Introduction

With more and more digital healthcare products being made available to the consumer, many of which being integrated into our phones, watches and other wearables, managing our own health - extending now into managing our own well-being - has become much easier, giving us the power and convenience to assess all aspects of our core health.

Of course, this extends well into the well-being sector - where we are not only interested in keeping our health conditions on-track, but rather where we practice “prevention” through exercise.

Two things are at the core of allowing this to happen - wearability and unobtrusiveness - both of these characteristics influence just how well we use these devices and just how effective the data generated is managing our health and well-being. Smartwatches fit this bill perfectly - easy to wear, light-weight, and robust- plus they are now bristling with built-in sensors that measure a myriad of health/ performance factors unobtrusively.

The HUAWEI WATCH GT 6 Pro is an example of just this - a watch that doesn’t just tell the time: it is lightweight, quite robust, has amazing battery life and has all of the types of sensors we are getting used to now to give us a running commentary of the various parameters important to our daily health and wellbeing - and more than that, to give us quick information of crucial parameters when we are pushing the envelope at some major sporting event … or when we are simple out for a healthy long walk!

Understanding the Core Metrics

What is interesting with all of these measures - especially when considering sports - is the contextual information that accompanies these measurements. For instance, are these metrics related to a brisk outdoor walk or an endurance run? What are the distances travelled and what was the terrain like? Was there a warmup/ down period? HUAWEI smartwatches not only contextualizes the data but it also provides meaningful real-time prompts to you the user - which apart from being mere data, is quite motivational, telling you not only your heart rate - for example - but combined with your step cadence and terrain how this is impacting your “energy burn”

The Value of Metrics in Sports

You might ask yourself why all of this matters. As a scientist, I may be biased, but I believe that everything we do generates useful data. In the past, much of it went unmeasured – I would even say wasted. Today, smart wearables make it possible to capture this information with unobtrusive devices, turning it into meaningful insights.

This is especially valuable when the data is linked to exercise and sport, where it can help us better understand performance, health, and progress. With data we can observe progress - progress towards an anticipated goal. If weight loss is your goal, step counts and energy expenditure bear a direct correlation to your weight-loss goal. Smartwatches us to “close the loop” - we push ourselves, our body responds, the watch measures our “outputs”, and, in the case of all HUAWEI smartwatches I have tested, gives us an interpretation of those outputs and we can see where we stand with respect to our end goals.

This gamification of activities makes the data the powerful currency in achieving our end goals. Without knowing it, this makes our actions more measured, more scientific, no longer relying on guesswork but using hard fact to inform our literal next steps.

Practical Applications – How I Use the HUAWEI WATCH GT 6 Pro

I see the use of the HUAWEI WATCH GT 6 Pro fitting best into a combination of monitoring healthy workout sessions and occasional glimpses of general health and well-being.

By this I mean that I regularly use the ECG feature to assess a healthy heart – a good resting heart rate in sinus rhythm, I also regularly assess my sleep based on the sleep scores the watch. Personally, I look for uniformity as much as I can. I am now entering into the habit of “formally” recording my Outdoor Walks as “workouts” – more than just counting steps and calories burnt. It provides a gentle nudge to keep going and makes my steps count. It also gives me a record of my achievements, something to compare against and observe improvements over time. Just as we enjoy seeing the weight drop as we diet and exercise, it’s good to measure distances walked, energy expended, and heart rates, both during activity and in recovery. This gives a healthy balance of managing “wellness”, as well as managing well-being.

Conclusion – Smartwatch and Data as a Long-Term Companion

In summary, I think the value of data in our daily lives cannot be undersold. If our intended end goals are improved well-being, with smartwatches such as the HUAWEI WATCH GT 6 Pro, we have a rich set of data right at our fingertips - quite literally. This data, coupled with some knowledge of our intended end goals, allows us to carefully map out our progress - tracking vital parameters when it counts. Be it HRV, ECG or just plain heart rate we can make sure that our efforts are going in the right direction - equally though we can ensure we are being safe in own endeavours. We are not all super athletes, with our busy lives it is hard to find the time to do what is right to keep ourselves fit and healthy, but remembering how I started this article - the power of our own health and wellbeing lies within ourselves, smartwatches such as these empower us and allow us to meet these end goals - and all of this through the power of data.