Category Archives: Fitness/Training/Nutrition

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GOT (‘Til It’s Gone): Gamification Of Things

You Janet Jackson fans will recognize what I did there in the post title (wink).

Greetings all. We humans have been presented with methodologies and processes aimed at motivating us to to things for a reward, for decades. Oxford’s Dictionary defines gamification as :

gam·i·fi·ca·tion/ˌɡāmifəˈkāSHən/

noun

  1. the application of typical elements of game playing (e.g. point scoring, competition with others, rules of play) to other areas of activity, typically as an online marketing technique to encourage engagement with a product or service.

Think of the many times you’ve been presented with gamification through your own desire or via presentation from services tied to your occupation, etc. It is purely psychological, yet can have, sometimes, profound effects on how one approaches things based upon the reward outcome.

The greatest effect of gamification on me (from what I can remember) came from awards given via fitness tracking devices. It really started for me back in 2009 when I started tracking my runs with the Nike+ Fitness app via the Nike+ iPod Sport Kit. This continued through the use of the Nike Fuel Band, and onto my current method of tracking fitness – the Apple Watch. All three entities provide awards, aka badges, for completing a myriad of daily, monthly, and special challenges. Out of the three, I will wholeheartedly say that Nike fitness tracking ecosystem and advertising deeply drew me into striving to gain those rewards. I haven’t tried the same with Garmin or FitBit, and Apple really doesn’t do it for me, like Nike did…it’s kind of hard to explain the draw with what Nike did, but if I could, this would end of being a TLDR post.

I’ll go on to admit that the entire marketing design, the aspects, the developed ecosystem (when done “right”) can provide that motivation for winning beyond anything else – and this is the only thing that matters when it comes to desired engagement and the same return on investment that a product seeks.

This entire process, at least from the digital approach to gamification, finally made me think back to the days prior to the rise of gamification, especially with digital fitness tracking techniques, I began to realize that there were (and still are) many that focus on the discipline vs the motivation, and that is very key.

Today, my approach to gamification is different. The collection of rewards is not important as it once was, particularly once I realized that the Apple Watch Activity algorithm for tracking fitness goals is flawed, I call it dumb, for reasons by which I won’t go into explaining in this post, but are quite obvious by the many posts I’ve seen regarding individual monthly challenges issued at the beginning of each month for everyone. If I get said challenge award for said goal based on my regular routine, that’s fine – if I don’t, that’s fine too. This is a far more realistic approach to take and it keeps you in tune to how to effectively track your goals.

What has gamified you?

Thanks for the read,

Fresh

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My upgrade to the Apple Watch Ultra

Greetings all, I hope this post finds you well.

Since July 2017, I’ve been tracking my fitness workouts with the Apple Watch. First starting with the Series 3, then continuing with the Series 4 (gifted to me). For all intents and purposes, the watch has proven to be a useful device for what I need, even with its many more features as an evolutionary medical device and companion to the iPhone’s features.

After doing two weeks of what I consider deep research online and talking the ear off of a recent Ultra owner, I lastly decided to determine what my best purchase approach would be. Applying for a brand new Apple Card vs Best Buy resulted in the former winning. This upgrade was also a milestone birthday gift to myself and I admit (although I’m not an ultra athlete by any stretch of the imagination), the tech that the Ultra offers, compared with its aesthetics and what Watch OS9, and beyond, will continue to offer for it, made it a compelling enough reason to upgrade. While my current Series 4 can make use of the WatchOS9 updates, and is still supported by Apple, I’m glad I made the jump. The whole experience thus far has been very nice.

While I won’t wax philosophically about its usual selling points (you can spend a short amount of time on YouTube to get your fill of a diverse set of opinions), I do enjoy the extended battery life between charges. While that is a good thing, I’m used to going to bed at with a minimum of 30% – 40% of battery life, so nightly charging has never been a issue, especially because I don’t track sleep metrics. What I do enjoy about it are along the lines of its aesthetics – particularly its 49mm size, sapphire flat glass bevel and titanium case. Outside of a new $750 MacBook Air I purchased for a family member, and M1 Mac Mini for my studio last year, this has been the most expensive Apple product purchased since 1991, the year I purchased my first ever Mac, a Mac Classic II.

As mentioned above, WatchOS 9 provides many of the software features across the Ultra, Apple Watch Series 8, and Apple Watch SE 2, however the Action Button is a handy feature that will become even more useful as developers create more apps that can take advantage of it. The Wayfinder watchface, in conjunction with the Compass app and backtrack features is also a nice edition. The Ultra, as many articles and YouTube posts talk about, is hardly a “Garmin killer”. I constantly state that if Apple and Garmin remain on their respective evolutionary paths, Garmin will remain king in the realm of fitness tracking watch devices, especially for the ultra athlete. The reason is simple – Garmin fitness watches are dedicated to fitness and ultra-athlete activities, while employing smartwatch features. The Ultra, while being a first real entry (level) introduction into outdoor extreme athletics, is still a smartwatch with upgraded fitness tracking/outdoor athletics features – it lacks many of the things that Garmin is superior for, especially battery life (there is no real comparison between the two).

That being said, I anticipate the Ultra serving my needs for years to come, and believe future WatchOS updates will make it shine even more.

Thanks for read.

Oceans of rhythm/peace and blessings.

Fresh

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POTD – 16/365

“There ‘s an app for that.”

I started seriously, or maybe I should say consistently, going to the gym in my very late 20’s…(yeah, yeah, there have been a FEW hiatuses, but that’s not what this post is about,😂)…long before the iPhone or any wearable fitness tracker was even in existence. It was then that I recorded all my workout data in a notebook: pen and paper.

Fast forward to 2019, when wearables are still the rage and smartphones are pretty ubiquitous, and everyone’s fitness data touches the cloud (if you use these devices for such) at some point. Yes, it makes it convenient, even motivating for sure, but there are still times I write down stuff in notebook – easy access, no power needed, right there whenever I need it on a sunny day (in other words, no “clouds” (get it??) in sight.

Best,
Fresh

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POTD – 10/365

Playing the numbers…

Greetings good people.

I’ve never purchased a lottery ticket, but definitely been “living by the numbers” for almost ten years.

I have been working out in the gym, solely (aside from those varied hiatuses) with pen and pad, pretty much regularly after college. The Nike+ iPod Fitness tracking system made me start tracking runs way back in July 2010, when I read a cover story in this July 2009 issue of Wired Magazine. I had never run before hand, but got sold on the concept, especially being a data hound, naturally. I went from the Nike+ iPod system to the NikeFuel Band to the Fuel Band plus the Apple Watch, and after Nike retired Fuel Band use, it’s down to the Apple Watch.

I’ve always been a data trend head and fitness trackers readily provide you with such data instantly. That aspect has been, and is, more desirable than the more seemingly popular “gamification” of fitness tracking. As saud above, I’m using the Apple Watch as my only fitness tracker now and I’m one of five admins in the Apple Watch Fitness Fan Facebook Group.

Similarly, I’ve jumped on the self-quantification bandwagon (albeit mildly) using the Gyroscope app. I like what it offers but just can’t jump in with both feet for reasons that would better be explained elsewhere.

I’m still part of the Nike+ posse. If you train with the Nike Run Club or Nike Training apps or use Gyroscope, feel free to follow me, I’m @ Mr. Fresh on both platforms. Information links are below.

Blessings,
Fresh.

References
1. Nike Training Club
3. NikeFuel Band (now discontinued)
4. Nike+ iPod Run Tracking
5. Gyroscope – The Operating System For The Human Body
6. Apple Watch – Fitness – Close Your Rings

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POTD – 3/365

“…and on the third day…”

Greetings everyone. We’re just about at the tail end of the work week, and that’s a good thing (for me, anyway).

I run. I started running of my own volition in July 2010, when I started tracking my runs using the Nike+ iPod fitness tracking system. It’s really that technology which got me interested in fitness tracking to start with. Thing is, I’m not a runner…I don’t profess to, nor aspire to be one. I don’t hate it, but I don’t love it either, I do it solely, in short distances at a time, for the cardio aspect. That said, I’m all into Nike’s concept for fitness training and use their Nike Run Club and Nike Training Club apps both on my iPhone and Apple Watch. The watch has been my main tool for fitness tracking since July 2017 and I’m one of five admins in the Apple Watch Fitness Fans Group on Facebook. I’ve run only two 5Ks in the last eight years, BUT, I do believe there is an advantageous aspect to running for fitness (maybe I’ll come to love it more…but not more than bodybuilding/strength training💪🏽).

Whenever I do run outdoors, I choose the local community college track versus the neighborhood or trails. While I’m counting laps, monitoring my pace via visual cues from either mobile device, and tracking whatever improvement I hope to gain this time around, sometimes I see this gent in the photo below. While I am no way a fast runner, he is far slower than me, YET, he presses on with consistency, barely appearing to pick his feet up off of the asphalt, but nonetheless, maintaining his forward motion and progress.

 

Right now, I’m in the midst of completing a 15K Nike Run Club Challenge that started on 31 Dec, last month, and ends at 11:59pm on 6 Jan. I’m more than half way done, running every morning a little before I work out. This morning, during my run, he crossed my mind – as a dose of external motivation that fuels my internal inspiration.

Peace,
Doug

References:

1. Nike Run Club
2. Nike Training Club
3. Apple Watch Fitness Fans (Facebook)
4. Nike+ iPod Running

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Farewell, FuelBand….it’s been a sheer pleasure.

Greetings all,
It’s Friday, 10:31PM EST to be exact, and I’m glad that the start of a long(er) weekend is here.

This post is about the end of a journey, a journey that began with the use of what became a fitness tracking device I became very fond of. While I won’t rehash all my feelings about it in this post, I’ll provide links to previous posts that you can read, should you be so inclined. The beginning of the end of the journey began on 20 April of this year. That is the day that Nike officially shutdown the Nike Plus website and pulled the Nike+ Connect app as well as the iOS NikeFuel and Moves App from the app store. The API was no longer available for quite sometime and the Nike Fuel Developer Site was also shut down. What this meant for users of the Fuel Band, Nike GPS Watch, and a number of other legacy Nike fitness tracking devices was that they were no longer able to sync their data or change any current user profile data to the Nike website. This also meant that once the device’s memory was full, it would essentially become useless. The day the announcement went up on Nike’s site, there was mixed emotions around the interwebs. Those emotions pretty much centered around two camps: 1) I haven’t used mine in YEARS/It broke, and 2) Being pretty much upset that Nike discontinued all support (even though they stopped selling it new years ago). With bearing much repeating, Nike and Apple eventually agreed to integrated NikeFuel into the four OS apps – Nike Fuel, Moves, Nike Run Club (NRC) , Nike Training Club (NTC). With April 30th arriving, Nike Fuel and Moves got the boot from the app store. Along with that, the Nike Training App ceased to generate NikeFuel points from their workouts (which I was not happy with – especially going back with the dolts at Nike Support who took about four Twitter messages to finally answer my question “Will the NTC app continue to track NikeFuel points because you didn’t make that clear in your website announcement).

That said, I was only able to track NikeFuel points via the NRC app…the issue there is…I’m not a regular runner, so that wasn’t going to me any good in tracking on a daily basis. As you’ll see from the previous posts below, I had already cobbled some math together that would allow me to “estimate” NikeFuel points derived from Apple Watch calories so this was going to be my way of tracking Fuel points once the Fuel Band ceased to work. I wore the Apple Watch and the Fuel together from 1 May to tonight (it’s still on my wrist). Since then, I became an admin in the Apple Watch Fitness Fans Group on Facebook, and continually posted my stats and photos of the band in that group.

Since since the website and apps were no longer available, I had to now log my daily Fuel points manually. Since I have a wee bit of knowledge in using Excel, I developed a spreadsheet to enter the daily goals into. I also created a graph that was a mild facsimile of the one used on the Nike Plus site. In a notes column, I entered anytime I logged Fuel points by using the NRC app, along with any workout exercises that added to my daily points.

This has been going since 1 May. Graphical data for the past four months. My Fuel Band user buddy, Hope asked me why I won’t continued until the band’s data is maxed out. I decided to only track dated for whole months. The band is giving me the “Memory Low -Sync Now” warning, which means it can be filled up anyday now, so I’ve decided to call it quits tonight, the last day of the month. Here’s what the data looks like since May 1.


Monthly Avg.: 2265
Exceeded Goal by: 67.7%


Monthly Avg.: 2299
Exceeded Goal by: 76.7%


Monthly Avg.: 22384
Exceeded Goal by: 77.4%


Monthly Avg.: 2142
Exceeded Goal by: 58.1%

And the grand total Nike Fuel Points earned (23 Sep 17 through 31 Aug 2018): 641,206

I spent the last week of July in Jamaica, came back in August and slacked off – hence the lower stats. LOL. nike has stated in its Fuel Band FAQ the band can go for about 30 to 45 days (max) without before the memory fills up and needs to sync with the website to empty the memory I believe I was able to extend that time frame because as of May 1st, my daily goal was only at 2000 points and the highest goal I reached in the past four months a little over 4000 (as seen above).

Well, tomorrow starts tracking Fuel points via the Apple Watch. I was fortunate enough to connect with a Sr. Data Scientist at Nike who worked on the Fuel band, who was kind enough to vet my math and provide some comments and suggest corrections for the conversion to be as accurate as possible, considering difference in accelerometer technology between the Apple Watch and the Fuel band. For those interested (see my previous posts via the links below on how I got started with this), I use this simple formula to continue tracking NikeFuel points using the Apple Watch:

[AW calories x 3.84]/0.892]
.

In addition, I was able to connect with some other employees that worked on Fuel band development, I was told that Nike had some discussion about releasing the Nike+ Connect (desktop) app as open source, but later found out that it is not on their list of priorities. There have been a few people who were able to establish bluetooth low energy (BLE) connectivity with the band and log certain types of data. There’s a software engineer I connect with on Twitter who has been working on doing the same in his spare time but, again, that is low priority.

On a whim last night, I decided to do one last Google search on the band, this time via Behance’s website. Behance is a portal for creators of illustration, photographic, animation, and product design content. To my surprise, I came across the work of Valentin Dequidt and his “recent” concept idea for a Nike Fuel Watch. Totally fell in love with what I saw. Here are two graphics of it.

For the entire concept, click on the link below.

NikeFuel Watch Concept – Valentin Dequidt

Well that’s it. It is officially Sept 1 (12:09 am). Goodbye Fuel Band 🙂 There never was and will never be another fitness tracker that will take the approach to fitness/activity tracking the way you did. The advertising Nike put into it’s ecosystem was phenomenal.

Nike Fuel Band "The Inside Story" from New North Sound on Vimeo.

It was a long post I know. I appreciate you taking the time to read it!

peace!
Fresh!

References:
1. The NikeFuel Band SE in 2017: Band On The Run
2. Apple Watch calories to NikeFuel Points: An experiment
3. Nike Discontinues NikeFuel Legacy Devices and Software

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Social Media Sabbatical (SMS): Day 12 – 12 Aug 18

Greetings all…

The weekend is gone that quick…what else is new? It was a good one nonetheless, outside of my broken sleep patterns via trying to see the launch on Saturday morning. It was a success this morning at 3:30 am or so (I didnt wake up for it, but will be checking out the replay when I get to work tomorrow. In the meantime, here’s a shot of the Delta IV heavy lofting Parer Soar Probe into space, courtesy a Twitter post:

Question…how many of you are into tracking your quantified self? I’ve been using an app called Gyroscope, the free version. I primarily use it as an add-on to my Apple Watch fitness track data. Gyroscope has some great features and a privacy mode, but as with many apps, I often wonder how the collected data is being used. The quantified self movement was very big some years ago and a friend of mine on Twitter is actually featured on Gyroscopes site as an avid user of the paid app. We had an interesting discussion about what he thinks about all the many types of quantified data he shares. In short, I’m still not certain if I could go to the extent of data sharing that he (or many do), even though we have our “always-on” mobile phones. From my understanding, the whole aspect of tracking one’s quantified data is to make improvements to yourself over time. It’s the data aggregation aspects that still don’t sit 100% well with me, though I admit there is lot to be seen from such data over time. Id be interested in your thoughts.

On the productivity front, I came across another interesting article that I was discussing with DarrenKeith, my brother in podcasting, blogging, and tech. Ironically, I received the latest Fast Company in the mail yesterday. There is a sidebar to an article in there that speaks to the subject of this article – Why productivity isn’t the only thing your smartphone is stealing from you. I think there are points in it we all can relate to. FB and IG are creating ways to cause us to spend less time on our mobile devices and there are a lot of apps that are made to do the same (although that whole approach seems like an oxymoron – spending less time on your phone my checking apps that help….that are on your phone….ok.). Then there is this approach of changing your mobile phone’s colors to grayscale. Supposedly this is less appealing than the colors we adore (there have been studies) and as a result, we’ll want to look at them less.

My solution – just put the phone down.

Have a good week.

Doug

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Broadening the workout horizon

Greetings all…

Earlier tonight I posted a blog about day 1 of 31 of my social media fast for the month of August. Part of the daily social media regimen is being an admin to the Facebook group, Apple Watch Fitness Fans. I usually post my daily exercise and workout results there, like many of the members there. Since I’m on sabbatical, I thought it would be the perfect time to start posting here again, like I used to.

I did a recent post that analyzed my exercise journey during the first six months of 2018. One of the things I learned from that is the types of exercises I tended to do the most (and least of). That said, I decided to create a balance, based on the results I found. Tonight (especially since it was late) I decided to do a functional workout, since I’d like to gain more core strength, It was a short one, but staying on this track consistently will help be balance the scales out.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Back soon.

::: oceans of rhythm :::

Fresh!

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My fitness journey – 01 Jan 18 to 30 June 18 – Six Months of Tracking

On July 3, 2017, I purchased my Series 1 Apple Watch from Best Buy – specifically for fitness tracking. NIce to say that one year later, it has served it’s purpose.

While I’ve worked out more on than off since my college days, the watch, through the Activity app and iOS Health app dashboard, provides a fair amount of data that can be sliced and diced in various. What I think the Apple Watch fitness ecosystem lacks is website and/or desktop integration like FitBit, Garmin and what Nike Plus used to have.

Prior to the watch, I used the Nike Fuel ecosystem to tracking my running first and then, with the addition of the Nike Training app, I tracked other forms of exercises that aligned with their app’s workouts. I specifically started using the Nike Fuel Band late in the game (August 2017) For the beginning of my journey with the NikeFuel ecosystem through now, you can read the blog posts here, here, and here

That said, looking at what the watch’s Activity app and iPone’s Health app portray as data, I decided to take a look at how and what I did for the first six months of 2018, I didn’t include the entire year I owned the watch, because it took some months to really understand how to use it as a fitness tracking device, something I know I have maximized yet.I took some very basic data points, threw them in Excel and created some simple data visualization graphics (aka charts LOL) to give me an idea of how things look since 1 Jan. The Health app provides a fair amount of ways for you to see data on what you’ve done over a specified time range, however I wanted to look at things in which the app can’t (as far as I know.) You can see them in the attached graphics.

It was pretty cool to see the data this way, because it now lets me know what changes I may want to make for the second half of the year. Feel free to let me know what you think. I’ll get around to doing a more detailed blog post with my plan forward based on what I’ve learned from the data. For now, here are a few of the ways I looked at what I accomplished. For all the following data, I created a small spreadsheet and manually entered all the data I wanted from the Activity app summaries, then created graphs

While losing weight is not a concern of mine (at the moment haha), I decided to see what kind of average calorie burns my exercise workouts netted me, and would they vary widely at all from month to month. The data in this graph clearly correlates to the following data points you’ll see below.

What were the average hours per month that I worked out? As said above, this aligns with my average calorie burns (obviously). Another reason why I want to track this statistic was to draw some correlation to how busy I may been from month to month or any other factors I can remember that would cause me not to exercise (lack of discipline and/or motivation, not enough sleep, poorly planned schedules, etc).

Another data set that correlates to the above is average exercise minutes per month. The Apple Watch has a standard, unchangeable metric of 30 minutes, of movement greater than that of an average brisk walk, needed to close the exercise ring – whether that is done doing and saving an actual workout from its list or just achieving that closure through daily movement. The 30 minutes minimum of daily exercise originates from the American Heart Associations recommendation, which Apple adopted for its baseline for the Activity app. From a ring closure standpoint, I found myself at least trying to do 30 minutes daily, HOWEVER, I also found that I did it only as my maximum when I could have done more. This, to me, is not a good thing because it places the focus on on only doing enough to achieve a metric goal and not doing a full set of exercises that would normally take more than 30 minutes. What I learned from this is just that – focus on what your exercise regimen is and make time for that average timeframe instead of doing just enough to close a ring – that is shortchanging at at best.

Here I decided to look at the total workouts done per month, regardless of what type of workout it was. It gave me an idea of just how many workouts I set out to do, which is (again) directly proportional to the time put in.

This last data set is my favorite because it shows, in a given month, how many different types of exercise workouts I did. My fitness regimen is primarily comprised of weight/strength training exercises. Over the last year, my desire was to work in exercises that would benefit me in the areas of cardio and core. I took up running in 2010, at the same time I became interested in tracking my fitness via the Nike+ iPod Sport Kit. I never cared for running and after a few years of hiatus, I finally started working it in more last year, and became a better runner than in the beginning. As for core, enter the Nike Training Club app. I LOVE this app and it’s been my go to for all the core workouts I do. It doesn’t one-for-one save it’s exercises (as it should) with the same name as the corresponding exercise in the list of Apple Watch workouts, but it gets the job done well enough. That said, it was interesting to see what exercises, in hindsight, were focused on for various reasons (known and unknown). I drew insight from this to help me plan the second half of 2018 with exercise types that will better provide the focus for what I want to achieve health/physical-wise.

The last reason I want to do this experiment was for finding out how I can slice and dice the data to show me what I want. I’m certain that there are tons of apps that can show similar (the Health app itself can show similar looking bar graphs), but it was a fun exercise to do on my own.

Well, thats about it. I was able to gain some good insight to plan for the rest of the year.

Thanks for the read.

Fresh!

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Calories to NikeFuel Points – An Experiment

Greetings readers,

In my last (longgg) post, I discussed why I have, in 2017, begun using the NikeFuel Band. In all the research I’ve done, I wanted to determine (via some crude experiments), what many have tried before – How many calories burned make up 1 NikeFuel point?

As a recap, the Nike website says this:

“The NikeFuel algorithm was developed at the Nike Digital Sport Science Lab (DSSL), a state-of-the-art performance lab located at Nike WHQ in Portland, OR. The DSSL consists of a team of exercise physiologists and biochemists who are constantly working and reworking the science behind the NikeFuel algorithm. Their goal is not only to perfect the accuracy and consistency of the metric, but also to tune NikeFuel for the performance needs of different athletes.”

About four years ago, there were net postings saying the ratio was 2.79 cals to 1 NP (calculated via experiment by a runner) and “roughly 3 cals to 1 NP” (according to Nike). Since the algorithm was worked over time (says Nike), I decided to conduct some experiments on a normal day of movement (24 Aug 17) and exercising to see what results I’d end up with.

Experiment 1 – Morning Calisthenics
Since I workout every morning by at least do a short calisthenics set, I decided to note the NikeFuel points tracked vs the calories burned with the band and compare them to what the Apple Watch recorded. The following resulted in the amount of calories burned for each NikeFuel point:

Roughly, a 4-to-1 ratio.

Experiment 2 – Normal Daily Moves and Exercise
This time, I decided to take the same approach and apply it to a normal day of activity. Once again, note the results.

Finally, Experiment #3 – Core Training
It takes 30 minutes of exercise in Workout mode to close the exercise ring on the Apple Watch. Since the NikeFuel Band offers a capability called Sessions, I decided to start a session simultaneously with the Apple Watch and record the results as follows:

In all three experiments, with the exception of the outlier of 3.42 cals/NikeFuel point, the results consistently show roughly 4 cals to every one NikeFuel point, or a 4-to-1 ratio.

Crude experiments, yes…but consistent. It’s just something I was curious about, but honestly didn’t expect pretty stable results across the board.

Thanks again for the read….

Best,
Fresh!