It’s all about being accountable for your fitness goals!

Whether your fitness goals are to get shredded, lose those love handles, or gain some weight and bulk up, we cannot deny that the key to achieving our targets lies in being consistent. Being consistent means having accountability, to keep track of our progress over time.

What better way to improve our fitness and physical health than to track our metrics consistently, to be able to make adjustments that align with our goals? It may sound like a lot of work, but these are tiny habits that will go a long way! Here are 5 stats to take note of when tracking your fitness, and it fits any type of fitness goals - weight loss, muscle gains, or overall physical fitness!

Heart Rate Variability

This insightful metric reflects your body's response to stress, recovery status, and overall health. It is essential whether you're trying to lose weight, build muscle, or improve overall fitness. For weight loss, it can influence how efficiently you shed pounds as lower HRV may signal overtraining or stress, hindering your progress.

In strength training, lower HRV might indicate incomplete recovery, informing you when to rest and optimize muscle growth. Regularly monitoring HRV can provide insights into your body's readiness to perform and potential health risks, contributing to overall fitness and endurance training outcomes.

Basal Metabolic Rate and Daily Caloric Intake

Knowing your BMR and daily caloric intake is key to managing your weight. To lose weight, understanding these figures can help you create a calorie deficit. Conversely, to gain weight, it aids in creating a calorie surplus. You've probably heard of the saying 'Calories in, calories out', which is essentially what weight gain and weight loss are all about.

These metrics also ensure you're fueling your body sufficiently for daily activities, workouts, and muscle growth in strength training.

VO2max

This measures your body's capacity to utilize oxygen. In weight loss, a higher VO2max can help you burn calories more efficiently during exercise. It's also a critical measure for endurance athletes as it helps determine aerobic endurance capacity and training zones. Moreover, a higher VO2max is usually linked to better cardiovascular fitness and overall health.

While VO2max is predominantly monitored by endurance athletes, it definitely can help you better achieve that 'one last rep'!

Steps

Keeping track of your steps ensures you maintain an active lifestyle, contributing to a calorie deficit for weight loss and promoting overall health and fitness. Regular physical activity, as simple as walking, is also crucial for heart and lung health.

Don't underestimate the benefits of counting your steps; apart from aerobic fitness, walking is a low intensity activity that can also aid in post-workout recovery, without causing additional stress on your muscles and joints (lifters, this is for you).

Sleep Quality

Good sleep is a cornerstone for all fitness goals and overall health. It aids in proper metabolic function, and is crucial for muscle recovery and growth when aiming for weight gain or strength training. It is essential for recovery, cognitive function, mood regulation, and general health, impacting overall fitness and stamina improvement in endurance training.

These five stats are the basic metrics for tracking our fitness and physical health, which goes a long way to improving our performance when we workout or exercise. There are other metrics such as Body Mass Index (BMI) and Body Fat Percentage (BFP) that are tracked more deliberately by individuals on a weight loss journey, but these stats are made convenient and accessible with the current tools and wearable technology available in the market.

The best way to keep track of these fitness statistics would be with a wearable device such as the smartwatches like Samsung Galaxy smartwatch, Apple Watch, Mi Watch (Xiaomi) that comes with an accompanying mobile app like the Google Fit, Apple Health or Mi Fitness (Xiaomi Wear).

Of course, these 5 stats are not the be all end all, and there are other important details such as rest, recovery, diet (nutrition and macros) and hydration. However, the 5 stats above will set the baseline for optimizing your performance during every workout session.

Team Slated