Listen to your own feeling
Of course, there are many trackers on the market today that measure in the morning, based on for example your sleep and HRV, whether you are recovered and to what extent. These are great tools, although in our opinion, you should always ask yourself to what extent you feel recovered.
In the future, we will want to use some of these trackers automatically to provide input on the recovery level, but until that time, you can already adjust the recovery level based on what your own tracker tells you. Since JOIN only takes your activities into account in the Recovery Score, you can use these trackers to supplement the JOIN Readiness score. How well each tracker does that, we leave open for now. We do not advise one device or method over another. But we will explain below how you can integrate the information from your tracker into JOIN for the Whoop, Oura, Garmin, and Fitbit. Needless to say, please also listen to your own body and do not blindly trust the numbers from any tracker.
Whoop Recovery Score
The Whoop Recovery Score, like JOIN, has a range from 0 to 100. You can take this number, if it also corresponds with your own feeling, directly into JOIN. A number below 33 means that you are not ready for training. With JOIN, that limit is 30 and the effect is the same. Between 34 and 66, Whoop advises that you may train, but should also listen to your body. With JOIN, you are in this area between 30 and 50 and JOIN may or may not prescribe a training. We also look at your availability and recovery in the coming days and of course at your training history. Especially with a score between 34 and 66 on your Whoop, you should use your judgment and feeling. Above this, you can do your training just fine according to both JOIN and Whoop.
Oura Ring Readiness Score
The Oura Ring Readiness Score also has a range from 0 to 100. But in this case, the area in which you should listen extra carefully to your body is 0 to 59. With JOIN, that limit is 50, and we make another distinction under 30, which Oura does not. In this case, we recommend that if you want to translate an Oura score between 0 and 59 to JOIN, it should be between 0 and 40. The area that Oura calls "Fair" between 60 and 69 would then fall between 40 and 50 in JOIN, and the rest would fall in the area above that. But again, let your own feeling lead in this.
The Garmin Readiness Score
As expected, Garmin also gives a Readiness score between 0 and 100. The Garmin score can almost be directly translated into JOIN. The biggest difference is in the low scores. Garmin indicates that a score from 0 to 25 is a reason not to train. This would fall between 0 and 30 in JOIN. Between 25 and 50, this translates in JOIN to the area between 30 and 50, and everything above that can be translated 1 on 1 into the JOIN Recovery Score.
Fitbit Readiness Score
Like the Whoop, Oura, and Garmin, the Fitbit also tracks your sleep, HRV, and activities. The Fitbit has 3 distinctive zones: 1-29 low, 30-64 good, and 65-100 excellent. The area between 1 and 29 can be taken directly into JOIN. But JOIN would not call 31 "good," while Fitbit does. We actually advise not to take a Fitbit score between 30 and 64 into JOIN, while a score between 65 and 100 can be placed somewhere on the JOIN score between 50 and 100. Just listen to your body about what best describes your feeling in this.
Any more questions?
Undoubtedly, we have not discussed all the trackers now. It is almost impossible to always be complete in this. In addition, we advise you to only take over scores from your tracker if there is a significant mismatch and the reason for that probably comes from missing sleep or HRV data that JOIN otherwise would not know. So, if nothing special has happened and your feeling today is just in line with your training from the past few days, then you do not need to change anything about the JOIN readiness and recovery level. We believe that this tool makes your training even better with the help of your input, than you are already used to from us. If you have any more questions, feel free to send an email to support@join.cc.