[johannes1234321]

Fitness data tells a lot, your health status, your daily schedule, with running/cycling/... your exact whereabouts that is quite some valuable information.

A notepad also isn't enough to correlate heart rate etc to specific exercises and plotting over time

[fud101]

Tell me more. Lol. I just did a 10k run, I tracked it with my watch but tell me how any of that matters to anyone except me (and it doesn't even matter to me what my HR was over that run - though i did use a HRM but mainly to keep myself from over-exertion). I really don't understand what fitness apps are supposed to do, they're possibly the most useless thing ever invented. I wrote my own app in Clojure over a decade ago and used it to track my workouts for a year or two, I never ever go back and look at a workout more than a week ago, maybe 2 weeks at the most, it simply isn't good data, it is the least valuable data one can generate.

[bravesoul2]

Funny. I keep a gym record in a local note on the phone. Not for the data. For the act of recording it. Never look back.

Only useful thing from Garmin app has been comparing heart rates to a year ago.

[fud101]

Act of recording is right. Pen and paper is efficient and you get a safe way to archive it once you fill the book up, it can go into storage or the bin. It's fool proof, doesn't have bugs or network timeouts, costs nothing and will give all the benefits of journaling without the downsides of digital distractions. I hate how every tech enthusiast thinks their addiction to technology is of benefit to humanity at large.

[eliasson]

I used to log my weight lifting in an app but I found it really distracting and time consuming so I gave up. For the last few weeks I have been bringing a small notebook and doing my logging by pen and paper instead. I find it much more relaxing and I only use it to check what weights I used last time, so I don't really miss anything.

Pen and paper is severely underrated today.