple Watch if it makes you happy, but to accept nothing less than perfection is really quite something else, so maybe there is a different kind of fitness that is immediately more pressing than physical fitness.

[thebigspacefuck]

It’s not necessary, but being able to measure improvement is highly motivating. Part of the fun of the sport for some of us is being able to experiment with variables like nutrition, heart rate zones, pacing , etc and measuring the impact on performance. I’ve had a Garmin watch since 2009 and I have always enjoyed being able to know I hit a new pace or distance. It also makes it easy to run on a new trail for X miles and turn around instead of having to map out a run on an existing course and time the laps with a watch. Probably the greatest addition to the sport since music imo.

[Maursault]

Whatever it takes to get you moving, but it is a little self-deceptive to ignore or replace natural incentives for fitness with artificial incentives of mere shadows on a cave wall. Perhaps the real world is a little boring, but it has the distinct advantage of being authentic.

[macintux]

I make absolutely zero apologies for the fact that the rings on my Watch helped me lose 40 pounds last year. Sure, I’m gaming myself, but good grief.

[Maursault]

Good for you and congratulations, but it was most likely due to your own hard work along with dietary adjustment, so you need not diminish your accomplishment by giving a device as much credit as you give yourself. The Watch really didn't do anything but keep time; you yourself did everything and filled the time.

[sirsinsalot]

That guy who is really organised, isn't degrading his organisational skills by using a calendar.

Get a grip jeez.

[Maursault]

Comparing egotistical obsession to neatness and an Apple Watch gathering absurdly detailed metrics in a running application to a calendar is both false analogy and oversimplification. The last part is ad hominem attack.

[sirsinsalot]

I don't often say this, but you're wrong and what you're saying shows a massive misunderstanding of fitness, metabolic process and goes in the face of everything we know about our physical makeup:

"Run. Run hard. Run fast. Run until you can't run any longer, and discover and accept physical limitations and push against them if your drive is unsatisfied"

This is just daft. Eliud Kipchoge, and most other runners very rarely hit their absolute physical limit (during training) and usually only hit it during a race if they did something wrong.

Your VO2 limit is not something you want to slam up against very often and doesn't represent anything other than how fast you can process oxygen directly (at the max point). Much more important to fitness is glycogen use efficiency and cell respiration. You don't improve these elements of your fitness (and they're the ones that count) by "Running fast until you can't run any longer". The opposite infact, you train them by doing long-duration low HR/VO2 activities.

In short, you don't know what you're banging on about, so are hardly in a position to be critical of how other people use digital devices when you don't know the first thing about human physiology in exercise.

[Maursault]

You're missing the forest for the tree. I wasn't giving instruction for exercise, I was making the miniscule point that all running requires is to run. You have entirely ignored the major point I was making to construct your straw man. All I was arguing was merely that exercise, getting fit and keeping fit, does not require wearable computing accessories to gather data second by second, the true purpose for which is stroking vanity. At these scales, the measurement is too refined to be useful. The odometer on your car does not display millimeters for a reason. Human memory and geographical awareness does the same work for free and apparently is more accurate.

[988747]

Accessories aren't strictly required, but they can be a massive help. Being aware of your heart rate and your pace helps you get the best results from your exercise. Also, accurately measuring your times, and seeing even few seconds improvement since the last week's training helps keep you motivated. There are many reasons to use such accessories, other than "stroking vanity".

[Maursault]

> Being aware of your heart rate and your pace helps you get the best results from your exercise.

This is widely believed but scientifically unproven. The understanding of the significance of awareness of heart rate to workout performance is ongoing. Basically, tracking heart rate shows what is already known, that improving cardiac performance will improve resting heart rate. The stated purpose of doing so is to increase self-esteem. For the same reasons there are large mirrors installed at most gyms.

> Also, accurately measuring your times, and seeing even few seconds improvement since the last week's training helps keep you motivated.

A $5 stopwatch is accurate to hundredths of seconds.

> There are many reasons to use such accessories, other than "stroking vanity".

This is an appeal to common sense, aka the fallacy of axiomatic thinking, or unsupported assertion. Claims which can be asserted without evidence may also be dismissed without evidence.

[sirsinsalot]

Again, more wrong. Zone 2 HR training induces a different physical response to zone 4. This is proven and measured. Zone 2 training increases mitochondrial function and burns fat. Zone 4 causes glycolysis and so on. These HR zones, reflective of effort, even exercise fast vs slow twitch muscle fibers differently.[1]

Having a device to help you stay in the right Zone is very valuable for effective training.

Large mirrors are in gyms to help with form when using equipment.

[1] https://youtu.be/-6PDBVRkCKc

[Maursault]

> Again, more wrong. Zone 2 HR training induces a different physical response to zone 4.

I'm not sure what you expect to accomplish by using obscure and invented health industry terminology absent from medical science and citing this kind of evidence with a three hour long podcast that I'm simply not going to entertain.

Regardless, you have constructed a new straw man argument. My point was far less complicated, which is that expensive and complex technological devices as sport accessories distract from the natural incentive of improving fitness and are unnecessary and functionally duplicated with an inexpensive stopwatch. The natural incentive for improved health is traded for the incentive for being entertained by absurdly detailed metrics without advantage to the fundamental goal of improving fitness.

Unnecessary reliance on accessories will synthetically make it more difficult to do the same activity if the accessories are removed, for whatever the reason they happen to not be available, stolen, lost, broken, whatever. Exercise is its own reward, and there is little reason to replace that incentive with the need to be entertained by detailed metrics of past events.

> Your statements are bizarre and arrogant. It feels like debating with an edgy teenager.

More ad hominem attacks.

Please do not be concerned about the opinions of others. Please follow you heart and do what makes you happy. I strongly insist that you do.

[dtf]

Bannister's use of a mechanical stopwatch on a 440 yard track is as much a case of cybernetics as a modern GPS or a heart rate monitor. He obviously didn't just turn up on the day and run 3:59.4. He trained for months with a stopwatch:

"Several days [per week] consisted of 10x440 in 66 seconds with a 2 minute rest. During the following months they were gradually speeded up ... to 59 seconds per 440." [1].

So aside from accuracy, what's the difference between training with the feedback of timed laps on a track (be it Bannister's mechanical stopwatch and cinder track measured in imperial units), or a modern athlete running kilometer repeats on the road via their fancy Apple or Garmin smartwatch?

If one is that much of a running purist, why measure time or distance at all?

[1] https://twitter.com/jmarpdx/status/1465431668206944256

[Maursault]

> So aside from accuracy, what's the difference between training with the feedback of timed laps on a track (be it Bannister's mechanical stopwatch and cinder track measured in imperial units), or a modern athlete running kilometer repeats on the road via their fancy Apple or Garmin smartwatch?

One gives useful feedback at a scale that is practical and sufficient and does so at a small cost, the other tracks information at scales beyond what is practical, the true purpose of which is obsession with self or vanity, at a comparatively exponential cost.

Consider that car odometers work on the scale of tenths of miles or kilometers. Exactly what purpose would it serve if they instead displayed distances in micrometers? They would be far more accurate, but that more accurate information is not any more useful than measurements in tenths of miles.

I already stipulated to go ahead and get your Apple Watch, or Garmin or what have you, if it makes you happy. But accumulating data on such absurd scales is not going to improve performance beyond that of using a conventional timer. The problem, as I see it, occurs when nothing less than perfection is acceptable, the entitlement that is exhibited simply because one was foolish enough to pay so much for an unnecessary sports accessory.

[dtf]

First, there's really nothing small cost about Bannister's stopwatch:

https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-the-omega-bannister-stopwa...

Sure, I can pick up the awesome Casio F-91W today for £10 and it would do much the same job. But for the modern day money equivalent of that gorgeous Omega piece I'm going to be able to afford a high-end GPS watch. There's nothing comparatively exponential about it.

Accuracy requirements will depend on training context - if you're running 60 second laps on a track and trying to shave 1 second of your mile PR like Bannister was, then you'll be wanting a certified track and decisecond accurate clock. If you're training for the marathon and running 5K repeats on the road, a few 10s of meters or seconds here or there doesn't really matter.

I can understand why some people don't want to run with a smartwatch, measure themselves, broadcast their progress to all on social media, judge themselves against others, and so on. (I also don't generally judge those who do, unless they're truly awful!)

I can also understand why some people would rather not run with any measure of time or distance at all. They feel it gets in the way, they'd rather just run free, they'd rather just run for fun, or they'd rather just race others for places in the spirit of pure competition.

I just can't get my head around the concept (and this isn't the first time I've heard it), that somehow old-school watches are acceptable but modern watches are bad. It smacks of neo-luddism (or sometimes hipsterism).

[Maursault]

> First, there's really nothing small cost about Bannister's stopwatch:

I was unfamiliar with the term and incorrectly assumed it was a common type of mechanical stopwatch rather than a ridiculously expensive brand of stopwatch. The fallacy is straw man, because my argument stated mechanical stopwatch implicitly as an inexpensive alternative to an Apple or Garmin watch. You effectively laid a trap for me and I walked right into it. Well done. But whatever your point may be, it is beyond the argument that I have made. I have no idea what the difference is between two expensive products.

> Sure, I can pick up the awesome Casio F-91W today for £10 and it would do much the same job. But for the modern day money equivalent of that gorgeous Omega piece I'm going to be able to afford a high-end GPS watch. There's nothing comparatively exponential about it.

Again, this is a straw man argument you have constructed in order to attack it. Regardless, it is not my argument.

> Accuracy requirements will depend on training context - if you're running 60 second laps on a track and trying to shave 1 second of your mile PR like Bannister was, then you'll be wanting a certified track and decisecond accurate clock. If you're training for the marathon and running 5K repeats on the road, a few 10s of meters or seconds here or there doesn't really matter.

The only running I am aware of that requires accuracy to the hundredths of seconds available on $5 digital stopwatches is sprinting races. Sprinting is not a cardiovascular workout but instead an anaerobic exercise. Regardless, the $5 stopwatch will suffice in tracking either cardiovascular or anaerobic exercise.

> I can understand why some people don't want to run with a smartwatch, measure themselves, broadcast their progress to all on social media, judge themselves against others, and so on. (I also don't generally judge those who do, unless they're truly awful!) I can also understand why some people would rather not run with any measure of time or distance at all. They feel it gets in the way, they'd rather just run free, they'd rather just run for fun, or they'd rather just race others for places in the spirit of pure competition. I just can't get my head around the concept (and this isn't the first time I've heard it), that somehow old-school watches are acceptable but modern watches are bad. It smacks of neo-luddism (or sometimes hipsterism).

Again, this is a straw man, a rephrasing of my argument such that it is no longer recognizable as my argument. My argument was that these extremely complex and expensive accessories become the ends themselves, they distract from the original intent of improving fitness, trading the natural incentives for fitness with the incentive of being entertained by a gizmo, which fundamentally is vanity. Beyond that, I speculate that it is merely the difference that money can make, and in this particular case, the difference is negligible and entirely arbitrary.

Simply be aware that unnecessary reliance on affectations will synthetically make it more difficult to do the same activity if the affectations are removed, for whatever the reason they happen to not be available. Exercise is its own reward, and there is little reason to replace that incentive with the need to be entertained by detailed metrics of past events.

But that said, for the love of serenity, please do whatever makes you happy.

[mrosett]

What you’re describing is a fantastic way to injure yourself.

[Maursault]

Comment is vague, but apparently what you are suggesting is that physical fitness isn't safe without using a computer. Our bodies evolved to run, and it is, actually, possible to recognize and react to what the body reports to the brain through sensation without any intermediary electronic device gathering and reporting false data. Many are capable of sensing injury or illness before overt symptoms appear, and react accordingly, reducing or eliminating negative impact. The more computerized devices are relied on for ordinary activity, the more they become a crutch, and the more difficult it becomes to operate without them. Obsession is unmistakably unhealthy.

[sirsinsalot]

No, what they're saying is that exercise as you've described, will lead to injury and goes against ALL the traning advice of seasoned long-distance runners.

But hey, go ahead.

[Maursault]

Then they, as you, have entirely missed the point of my comment, which had nothing whatsoever to do with any exercise plan. I was instead cautioning against unnecessary reliance on affectation.