Being someone who tests and reviewsa lot of smartwatchesmeans I’m exposed to every company’s take on tracking health and fitness. Whether it’s Garmin’s detailed performance and recovery tracking,Withings' whole-body health, or the Fitbit approach of making everything easy to digest. And, while there are definite benefits to every company’s take, there’s one third-party app and service that has completely changed my mindset and relationship with fitness for the better: Gentler Streak.
What is Gentler Streak?
Gentler Streak is an app that ties in with Apple Health, and helps guide you along a gentle, productive path to improving or maintaining fitness.
It’s available as anApple Watchapp and an iPhone app and - while it works best if you have both - you can still make use of it if you use a different health/fitness watch, as long as it syncs its data and is set to read/write data with Apple Health/Fitness. The only issue with it if you don’t use Apple Watch is that it misses some of the sleeping data, which can be useful for judging how much rest you need.
Instead of bombarding you with lots of numbers and data, the main home screen interface is a bar telling you if you’re pushing hard, being productive, overreaching, need a rest, or need to go and be active to improve your fitness. It can be viewed as the single bar for that particular day, or it can show a 7-day chart plotting your progress and trajectory based on the activity you’ve done and how much effort went into it.
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Whenever you do an activity - and it syncs to Apple Fitness/Health - the chart updates and can tell you your next best course of action. If you’re overreaching, you’ll be told to rest, if you’ve had a couple of inactive days in a row it’ll probably advise you to get out and do some exercise.
It works even better when you wear yourApple Watch to track sleepas well, importing all of your sleep data to get a better sense of your overall condition. For instance, if you’ve had a few days of intense activity, and are struggling to sleep properly, it’ll tell you to listen to your body, take some time to rest and don’t rush back out to do a workout or activity. So even if you’ve had a day or two of rest, and it detects you haven’t had good quality sleep, it can guide you and suggest that you rest some more. It’s all based on the signals your body gives it.
Gentler workouts
As I’ve mentioned, Gentler Streak will import activities you’ve done on your Apple Watch or other fitness tracker using their own dedicated workout modes. However, if you have an Apple Watch, you’re able to actually use the Gentler Streak app to launch a workout from your wrist. And - as you’re doing that workout - it’ll show you where along your effort line you’re up to, so you can see when you get close to pushing too hard or overreaching, helping you avoid pushing that effort dot into the red zone.
If you have a premium subscription, the app offers up 3-4 suggestions of workouts that you can do based on the type of workout you enjoy, and at different degrees of effort.
For instance, on a day you need rest, it might tell you to rest, or try a gentle yoga session if you want to move your body without straining or putting in too much effort. Likewise, on days when you’ve had good rest the day before and slept well, it might suggest pushing hard and going for a more intense workout like a 35-40 minute run (depending on what your history and effort look like, and it knows you can cope with). If you’ve only ever managed a 15-20 minute run - and it knows that would be an intense workout for you - it’ll adjust its suggestions based on that. It won’t just suddenly decide you need a much longer run than you’ve ever managed before.
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With this approach, I never feel like I’m having to push myself to the limits of what I can handle, and the suggestions are always realistically attainable. They never result in extreme fatigue, and leave me feeling good.
Why has it changed my relationship with fitness?
My relationship with fitness, or mindset around running and working out, was historically one of striving to get to the next goal. I’d start off doing Couch to 5K for instance, get up to 5km then push until I could run 10km, then it would be a case of seeing what the furthest I could run was. I never really listened when my body was clearly tired - never took an extra day of rest when I needed it - because my training plan said I needed to go for a run that day.
Even worse, when I did miss a day that I was ‘supposed’ to train, I’d feel awful and it would completely derail my progress and motivation. It was the same if I went away for a few days on a work trip and my running routine was upset. It could blow me right off course, and I always found it incredibly difficult to bring myself back.
Other times I’d get obsessed with the Apple Fitness ring-closing challenges and streaks. Which is fine on its own, but when I got a 70-day streak and suddenly missed one day, it broke my streak, derailed me, and left me unable to get back in the groove again.
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Gentler Streak’s approach is far more sustainable and the funny part is I’m not really doing workouts or exercises that are any different to before. I’m still running, I’m actually doing a Couch to 5K plan again to build my cardio fitness and doing kettlebells just like I have been for years. The only difference this time is that I’m following my gentle path to progress instead of religiously following a preset schedule.
It means when I go away for a few days on holiday and I can’t run, or do my regular workouts, it’s not a big deal. I can spend days out walking, and it counts towards my progress, and I just pick up the running again when I get back.
Working out doesn’t feel anywhere near as make or break as it used to. In fact, I don’t even run every two days. Sometimes I only run once a week, sometimes 2-3 times. It depends on how I feel in myself, what the advice of the Gentler Streak app is, and taking the path of kindness towards my own body. It’s genuinely a game-changer for me. The fact that it gives me the option to choose an easier session every day - or gives me permission to rest - eases that part of my mind that has the urge to keep striving, keep pushing.
It’s a breath of fresh air. I might still use different services to do coaching plans, or try different workouts and exercises - I might even sometimes still really push myself and go on a crazy long 8-hour walk that leaves me wrecked for a couple of days - but I always come back to the progress chart and listen to what my body is telling me about my rest and fatigue levels.
So if you’ve struggled with fitness, or sticking with goals to be a ‘new you’, or just maintaining a fitness regime, I’d definitely suggest giving it a go. It helps make fitness a sustainable part of your life, rather than something that requires a tonne of extra effort and motivation which eventually fizzles out after a couple of months. It has genuinely changed my life.
