Is technology your tool or your master?
Like a lot of folks, I have a complicated relationship with exercise. I imagine that I give off major “indoor kid” vibes, but I grew up playing sports and I recently got back in the game. I’m hesitant to call it a “love-hate” relationship because exercise has always been an outlet for me. However, I struggled with certain aspects, especially team sports, for a variety of reasons. If I wanted to be quippy, I could say that as a kid I had athleticism but zero skill in any sport. If I wanted to be serious, I might start talking about how a number of the teams I joined as a kid had a toxic culture that made me feel like a fish out of water.
Today, I don’t want to do either of those things. I want to talk about fitness apps.
Fitness apps motivate the hell out of me. I can’t get enough of those little badges you earn when you extend a streak, or hit a new personal best, or run a 5K on Thanksgiving. They combine video games and sports and I am a complete sucker for it. What’s not to love?
When I was in my mid-twenties, my family and I decided to train for a mud run. For those unfamiliar, a mud run is basically a gigantic obstacle course mashed up with a cross country race. There is a lot of running and climbing involved. You cannot go into it lightly (unless you want to die), so I started a training regimen.
I had dabbled in using a running app to track my distances and integrate music into my runs before, but I really put the app through its paces that summer. This was before the advent of the fitness-tracking smart watches (or at least before I had one), so I was lugging my phone around with with me up hills, over beaches, and through neighborhoods blasting up-tempo EDM and alt-rock into my eardrums. I racked up those little digital badges I love so dearly as I broke my personal bests: fastest mile; longest run; smelliest running shoes (actually I think that last one might have been a complaint from my roommate at the time). Each award gave me the loveliest little hit of dopamine. It felt good.
At the same time, I needed extra strength to climb up and over the course’s obstacles, so I started the P90X program (remember that one?) and downloaded that app too. It had nifty little reminders and inputs to help keep you on schedule. The dopamine kept coming. By the end of the summer I was in the best shape of my life, though I noticed my ankles were starting to bother me after long runs. No matter. I gave my legs some rest, iced up, and bought some compression socks for the mud run. Problem solved right?
Finally, the big day arrived. I flew down to South Carolina for the event, lined up in an open field with my brothers as the sun rose for our designated staggered start, and we were off. We slogged through mud-filled trenches, clambered over high walls, and swung through ropes courses. It was awesome. Afterwards, we all agreed that our strategy was a bit too conservative and could pick up the pace next time. I had a lot of fun. I also had a cracked rib and my ankles were on fire.
I took some time off after the race to give my body a chance to heal up. The rib got better, the ankles didn’t. I couldn’t jog for more than a mile without both ankles flaring up and sidelining me for weeks. I didn’t know it at the time, but my running days were just about over.
Running had always been “old reliable.” It cleared my mind. Getting motivated to start a long run could be difficult, but once the motion of my limbs aligned with my breath and heartbeat, the rhythm quieted the cacophony between my ears and allowed me to process my thoughts. It was meditation.
Don’t get me wrong, I cursed the sport countless times. It is hard not to when you are trying to get to the top of a steep hill, or lining up for a race in 20 degree weather wearing nothing but a thin racing jersey and the shortest of shorts, or clawing your way through sludge-like humidity under the unrelenting August sun. However, a particular thought often pierced through the negativity and self-doubt at these times: “Enjoy doing this while you can. One day you won’t be able to anymore.” How prescient of me.
I struggled to find an exercise program that filled the void for a very long time. At first, swimming seemed to be the perfect substitution, and lo and behold my smartwatch had a swimming app. Perfect. I jumped in the pool and started building my endurance at what I thought was a steady and reasonable pace, until my shoulder gave out in the middle of lap swim at the YMCA (and broke my weekly streak on my app). More downtime. More frustration.
To be clear, these fitness apps certainly did not cause my injuries. My underlying issue is that I have difficulty identifying where my physical limitations are. However, for me, this problem is exacerbated by the way that fitness apps gamify performance. Those little hits of dopamine that incentivize pushing myself to my limits also make it very hard for me to know when to stop. I want to close my rings, keep my streaks going, hit a new personal best. In order to do that, sometimes I ignore the stitch in my side or the cramp in my leg. Most of the time “pushing through” is the right call, until it very much is not.
I started rowing regularly about a year ago and it finally feels like I am getting back on track. I spent a summer learning the basics when I was in high school and loved it, but I didn’t stick with it. I was focused on running at the time, and running didn’t require waking up before 5 am to get out on the water.
Knowing this, my wonderful wife gave me a beautiful rowing machine for my birthday last year and it has been a game changer. I intentionally ramped-up my activity slowly, and I finally got to the point where I could put in some serious work in July. Now that running is off the table, I find that falling into the rhythm of catch, drive, finish, and recovery puts me right back into that tranquil, meditative state I found as a runner. It is a low impact exercise so I can manage my various lingering injuries with much better efficacy. At least, I should be able to.
You see, this rowing machine came with an outstanding app. Possibly the king of all fitness apps. It gamifies rowing to perfection: it gives you targets to hit mid-row, it tracks your streaks and personal bests, it even ranks you against your peers. I am 100% addicted to it, and I give it a lot of credit for helping me improve my health and fitness significantly over the last twelve months.
However, about two weeks ago I tweaked a muscle. I gave myself exactly two days to rest, because that would allow me to row again later on in the week and maintain my streak. After my two-day stint of rest, I cautiously started the next workout in my program, felt good, and finished it. I felt like I cracked the code: I listened to my body and still met my exercise goal! I rule.
Except that tweaked-muscle feeling came back later. It turns out that I didn’t give myself enough time to heal. I pushed myself to get back on the horse too quickly because I wanted to “keep the streak alive” and stay at the top of the leaderboards. I was at the beck and call of an app.
Typing that out, I feel pretty stupid.
In fairness to myself, it is really difficult to know when your body needs to rest and when it is okay to keep going. I don’t regret trying to push myself, but I shouldn’t be doing it for the sake of unlocking some obscure digital content. Instead, these tools need to be in my service, not the other way around.
If I find myself beholden to the app again, I will be breaking my streaks on purpose.