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For anyone looking to take their running performance to the next level, strapping on a fitness watch can be superb practice when it comes to improving on your personal best times. By tracking your speed, distance and heart rate as your train, a fitness watch can help you become more aware of your body’s limits and, in turn, devise strategies to push beyond them with consistently being progressive in your training approach. With this in mind, here is how to use your fitness watch to improve your personal best times when running. From setting goals and assessing the invaluable data provided, to making adjustments in real time, this post will help you make the most of both short and long distance runs, so without further ado let’s get to it.
Are you looking to get the most out of your running sessions and improve your personal best times? If so, then you should consider using a fitness watch to help you reach your goals. Fitness watches are becoming increasingly popular among runners, as they provide a convenient and effective way to track your performance while running. In particular, they allow you to easily monitor your other important statistics such as heart rate, distance covered and average speed. From a casual runner to an athlete looking to compete in the Olympics one day, a fitness watch is a great tool for tracking your progress over time, as well as offering you real time feedback during your runs.
Fitness watches come fully equipped with a variety of features that can help you set, monitor and reach your goals, allowing you to push that personal best time up over the months ahead. For example, many modern fitness watches come complete with built in GPS tracking capabilities that allow you to keep track of the distance and speed of your run in real time, as well as providing you with a detailed view a map of the route you took. This can be very useful in helping to plan your next run, as you can assess where you should run based on what you achieved during your previous session.
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This detailed data can be used to identify where you can make small improvements and improve your personal best times. Another impressive feature of most fitness watches is their built in heart rate monitors, which allow you to keep track of your heart rate while running. Although these are not always exactly correct, they are a really helpful guide and can be used to measure the intensity of your workouts and set goals accordingly. Overall, using a fitness watch is an effective way to track progress and set goals in order to reach your personal best times when running. By leveraging the data provided by the watch, runners can look to improve on times each session by identify areas of improvement to address with the help of this data driven approach to training. By keeping track of your performance, you can gain insights into areas such as where you are losing energy or what type of terrain is best suited to your own personal running style. Further to this, fitness watches also offer a host of features which really assist with motivation and goal-setting that can keep you motivated with your training. Most Fitness watches allow you to set yourself personal objectives and goals in terms of speed, distance or heart rate, so you are then able to monitor your progress towards achieving them. This can act as a superb way to keep yourself motivated and ensure that you do not begin to become complacent with your running training. These advancements in technology really have revolutionized the way all levels of runners train, allowing us all to take greater control of our performance like never before and ensure we are striving to reach our full potential.
Unfortunately, there are a few downsides of using a fitness watch to improve on your personal bests that we need to mention to ensure your device doesn’t become more of hindrance than a help in terms of your training. To make sure this doesn’t happen to you, here are five of the most common mistakes to avoid when using your fitness watch to improve on your personal bests.
1. Not setting yourself goals that are realistic to you: Don’t get us wrong, an ambitious goal is great for motivation when we speak about ambitious long term goals, but if it’s too far of reach within the time frame you expect this could lead to you feeling discouraged and give up on the data tracking altogether. So start small and take it one step at a time until you reach your larger more ambitious goal.
2. Listening to the watch rather than your body: Even the most sophisticated and high tech fitness watch won’t be able to tell you when you’re pushing yourself too hard and close to the edge of an injury. Never ignore any signs that something isn’t right with your body, always put your body first as there are certain things a watch cannot tell you.
3. Not adjusting the settings of the watch to suit different terrains: Fitness watches are designed with standard road running at the front of mind, but you should not expect them to give you accurate readings if you’re heading up the side of a steep hill or mountainous terrain. Take the time to adjust your settings so that you get an accurate measure of progress no matter where you are running.
4. Not keeping track of your recovery: It’s not just about how far and how fast you can push yourself, but also how quickly and efficiently you can recover between runs that will help you make real long term progress. Make sure to use the data collected by your fitness watch to track your recovery time as well.
5. Not wearing your watch correctly: Something that not many runners realise is that the way a fitness watch is worn against the user’s wrist can have really substantial effect on how accurately your fitness watch will read your fitness data. This is due to the fact that wearing your fitness watch too loosely can lead to the sensors on the watch not tracking your data correctly. That is why a snug fit is always recommended for you to get the most from accurate data from your watch, getting yourself a replacement strap from FitstrapsUK to ensure the best fitting strap possible may be a great choice.
By avoiding these five common mistakes, you can be sure that your fitness watch will be an invaluable tool that helps you reach your goals.
By following the tips outlined in this article, anyone can use their fitness watch to improve their personal best times when running. It is important to remember that it takes consistency and dedication to see long term results; don’t be discouraged if you don’t see yourself hitting new PBs right away. Additionally, make sure that you are not relying too heavily on your fitness watch and avoiding the mistakes that we outlined above. With a little bit of effort and dedication to your data tracking, you’ll soon find yourself smashing those personal bests regularly!
