Hi,
I was hoping to find out whom too suffers from “Orthosomnia” - a condition where the person suffers from a level of anxiety around tracking their sleep, HRV, HR etc while sleeping via their wearable.
I have been a Garmin and Whoop user for many years to not only track my athletic performance but also my sleep, HRV, resting HR and the many other health metrics captured by these devices whilst we sleep. However, on many many occasions I believe it has done me more harm than good in bettering my athletic performance.
There have been many times throughout the night where I have had to remove my Garmin device due to the anxiety around hoping the Garmin Morning Report or Whoop Recovery score show I am productive enough to actually train during the day. There have been many times I have been told by the device I am “cooked” when I’ve felt fine and vice a versa.
There are also many many examples where I have not worn the device to bed and had some of the most restful sleeps I’ve ever had. Then why do I keep going back and putting it on to track everything? - I guess there’s an element of addiction to knowing the numbers if I’m honest about it.
Since my operation a week ago I have noticed how the anxiety has returned during my sleep whilst wearing my Garmin. It is telling me (as it would) how my performance and fitness is declining (due naturally to no training) and showing me my HRV is dropping, my resting HR has increased and that my Training Status is Unproductive. These are, of course, all typical indicators of someone not training BUT it is still messing with my head.
So the remedy - ditch the wearables, cancel my Whoop subscription, stop tracking everything for a while until I am fully recovered, in particular while I sleep.
Sleep for me at the moment is the best recovery tool on the planet and doing it without a device telling me how long my REM, Light, Deep etc was and the sleep score to stress over upon rising, is the best thing I can do at the moment.
Also, when it comes to training some of the best sessions I have had have been based solely on RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion). I have been an Athlete whom has been Coach led via structured training, Self Coached via structured training and also RPE via unstructured training. All have their place in an Athletes training life, however, if I am brutally honest about it, for me, I find I am in my happy place during training when it is unstructured and based on RPE. The problem with that, come race day I’ve generally under-trained myself and that has it’s own stresses as well.
Anyway, I’d love to know if anyone else suffers from the same. Please share.
I’ve attached a short article (see link) on what this new condition actually is: