Recording Sessions: Strength Training
Recording strength training requires regular use of the lap button to separate exercises, sets and rests, and to log repetitions and the weight moved.
Definition
“Recording sessions: strength training” refers to capturing a gym session with a sports watch, where the individual parts of the workout are separated by regularly pressing the lap button and supplemented with repetitions and weight moved. Unlike endurance sports, the watch produces hardly any usable metrics on its own here; the information only emerges through manual structuring.
Why it matters
Heart rate and duration alone do not describe a strength session. Two 60 min workouts averaging 110 bpm could have been an easy mobility routine or five heavy sets of squats. Only exercise, sets, repetitions and load make the session comparable and usable for load management.
| Part | What the lap button marks | What should be added |
|---|---|---|
| Warm-up | End of the warm-up | Tag as cardio segment |
| Set | Start and end of every set | Exercise, repetitions, weight |
| Rest | End of a set until the next begins | Nothing, follows from the set markers |
| Finish | End of the last set | Tag as cool-down or cardio |
Garmin devices, for instance, offer a function in the strength profile that lets every stored segment be characterised. After the warm-up it can be marked as a cardio segment; after a strength exercise, repetitions can be entered or corrected and the weight moved can be documented. Repetitions are recorded from hand movement, but by no means always detected objectively and correctly.
How obseed measures it
obseed imports the strength session with duration, heart rate and whatever sets, repetitions and weights the watch exports. Load enters the overall training load through duration and heart rate; a power- or pace-based stress score does not exist for strength training.
Because automatic rep counting is unreliable, obseed recommends adding exercises, sets and loads in the notes right after the session or correcting them on the watch. Only then can progression be traced over weeks. obseed treats the watch data in strength training as a time grid, not as a measurement.
Example
An athlete does a lower-body session: 10 min warm-up on the ergometer, 5 × 5 back squats at 100 kg, 3 × 8 Romanian deadlifts at 80 kg, 3 × 12 lunges with 2 × 16 kg.
Without the lap button, the session appears as 58 min of “strength” at an average of 112 bpm with 47 automatically detected reps, 30 of which the watch attributes to squats and 17 to an unknown exercise. The deadlifts are missing entirely because the wrist barely rotates during them.
With the lap button and a correction right after each set, the recording contains 11 sets with correct reps and loads plus a 10 min cardio segment. Total volume works out to 5 × 5 × 100 + 3 × 8 × 80 + 3 × 12 × 32 = 5,570 kg. If that figure rises to 6,000 kg two weeks later with the same structure, progression is documented; heart rate alone would never have shown it.
Categories
- Trainingsaufzeichnung