Wearables

Device guides written for the coach rather than the wearer. What each one measures, what its recovery score is really telling you, and where it stops being useful across a roster.

• GuideThe best wearables for coachesAlmost every wearable review is written for the person wearing it. The coach's question is different: what can I actually see, and can I act on it across a roster?
• GuideWhat a recovery score actually tells youA single number between 1 and 100 is a compression of several signals into something an athlete can glance at. Compression loses information, and it is worth knowing which information.
• GuideManaging a roster where everyone owns something differentMandating one device is the tidy answer and almost nobody can make it stick. The practical answer is a monitoring approach that does not depend on which brand an athlete happens to own.
• GuideGarmin data for coachesGarmin is the most training-rich ecosystem an athlete is likely to own, and the most inconsistent one to coach from, because the range spans a decade of very different hardware.
• GuideWHOOP data for coachesWHOOP is the mainstream wearable most explicitly designed around recovery rather than around workouts, which makes it a natural fit for coached athletes — with two real caveats.
• GuideApple Watch data for coachesThe Apple Watch's advantage is that your athletes already have one. Its disadvantage for recovery is that most of them take it off at exactly the wrong time.
• ComparisonGarmin vs WHOOP for coachesThe short version: Garmin is a training computer that also tracks recovery, WHOOP is a recovery tracker that also estimates load. Which is right depends on which gap you are filling.
• ComparisonWHOOP vs Oura for coachesThese two are closer than any other pairing in this category. Both are recovery-first, both baseline against the individual, and the deciding factor is usually which one an athlete will actually keep wearing.
• ComparisonGarmin vs Oura for recoveryThis is the least head-to-head of the wearable comparisons, because the two devices are mostly answering different questions — which is why wearing both is a more reasonable answer here than usual.