[alephxyz]

Garmin estimates it using heart rate, body weight and power output. It also adjusts for temperature and altitude if possible. In my experience it still varies a lot depending on which conditions I exercise in but it's a decent tool to see your progress if you're able to test it under similar conditions every time.

[maeil]

Which watch do you use?

The user you replied to has convinced me to get a smart watch as 1. I've had awful stamina since age 10 or birth 2. Stupid "number going up" gimmick generally works well at motivating me. But I'm not about to switch to iPhone, so getting an Apple watch isn't going to work.

[542354234235]

Not OP but I’ve used Garmin’s for about 15 years and over 10k running miles. I don’t like or use non-fitness related smart watch features, so I can’t speak to those or recommend a good "smart watch that also does fitness". If you want top of the line with more data than you’ll know what to do with and a ton of fitness activity tracking beyond running, the Epix2, Fenix 7, or Forerunner 965 (I have the Epix2).

A step down but still great is the Forerunner 265. The feature they all have and I think has been the most useful is the Training Readiness. It looks at a bunch of different metrics, both current (your HRV, last workout performance, sleep, stress) and chronic (your weekly and monthly total exercise amount, types of running, etc) and advises you on how hard you should train and suggests a running activity for the day. It is basically a digital running coach/personal trainer that makes sure you are getting a good mix between tempo runs, long runs, easy runs, etc. and makes sure you aren’t overtraining or if a bad day means to switch to a light workout. I normally use it loosely to inform my choices but I’ve tried using its daily training plans exclusively and it was very good at keeping me progressing.

Hopefully this helps.

[maeil]

Super helpful, going to look into those! I too only care about the fitness part, in an even narrower scope - literally only the usecase mentioned here, giving some VO2max-ish or other "stamina level" number (even if of questionable accuracy) that I can slowly see improve over time to help with motivation.

In some sense less data might be better to make it clearer which number to focus on, so sounds like the Forerunner may be the right fit. The Training Readiness does sound a bit intidimating for someone who's starting from zero (or really, minus), but I can always strategically ignore that ;)

Thank you.

[542354234235]

>The Training Readiness does sound a bit intidimating for someone who's starting from zero

I totally understand, however, I would say that is exactly where it is most useful. You don't need to actually know or understand any data, since Garmin crunches all those things in the background for you and distills it down to concrete advice on where you are and what to do next. You can really do well with just two metrics (the daily suggested workout and Training Status). You could just follow the workout of the day "Easy run, heart rate range x-y, 31 mins" or "Tempo run, warm up 10 mins, run 15 mins heart rate range x-y, cool down 10 mins" etc. And look at what your Training status is currently, which is things like “Productive”, “Overreaching”, “Maintaining”, etc.

You don’t need to understand about lactic threshold and what types of runs improve it or how high aerobic, low aerobic, and anaerobic runs affect different aspects of improving your fitness or how many rest days are enough. You don’t need to have the experience to know how to balance recovery and training and which factors to even look at. Was your status “Productive” most of the week? Awesome, you know you are improving. What is the next workout? Done.

I hope it works out for you and you enjoy running as a healthy hobby.

[maeil]

> Was your status “Productive” most of the week? Awesome, you know you are improving. What is the next workout? Done.

Right, but to us monkey-brained seeing a boolean "productive" isn't a great motivator, we need to see a number that can go up, making it much more addictive. That's why I was so convinced by the Apple Watch user giving that one number that they look at - that will definitely work for me as it's super effective on the reward-related parts of my brain. A boolean, or having a hundred numbers - not as much. If you're someone who doesn't need that, I'm sure the training readiness is much more actually useful for improving, but we're not necessarily looking for that - our hope is to one day get to a point where we may start looking for that :)

I've noticed it myself even when doing projects. So much easier to stay motivated when you have this one number, e.g. page views or active users that updates every day (not "enterprise contracts" which may change once every month), to focus on, purely for monkey-brain reasons.