10 Best Sleep Apps Of 2025
Most dig, pop out, or ache by morning, but these are soft, compact, and light enough to disappear into your ear—yes, even when I was laying on my side. Like Whoop’s approach, this sees exercise and sleep as sort of opposite forces. Your Body Battery will be closer to 100% if you’ve been sleeping well and haven’t done much strenuous exercise lately. If you want something that can track activities, but works with an app that is recovery-focused rather than exercise-focused, you probably want a Whoop band. The newer gen 4 ring has a wider range of sizes, a more comfortable fit, and a more accurate sensor setup.
The Best Fitness Trackers for Sleep and Recovery
![]()
Acquiring a recovery tracker has helped Tompkins see how her sleep, nutrition, and lifestyle affects her body, and she adjusts her training accordingly, lowering her intensity when necessary. Lucy Conlon, a London-based marketing professional and fitness micro-influencer, told Insider wearing a recovery tracker has helped her know how hard she can push herself. We also found that the Oura Ring 4 works with your sleep schedule, rather than trying to change your lifestyle.
These are the types we recommend, and the most common ones you’ll come across while shopping. Best for outdoor enthusiasts looking for a durable, full-featured GPS watch with excellent battery life. Best for dedicated runners and athletes who value precise pacing, detailed training insights, and customized tracking features. Best for users seeking a feature-rich, precise tracker that can be used for a wide range of activities and has a long-lasting battery.
Unisex Design And Clinical-Grade Accuracy Make Sleep-Tracking Bracelets A Go-To Wellness Tool
Prioritizing recovery will not only minimize the risk of injury but also optimize your performance for future training and competitions. Whether you are a seasoned athlete or a beginner, it’s important to understand the crucial role that recovery plays in your performance. Track and field is a sport that demands high levels of physical exertion and places immense stress on your body.
Best Smartwatch for Fitness
Ultimately, the key to success lies in consistency and mindful adjustments. While a tracker provides valuable feedback, it’s your commitment to applying its insights through better routines, sleep-friendly environments, and stress management that will determine your results. By combining technology with healthy habits, you can transform your sleep quality, wake up refreshed, and enjoy the full benefits of a well-rested body and mind.
- It’s easy to think that taking shorter rest periods will make your workout “better,” but inadequate rest between sets or workouts can put your body at risk for overtraining.
- Amazfit’s Active 2 Smar Watch offers robust capabilities, accurate GPS tracking, and a long-lasting battery–all at a budget-friendly price.
- Like many of the sleep trackers we tested, the Oura Ring throws a lot of data at you in the form of color-coded charts and graphs.
- The Ozlo Sleepbuds are (surprisingly) earbuds that are actually comfortable to sleep in.
- If you did a long or hard workout, your Strain will be high, and the app will recommend an amount of sleep that will help you to recover.
- These apps offer soothing music, calming meditations and even features like sleep tracking to help users fall asleep, stay asleep and maintain healthy sleep habits.
Learn How to Use Whoop’s Super KPI – Recovery
In our tests, the Oura Ring 4’s smart sensors, located on the interior of the ring, accurately measured heart rate and HRV during activity and rest. When we tested the Oura Ring 4 against a heart-rate sensor, it proved to be the most closely aligned of all the sleep-tracking devices we tried. We took note of trackers with apps that offered extra features such as guided meditations, breathing exercises, “bedtime stories,” daily sleep journals, and coaching. We favored sleep trackers that looked discreet during the day and were lightweight and comfortable enough that we could forget we were wearing them while sleeping. Of all the sleep trackers we tested, the Oura Ring 4 offers the most comprehensive and approachable data and daily guidance.
Track and field events, whether short sprints or long-distance races, rely heavily on the body’s glycogen stores for fuel. Glycogen is the primary source of energy for high-intensity activities. During recovery, the body replenishes these glycogen stores, ensuring you have sufficient energy for your next training session or competition. Recovery is the process by which your body repairs and adapts to the stress placed upon it during training and competition.
How to Optimize Your Sleep Using Tracker Data
Garmin defines recovery time as “an estimate on how long it will take for you to fully recover and be ready for your next workout of the same intensity.” Note that phrase, fully recover. No athlete is fully recovered at the start of every training session; sometimes you carry a little fatigue from one session to the next. This number is just giving you a sense of how long you’ll be feeling the effects of this workout. Although active recovery workouts are usually performed later in the day after a strenuous workout or the following day, the cooldown portion of a workout can also be considered a form of immediate active recovery. For strength training, studies suggest that longer rest https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/water-balance periods (2–5 minutes) are ideal to allow muscles to fully recover.
Additionally, practices such as stretching, compression therapy, and various forms of active recovery can help reduce muscle soreness and improve overall healing. By following these general guidelines for recovery, you are setting yourself up for success in track and field. Overall, recovery is the foundation for optimal athletic performance in track and field. It allows your body to repair, regenerate, and adapt to the physical demands of the sport, while also preventing injuries and promoting long-term progress. By prioritizing recovery as an integral part of your training regimen, you set yourself up for success in reaching your athletic goals.
CareClinic tracks your personal trajectory, not universal standards. Track narcolepsy and cataplexy episodes with detailed logging features. Record trigger situations, episode duration, and medication effectiveness. The app’s pattern analysis unimeal review helps identify environmental factors that influence symptom frequency.
#2: Between Exercises In a Workout
So if you can’t lift in it, and it’s not great at activity tracking or sleep staging, why wear one? Honestly, because I can forget that it exists and still get all the benefits of knowing what my RHR and HRV have been, pretty much every night, for the last three and a half years. Oura’s app then uses those metrics, and other data it’s collected about you, to give you sleep scores, readiness scores, and gentle recommendations for supporting your health.
How Long Should I Use Sleep Recovery Tracking Before Seeing Patterns?
While premium features come at a higher cost, reading user reviews and testing different models. Amazfit’s Active 2 Smar Watch offers robust capabilities, accurate GPS tracking, and a long-lasting battery–all at a budget-friendly price. During testing, it felt light and comfortable for exercise, sleep, and everyday wear.
After scouring the app store, and trying each app out for ourselves – we’ve put together three Apple Watch recovery apps that we feel are worth trying. Lauren Keary is a NASM-certified nutrition coach and fitness/nutrition writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has nearly a decade of professional journalism experience and has covered topics all across the wellness and lifestyles spaces. The silicone band is soft and ventilated, and it’s slim enough not to bother you overnight.
Success Story: Jason’s Sleep Transformation
With so many great features and compatibility, we think this tracker is well worth the money for fitness enthusiasts. For example, the app might tell you that you were in “Zone 3” during a workout, meaning you had hit 70% to 80% of your maximum heart rate. Our testers said that data such as this helped them learn in real time whether they were making strides in their fitness or overdoing it. When we tested the Oura Ring Gen3, the old activity-tracking software struggled to categorize certain types of exercise. This time, we were impressed with how the Oura Ring 4 was able to differentiate lifting, walking, and swimming.
While the WHOOP tracker is designed with a wearable wristband, the sensor can be detached from the band and used with different garments such as sports bras, compression tops, leggings, athletic boxers, and intimates. The parasympathetic nervous system balances the body by regulating the rest and recovery mechanisms. This pathway slows down heartrate, restricts the release of hormones, and generally helps our body recover.
She consistently wears an Apple Watch to track her outdoor runs, daily steps, and other health and fitness data. Another useful feature includes the watch’s Track Back functionality, which uses the built-in GPS to direct you back to the start of your trail run, hike, or ride. We also loved that the watch synced seamlessly with our earbuds and smartphone, delivering messages accurately and in real-time. Plus, we didn’t have to charge it every day or worry about running out of juice mid-workout, thanks to its 60-hour battery life. Best for budget-conscious users who want a sleek smartwatch with comprehensive health and fitness tracking, but aren’t worried about data being extremely precise.
Best Investment Fitness Watch
Active recovery involves moving your body, with low-intensity exercise, which increases circulation to your muscles and connective tissues. The relationship between rest periods and muscle growth is a well-documented one. The optimal duration of rest depends on the type of training and the specific muscle fibers being targeted.
