If there is something good which has come out of the pandemic, it’s the way humans have started to care about their health. From eating healthy and strengthening their immunity system to taking care of their workout regime, people have started giving more importance to fitness now.
Tech plays a vital role in this process, and smart wearables are one such category of products which makes healthy living a lot easier. From monitoring your workouts, step count and blood oxygen levels, these smart devices help you keep a check on all aspects of your health.
The Apple Watch was one of the first smartwatches to enter this arena. Over the years, we have seen many additions to the watch which have kept in mind the changing times—like the 20-second hand wash alert which has been a great add-on for the pandemic.
We have always liked the activity ring aspect in an Apple Watch because that pushes the person to work harder for their goals. You are constantly reminded to stand, walk more, and achieve the targets you have set for yourself. Above all, you have the option to compete with your friends which makes the process a lot more interesting. In the end, when the watch your goals achieved, it gives you a feeling of immense satisfaction.
Such options are usually hidden in the Health app and need to be discovered. One of my recent favorites has been the V02 max which has some great ways of checking how fit you actually are and giving you the ultimate aerobic fitness test.
Being at home for the past one year has meant that many like me have skipped heavy weight workouts and moved towards low endurance sports. The V02 max works well within such parameters. It is a measurement of the amount of oxygen from the air you breathe into your lungs, which is then transported by your bloodstream to your muscles, where it is converted into energy during a workout.
Why is V02 max important? If you have been training for a long time but do not have good endurance levels, V02 max is going to help you a lot. It helps measure your progress as an increase in V02 max indicates an improvement in your aerobic fitness. Improved workout endurance like the ability to run for longer periods without breaks can be measured in V02 max, helping you keep track of your improvement. During the last year, many of us have taken to running and walking outdoors and that’s where V02 max really comes into play. We need to remember that these are the two types of workouts which also help estimate V02 max on the Apple Watch.
How does one check their V02 max? For that, you need to use the Health app on your iPhone. Go to Health Data, then Activity, and scroll down. Once you have your data, you can compare things and keep an account of your wellness and health.
Personally, V02 max has helped me in the last few months. For someone who was majorly into weight training, switching to outdoor runs was hard and maintaining consistency wasn’t easy. However, having a constant measuring scale has been helpful in such a case as it only made me push myself for a healthier tomorrow.