After reading your last roundup, I found the way the Visible app worked really interesting. Although my recovery is good, I have struggled with how to start exercising and regaining a bit of fitness. My body is pretty different now and what worked before for exercise is not the same now!
So inspired by your mention of Visible, I searched around and found an app called Training Today. It takes HRV, resting heart rate and sleep data and crunches them. Then it looks at your last 60 days of metrics and gives you a readiness score based on your past baseline.
I have found it massively helpful and very revealing. I mention it here, because I know Visible is not widely available, and so this might be a light weight option for some people out there
Yes its in the Apple Store , title Training Today by Betoli Ltd. https://apps.apple.com/nz/app/training-today/id1507992127 This is the link, but note the nz in the middle of the link - I am in New Zealand. Maybe you would need a link that is not specific to NZ. It is also possible the app is not available in some countries
Wow. Thanks for this tip! I got my polar plus 3 days ago but it seems really redundant and takes a while to load all the data. I just downloaded and subscribed to training app. It loaded all my data for the past month & has already given me a score ! And it tells me I over did it today (accurate!!) thanks. I’m going to tinker around with both for the next month but off to the start the training app seems amazing!!!
Hi Helen, I am in the Netherlands and couldn't find the app.
The reason for that is simple:
Found the site and it just read that it works with enhanced capabilities of an Apple watch. This makes it unlikely that the app is also in the Google play store, the place I searched.
I personally use the capabilities of an polar Vantage V (beside the Visible app) to help me understand the dayly actity vs the nightly recovery
It seems similar but, now that I have seen the details of the beta test of the Visible app with the polar monitor, I decided to wait for the go live of the Visible app.
Someone coded spoons! I love it! I have friends with fibromyalgia and POTS, so I hope once they’ve strengthened their current product, they can expand it ... guessing how many spoons one has is no small feat.
Ha! I guess that is what they did, isn’t it?! I have POTS too and I think your friends would get a lot of value from this wearable (although if they don’t have PEM - post exertional malaise - they’d probably be just as well served by a FitBit Versa 3, which comes with apps that alert you when your heart rate spikes too high. You set your own parameters). The FitBit’s alerts can make you aware of your high HR, but I find it not as helpful with pacing (avoiding energy crashes) as the Visible Plus.
I was curious if it works equally well with the different types of exertion? At work I encounter the mental type a lot and it's hard to deal with and take a timely pause. I am very curious if visible plus can help improve handling this.
Great question, Arnold. I’ve been sort of testing this out myself. My conclusion is that it doesn’t work *equally* as well; it works very well for physical exertion. For cognitive or emotional exertion, very likely your heart rate would have you in the “exertion” zone, even if you feel yourself to be cognitively or emotionally over-exerting. But that is still somewhat helpful, because being in the exertion zone still chips away at your Pace Points budget, just not as quickly or dramatically as physical over-exertion does.
For example, I just spent a few minutes taking laundry out of the dryer, walking it upstairs, and finishing making the bed. And boy, did the armband NOT like that much activity for me; my heart rate was 120+. I’ve now used about half my PP for the day, even though the day is not half over. But computer work or emotional stimulation registers in the 80-95bpm zone. This will still eat up my PP, but clearly not as quickly as the Olympic sport known as changing the bedsheets 🙄.
Hope this helps? Let me know if you have other questions.
I am in and have the full app now. For about two weeks. It's giving me lots of insights where I spend and loose. Working and making choices with the insights is becoming the hardest part.
one more thing - if you have POTS (even mildly) and are doing hours of something stressful or cognitively difficult, or even just sitting upright for a long time, your heart rate will eventually be on the high end of the exertion zone (mid-90s-100bpm). This will eat through your PP too. So, like I said, it’s not as obviously helpful as it is with physical activity, but still can be helpful to a degree.
Hi Amy! I was wondering how useful you found the free version of the Visible app. I've been using it for a bit over a month now and am a bit confused by the HRV reading it gives me. Sometimes I don't agree, I take it again and then it's way different (like going up to 53 from 47...).
I initially thought it was good, but it didn’t really change much for me as far as pacing. The armband was a game changer though. I only needed it for a few months because once it taught me that I was way overdoing activity (I thought I wasn’t), I got so much better at pacing. After a few months, I didn’t need it anymore; it taught me what I needed to know. It might be worth the investment, but I would go month by month with the subscription. Hope this helps!
We got our Polar monitors for Visible on the same day - I think, however, your eyes must be better than mine 😏 it took me longer to figure out the ins and outs and pace-point settings off of their VERY SMALL FONT (I already wrote a request to let Apple’s font-size setting work within their app—even though it’ll blow their lovely design) so reading your summation here was very helpful. Even without understanding all the bells and whistles properly out of the box I’ve still found the Visible App with the Polar Monitor to be extremely helpful.
Visible, my Sensate, and the Brainwaves app I posted about last week made it possible to spend last weekend with friends for my husband’s birthday. I was pretty much able to do dinners and a walk (and a Literary Tarot throw or two) and that was it. Yes, I crashed somewhat this week, but it would have been infinitely worse without these tools.
After reading your last roundup, I found the way the Visible app worked really interesting. Although my recovery is good, I have struggled with how to start exercising and regaining a bit of fitness. My body is pretty different now and what worked before for exercise is not the same now!
So inspired by your mention of Visible, I searched around and found an app called Training Today. It takes HRV, resting heart rate and sleep data and crunches them. Then it looks at your last 60 days of metrics and gives you a readiness score based on your past baseline.
I have found it massively helpful and very revealing. I mention it here, because I know Visible is not widely available, and so this might be a light weight option for some people out there
That’s a great mention, Helen. I’m going to check it out and include it in my next post, with a shout-out to you 🙌🏻
Hi Helen,
I'm certainly interested in Training Today.
Is it for Apple? I can't find it in the app store?
Yes its in the Apple Store , title Training Today by Betoli Ltd. https://apps.apple.com/nz/app/training-today/id1507992127 This is the link, but note the nz in the middle of the link - I am in New Zealand. Maybe you would need a link that is not specific to NZ. It is also possible the app is not available in some countries
Wow. Thanks for this tip! I got my polar plus 3 days ago but it seems really redundant and takes a while to load all the data. I just downloaded and subscribed to training app. It loaded all my data for the past month & has already given me a score ! And it tells me I over did it today (accurate!!) thanks. I’m going to tinker around with both for the next month but off to the start the training app seems amazing!!!
Hi Helen, I am in the Netherlands and couldn't find the app.
The reason for that is simple:
Found the site and it just read that it works with enhanced capabilities of an Apple watch. This makes it unlikely that the app is also in the Google play store, the place I searched.
I personally use the capabilities of an polar Vantage V (beside the Visible app) to help me understand the dayly actity vs the nightly recovery
It seems similar but, now that I have seen the details of the beta test of the Visible app with the polar monitor, I decided to wait for the go live of the Visible app.
Someone coded spoons! I love it! I have friends with fibromyalgia and POTS, so I hope once they’ve strengthened their current product, they can expand it ... guessing how many spoons one has is no small feat.
Ha! I guess that is what they did, isn’t it?! I have POTS too and I think your friends would get a lot of value from this wearable (although if they don’t have PEM - post exertional malaise - they’d probably be just as well served by a FitBit Versa 3, which comes with apps that alert you when your heart rate spikes too high. You set your own parameters). The FitBit’s alerts can make you aware of your high HR, but I find it not as helpful with pacing (avoiding energy crashes) as the Visible Plus.
HI Amy,
I was curious if it works equally well with the different types of exertion? At work I encounter the mental type a lot and it's hard to deal with and take a timely pause. I am very curious if visible plus can help improve handling this.
Thank you for sharing your experiences in this.
Great question, Arnold. I’ve been sort of testing this out myself. My conclusion is that it doesn’t work *equally* as well; it works very well for physical exertion. For cognitive or emotional exertion, very likely your heart rate would have you in the “exertion” zone, even if you feel yourself to be cognitively or emotionally over-exerting. But that is still somewhat helpful, because being in the exertion zone still chips away at your Pace Points budget, just not as quickly or dramatically as physical over-exertion does.
For example, I just spent a few minutes taking laundry out of the dryer, walking it upstairs, and finishing making the bed. And boy, did the armband NOT like that much activity for me; my heart rate was 120+. I’ve now used about half my PP for the day, even though the day is not half over. But computer work or emotional stimulation registers in the 80-95bpm zone. This will still eat up my PP, but clearly not as quickly as the Olympic sport known as changing the bedsheets 🙄.
Hope this helps? Let me know if you have other questions.
Hi Amy,
it most certainly helps me. Thank you for taking the time an energy to answer. I feel the similarity between your examples and my life.
I am in and have the full app now. For about two weeks. It's giving me lots of insights where I spend and loose. Working and making choices with the insights is becoming the hardest part.
one more thing - if you have POTS (even mildly) and are doing hours of something stressful or cognitively difficult, or even just sitting upright for a long time, your heart rate will eventually be on the high end of the exertion zone (mid-90s-100bpm). This will eat through your PP too. So, like I said, it’s not as obviously helpful as it is with physical activity, but still can be helpful to a degree.
Hi Amy! I was wondering how useful you found the free version of the Visible app. I've been using it for a bit over a month now and am a bit confused by the HRV reading it gives me. Sometimes I don't agree, I take it again and then it's way different (like going up to 53 from 47...).
I initially thought it was good, but it didn’t really change much for me as far as pacing. The armband was a game changer though. I only needed it for a few months because once it taught me that I was way overdoing activity (I thought I wasn’t), I got so much better at pacing. After a few months, I didn’t need it anymore; it taught me what I needed to know. It might be worth the investment, but I would go month by month with the subscription. Hope this helps!
We got our Polar monitors for Visible on the same day - I think, however, your eyes must be better than mine 😏 it took me longer to figure out the ins and outs and pace-point settings off of their VERY SMALL FONT (I already wrote a request to let Apple’s font-size setting work within their app—even though it’ll blow their lovely design) so reading your summation here was very helpful. Even without understanding all the bells and whistles properly out of the box I’ve still found the Visible App with the Polar Monitor to be extremely helpful.
Visible, my Sensate, and the Brainwaves app I posted about last week made it possible to spend last weekend with friends for my husband’s birthday. I was pretty much able to do dinners and a walk (and a Literary Tarot throw or two) and that was it. Yes, I crashed somewhat this week, but it would have been infinitely worse without these tools.