All the questions you ask about scientific running training, Huawei has the answers Huawei teaches you how to train like an Olympic champion
For the human body, running is actually a complicated activity. From swinging limbs externally to internal organ circulation, every breath and every step involves the coordinated work of hundreds of muscles and dozens of circulatory systems. This process can be described as a battle, with the precise coordination of all parts of the body, our feet can be temporarily off the ground and our arms can embrace the wind.
The body will develop certain type of habits after training for a long period of time, which will make you more comfortable when running. But when you want to further improve your running ability, it is necessary to break the habits of the current body and form new habits to improve performance. However, sudden changes in training may disrupt the rhythm of our body systems and make it difficult to adapt and injuries may follow one after another. Just like a mechanical watch, even if only one cog is damaged, the watch may become inaccurate or even stop functioning.
The history of scientific running
In modern society, people no longer need to obtain survival necessities through running to different places and running has changed from survival skills to a means of health management. In the past decades, running has turned into a competition and people continue to explore the training methods of running. Scientific training is now a global hot topic.
In earlier stages, running monitoring mainly relied on the feelings of the body. People assessed the training situation by perceiving their physical reactions, such as determining whether the training is too easy or too difficult according to the breathing rate, breathing rhythm, etc., but there is a problem with this method, which is easy to run at the wrong pace. Many people feel that their breathing is unobstructed, and they think that they can easily reach their running training goals, and therefore increase their speed. However, the heart rate may have been far beyond the anaerobic range, which may actually mean that his physical strength has been overdrawn.
With the advancement of electronic equipment, people can monitor their heart rate through specific equipment to assess the training situation. However, there are still several problems with using purely heart rate to evaluate the training. First, wearing a heart rate monitoring device itself is a professional and complicated problem, and the price itself is not cheap. At the same time, the professional heart rate monitoring device is loaded with too many functions for ordinary runners to read and understand the training status.
Until today, despite the availability of more training equipment and professional assessment, no one can easily understand their training status through the massive and complex data. So, for scientific running training, whether professional runners or ordinary runners, there are four questions they must raise: How should I pace? What is the appropriate amount of training? How to recover from fatigue? What is the training effect?
Huawei would like to solve the four questions
To overcome the difficulties, there are two requirements. The first is to collect the body data generated by different people in different motion states and in different environments. The second is to collect these data for scientific analysis and present accurate and easy-to-understand interpretations.
The first requirement is to invite enough people to participate in the test, simulate the environments, and collect accurate data. The second requirement requires a team of professionals who understand the health and fitness technology, algorithms, physiology, and medicine at the same time. These all mean huge investment and long-term research and development are required.
Huawei is not the first one to participate in this. Technology giants such as Apple and Google have already invested in health and fitness technology. Faced with these giants, huge investment and long-term research and development, Huawei has chosen to become a challenger in this field.
Since 2016, Huawei has established a HUAWEI Health Lab in China. The total area of the HUAWEI Health Lab (Songshan) opened in 2021 has an overall area of 4,680m2. The laboratory supports more than 80 types of testing requests for R&D personnel in fields such as professional research, ecosystem co-development, and health and fitness scenario incubation, ultimately supporting the research, incubation and testing of Huawei's smart wearable products.
For example, in the high-altitude environment, under the condition of hypoxia and low pressure, is running training good or bad for the human body? Huawei has a special plateau blood oxygen chamber. The environment can simulate the climate changes of the natural environment by providing stable and specific environment temperature, humidity, and altitude simulation control requirements, and can simulate the plateau environment to test the motion state of the human body.
In addition, the large amount of data generated during running, such as heart rate, pace, calorie consumption, etc., are like consumers’ personal check-ups, but for most people, it is difficult to interpret the data and provide training guidance based on the results. HUAWEI Health Lab has an extensive professional team, ranging from sports science researchers to medical experts, and from data acquisition engineers to algorithm engineers. These experts cover biology, sports training, medicine, software engineering, algorithm engineering, test engineering, biological engineering, applied sensor technology research, and more.
After nearly 6 years of development, Huawei finally developed a set of scientific fitness system and named it HUAWEI TruSport™. With the algorithms, it can accurately collect various physical indicators generated by the human body during running, scientifically analyse the collected data, and present the most reasonable training tips. HUAWEI TruSport™ has the same direction as the current international training, which can build a complete scientific training theory of running.
What does HUAWEI TruSport™ do?
First of all, based on HUAWEI TruSport™, Huawei developed the Running Ability Index (RAI). To measure the running performance, which is hard to measure before, Huawei developed the RAI, using HUAWEI TruSport™'s algorithm to calculate the relationship between heart rate and pace to get a personal score. In addition, everyone can know their current RAI every time they train, so that people can clearly know the gap between their ability and their goals, also, they can make accurate performance estimation and receive guidance on the pace. The new RAI system helps runners in competition and training and solve the problem pacing as well.
Secondly, HUAWEI TruSport™ provides training load, which can scientifically evaluate training volume. It can help runners to scientifically quantify their training and Huawei proposes to use training load instead of running volume to measure training volume. Training load does not simply take running distance or duration as a measurement basis, but considers the stimulation and pressure caused by the training to the body, which objectively reflects the load caused by training. Training load can also be measured by HUAWEI TruSport™ to advise runners on the degree of recovery and recovery time for a single training session. In this way, runners can plan a more reasonable amount of training.
Furthermore, HUAWEI TruSport™ can determine the degree of recovery and monitor short-term fatigue. It can evaluate the user's degree of recovery and provide guidance on recovery time. Recovery time refers to the fatigue caused by training pressure, how much time is needed to fully recover after the training, and the degree of recovery can reflect the fatigue caused by a single training. Equipped with HUAWEI TruSport™ technology, the device can give users suggestions for training loads of different intensities under different recovery levels of the body.
Finally, HUAWEI TruSport™ also provides training index for users to understand their training status. Training status refers to the evaluation of sports performance based on long-term changes in physical fitness and fatigue under periodic system training. HUAWEI TruSport™ can help runners combine effective training stimulation with proper rest and find the right time to improve running ability with the changes in physical fitness and fatigue caused by training.
HUAWEI TruSport™ can provide runners with a very professional training plan, which solves the three problems of data collection, data analysis, and data interpretation that have long existed in running training, but why does Huawei do this?
Huawei’s health and fitness plan
Since 2015, the concept of health management has become increasingly popular. As people pay more and more attention to their health, the demand for health monitoring of smart devices is becoming stronger. Huawei put forward the concept of active health management in 2018, using its leading technology capabilities to provide users with top notch active health detection management services. This is also in line with Huawei’s vision: “Committed to bringing the digital world to everyone, every family, and every organisation, and build a smart world with all things connected.”
As one of the important means of daily health management for people, running training also has a lower entry requirement and can be benefit to most users. Therefore, Huawei focused on investing in running projects. Huawei's strategy for health and fitness does not stop here. In fact, what Huawei wants to do is a whole new set of health systems based on smart wearable devices that connect users' body data and life scenarios, and HUAWEI TruSport™ is just a component of this strategy.
For example, Huawei's latest HUAWEI WATCH GT Runner intelligently defines the user's physical ability level according to the user's own physical state and exercise habits under the empowerment of HUAWEI TruSport™, and exclusively customise the scientific training plan. The training plan can be cycled, and dynamically adjusted according to humanised intelligence.
In scientific running training, Huawei has established its position with HUAWEI TruSport™. Technology can play a much greater role in health and fitness management. Many seemingly irregular and unpredictable motion states can become very clear and predictable under the analysis of big data and other technologies. With the capabilities of HUAWEI TruSport™, Huawei will likely further develop new technologies in health and fitness.
As what Huawei Consumer Business Group CEO, Richard Yu, said “Technology should serve people, and we will continue to use the power of technology to protect everyone's health.”