An Apple Watch has been protecting my wrist since 2015. I’ve been wearing it every day since then, but it’s not there every night. At first I was using it to monitor my sleep, but there came a time when I stopped doing it: “Come on, six hours”, “come on, seven hours” I saw no use. And that? I chose to use it at night for charging, because a chronic sin of this watch is that its battery lasts for one day, not two.

a little over a year ago, With a renewed interest in improving my health, I charged the watch during the day to monitor my sleep at night.. And going back to that tradition with a few resolutions made me understand all about the usefulness of this follow-up.

Much more than “Let’s see how long I’ll sleep”

At the beginning of time, I thought keeping this recording in the background would help me become more aware of my insomnia. Seeing that my average nightly sleep time is far from ideal, black on white, may help me realize the problem and sleep more easily. It wasn’t exactly like that, and months later everything was still the same.

The difference is marked The use of applications that combine thousands of daily data recorded by the watch, including sleep as the lead character, to examine physical condition in real time. In my case, this app is Atlitik, very complete and subscription. A while ago I used Training Today, which is much simpler and does not require a subscription. There’s also AutoSleep, which requires no subscription and does the job of mirroring our physical condition as well as monitoring sleep.

These applications collect data about our heart rate, the variability of that pulse, the time we sleep, the quality of that sleep, the physical activity we do, our resting heart rate… A lot of information that the health application covers in the case is iOS. There are equivalents of Android, depending on the manufacturer.

Then he processes them and each in his own way tells us our physical form, our ability to face an effort in the moment.

In the Athlitic state, it essentially scores three points:

• improvementis measured as a percentage. 100% means we are fully prepared for maximum effort. Our recovery above 66% is pretty good. Not below 50% and below 33% rest should be our only option. This metric is calculated by combining resting heart rate and heart rate variability.
• Effort. Expressed from 0 to 10 with decimal places, this metric calculates our accumulated effort level throughout the day. Calculated based on each user’s maximum heart rate and time spent in each of the heart rate zones.
• target effort zone. A range for the effort we can reach each day is based on our recovery. If we see that our current effort is around 4.2 and our target zone is between 7.5 and 8.5, it means we can exercise (or just walk) until we reach that range. Up there, we’d be overtraining.

Recovery is a mainstay for this application, both on its own and for calculating the target effort zone. Without measuring heart rate variability while sleeping at night, this calculation would not be possible. So it saves me from having to wear an Apple Watch every night to monitor sleep.

The screenshots below are all mine:

Athletic showing accumulated effort over a day. In this case, specifically above the target effort zone indicated in green.

Marks the athletic recovery level.

A graph of Heart Rate Variability over a day in Atlitik.

Sleep hours for a day collected by AutoSleep and displayed in Athlytic.

Training Today offers the equivalent of a 0 to 10 recovery score with just one decimal place. AutoSleep integrates a multicolored speedometer that tells us the same thing. It’s not as clear or complete as Athlytic, but not asking for subscriptions in return is something many users will see with better eyes.

Colored speedometer that AutoSleep uses to indicate our level of rest and recovery for a great physical effort.

And what is all this for? before everything, make decisions about sports efforts not just with sensations but with information that supports them. While this subjective assessment (“how am I feeling today?”) is important, it is better to have objective data to base this decision on. Should I run 15 kilometers today or stop at 6? Is it a good idea for me to cycle the 90km route or should I stay at 30? How intense can I train today?

And vice versa. Why couldn’t I rebuild my max score today? What happened to me to stay halfway through my training plan? Seeing recovery data and target effort zone for the day helps us understand how our bodies are working. It is even information that we can add dynamic complexity to our watch face. And so, optimize the effort.

There are also utilities in another sense, such as optimizing the alarm to wake us up during a light sleep phase.and so we experience a less abrupt sunrise than when we wake up at a deep stage. But that’s another story.

The hassle of finding a new daily charge model for the watch comes at a high price to Apple Watch users, which owners of other brands’ models would see as something out of date. But it’s still worth it to have so much personal and useful information on your wrist.