[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.

[sirsinsalot]

The video I linked was doctors who specialise in fitness doing a literature review of the evidence of what I was discussing as published in medical journals and talking about the actual, medical, biomechanics.

"by using obscure and invented health industry terminology absent from medical science"

"Zone 2 HR" is just an alias for 65%-75% of your max heart rate with Zone 3 being 80%-85% and so on ... very simple, and max HR % is used across the medical profession (along with VO2 Max) [1][2][3][4] ... I could go on and on.

These "zones" are defined by the point at which metabolic processes change. After ~zone 2, you burn more glycogen and engage fast twitch muscles, and this affects cellular respiration differently in terms of performance pay-off. At ~zone 3 the metabolic processes and chemical balances change again, and so on [5]

You VERY evidently have so little idea about what you're actually talking about, at this point I consider it a troll and I won't bother continuing.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6607712/ [2] https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/physiol.000... [3] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259652575_From_Hear... [4] https://escholarship.org/content/qt5cz1v976/qt5cz1v976.pdf [5] https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.14814/phy...