Wearables

A strain score can't tell a hard session from a hard day.

Stressful meeting, double espresso, heatwave commute — your strain climbed. Your muscles weren't invited.

Strain models your heart, not your training

It is cardiovascular load accounting: how long your heart rate stayed elevated, and how high. Useful — but blind to what elevated it.

Adaptation is the number you wanted

Training works by stimulus, then recovery, then change. Strain gauges the first step only. The change itself — muscle kept, fat lost — never touches the score.

Chasing strain optimises the wrong thing

You can raise today's number with junk volume and a hot room. You cannot fool a body measurement taken weeks apart. One of these is worth chasing.

Pair the effort gauge with an outcome gauge

Keep the strain score as an effort diary if it helps. Then measure the output on the only instrument that shows it: your body, over time.