Does Our Exercise Data Wag the Dog?

I freely admit to being an exercise data junkie. Looking for those extra miles, personal records (PR’s), King of the Mountain (KoM) stats to post online. It seems that every workout became an attempt at furthering ones bragging rights.

Using portable computers to passively record and publish those emotionally charged numbers for us just makes things all that much easier.

My workouts however, evolved into a competition every time I geared up. I sensed the pressure to beat the numbers from my last workout, last week, last month. Who needs a training partner when you have your computer to flog you into pushing your resolve every time you train?

It took me a while, but I eventually came around to the simplest of questions:

Why?

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

While Disraeli and Twain quibbled over the rhetoric of statistics, our modern sports have taken numbers much more seriously.

With the buildup to the Super Bowl this winter, I consumed some professional football out of curiosity. As a lapsed television football fan, my love for the game, and its inherent sportsmanship, is still strong but the changes to the game, designed to attract greater viewership, are too distracting at times.

The overload of statistical information presented during competition distracts from the athletes and their competition. Numbers speak to the past but are not necessarily helpful for current or future performances. Percentages and comparative numbers are useful when handicapping competition for betting (which I suspect is the reason for the proliferation) but I do miss the pure game-play.

There is more to sports than numbers.

Why the Numbers?

My own theory on the numbers explosion in sports is that numbers are the only elements of activity and competition that our technology can capture. The “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” approach seems to apply.

Clocks, computers, maps, and the like are all numbers based. There is not a collection method available to record the feelings of winning a competition or even the euphoria of an exceptional workout. We can record it but we have no way of quantifiably capturing emotions, even though feelings are often the motivators for why we come back to a sport. So, we are stuck with tallying up numbers.

Numbers come in a poor second, if you will pardon the play on words, but when the only tool you have is number collection…

Turning the Tables on Exercise Data

Peer pressure has been quite the rage in society these last few years, but if you have tired of the juvenile antics over how you “should” be living your life, you can reclaim ownership. In the case of exercise data, and all the ensuing competition over having the best numbers, the answer can be as simple as saying “Thank you for sharing.”

I tend to put far too much pressure on myself. What I expect to do and what my aging body can produce, are often living in two different states.

Mental attitude and athletic performance are old friends, so dumping an outmoded thought process and adopting a new one is not a big deal. It is a fair amount of work to develop a new habit but not a big deal.

That is how I became an employer of my numbers, with my data collection machines reporting to me. I allow exercise data to work for me, instead of the other way around. When I work out, the numbers are available, but I just observe them in passing. The evaluation comes later.

Another PR? That is Cool.

Turning off the distracting notifications in your technology really helps. I find that going by how I feel on a given day really lightens the mental load.

Shutting off the segment notifications, unplugs me from all that mental competition. I know where the segments are, so I can still compete on them. I just wait until I get home to learn my results. Trust me. Missing a record by a second goes down a lot easier when kicking back with a smoothie in an air-conditioned house, than leaning exhausted over the handlebars. In that state, I am predictably willing to go hit it again, even when I am already out of gas.

Sort of takes much of the fun out of the workout.

I now enjoy the surprise of discovering a new PR or record number of miles, altitude, pounds lifted when I log into my workout afterwards. Mostly though, I just go out and enjoy what a workout offers.

Time to get into my body and just listen.

Time to enjoy scenery and being out-of-doors.

Sometimes it is time spent enjoying the company of others in the sport.

Mostly I just enjoy the sport.

That is why we are here, right?

“I don’t count my sit-ups; I only start counting when it starts hurting because they’re the only ones that count.”
― Muhammed Ali