Activity/Fitness Trackers; do they change your life?

Wearable trackers are here to stay and it seems like most people have one, but do they change your life or not?

We get into both perspectives to give you a wider view and maybe change your thinking on them.

We've noticed some things in relations to trackers with the members at the gym. For example, without a doubt when we recently did an activity challenge the members who wore trackers were at the top. But were they are the top because they wore a tracker, or did they wear a tracker because they already do a lot of activity and wanted to measure/ validate it?

We've also noticed a level of dependency, leading to levels of anxiety about activity not being tracked; is it wasted activity if it's not tracked?! We’ve all joked about not setting our trackers going or leaving them on charge and does it even count if it’s not being tracker, but that is actually how it feels!

All activity is valuable but a tracker can lead us to over-valuing our "ambient" activity, or mometarily under-value anything we didn't measure (if we forgot to set it, or if it was charging), or maybe put in less effort if it’s not being tracked.

They are great for establishing where you are right now (although you can do that without one) and also for quantifying the "a lot" measure we come up against time and time again. The "I walk a lot" statement tells us nothing and far too often we find one person's a lot is another person's not very much!

They add a community aspect, you can see how you are doing compared to a large amount of people or your social group. They are a way of encouraging others and the different brands motivate us with challenges and competitions.

Trackers also give us a lot of other useful data (such has heart rate variability and stress scores) which can be incredibly useful for managing certain health conditions, and helping us not to feel guilty for resting.  While this is certainly useful they can also give us inaccurate data and don't measure certain activities very well (such as Strength Training).

A tracker "casts votes" for the person you want to become which James Clear tells us we must do in Atomic Habits. He also warns us against getting trapped into thinking it's the measure that counts, and optimising for what we are measuring (such as not going on a bike ride because then we miss out on steps).

Lastly, these trackers mostly only measure quantity not quality. They can make us hyper-focus on the number while ignoring other important factors such as how good moving our body makes us feel.

We're not going to give you a definitive answer on whether you should be using a tracker, it's just a discussion and as Coach Dannii points out, it's value to you most likely depends on the type of person you are.