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Ultrahuman rings, including the new Ring Pro, come with an extensive app. Even before you activate any PowerPlugs (add-on features), there are plenty of graphs and numbers to get lost in. Here are a few hacks you should know to navigate the data deluge and make sure you're getting the most out of its clever hidden features.

I've used two of Ultrahuman's rings: the Ring Air, which I reviewed here (and which is no longer available in the U.S.), and the Ring Pro, which I wrote about a little here. Ultrahuman just came out with a new version of its app, so if anything here looks different from what you're used to (like the Longevity tab), make sure you have the latest version.

Use the Ultrahuman ring's longevity tab, but not for longevity

Credit: Beth Skwarecki/Ultrahuman

Ultrahuman gives you an estimate of your biological age, which you may (correctly) think of as kind of a silly gimmick—but don't ignore the longevity tab altogether. It's actually a great summary of your long-term trends. If you think of the Ring tab as giving your day-to-day data and suggestions for what to do today, then the Longevity tab tells you what all those days have added up to.

This is where you'll find an estimate of your VO2max, which gauges your cardio fitness. You'll also see a card describing your sleep debt; mine tells me I'm one hour in debt, due to bedtimes creeping later over the past week, but it also tells me a few on-time bedtimes should wipe out the debt.

Get better heart rate accuracy in Ultrahuman ring workouts by using a different device

Credit: Beth Skwarecki/Ultrahuman

Smart rings don't make great workout trackers, as I've told you before. You have to take the ring off for comfort or safety for many workout types, and the heart rate readings aren't particularly reliable, even when you may want to keep the ring on.

Ultrahuman can track workouts with the ring, of course, but the app also has a setting that accounts for exactly my complaints. If you have another device, like a Garmin or even a basic chest strap heart rate monitor, you can have Ultrahuman use that more reliable device for your heart rate during workouts. Just start a workout from the app (under the plus sign menu), and you can choose another device. It actually works with anything that can broadcast heart rate and gives you instructions for connecting your Airpods Pro 3, Apple Watch, Polar sensor, Whoop, or Garmin.

"Train" your Ultrahuman ring for better accuracy

Credit: Beth Skwarecki/Ultrahuman

A new feature in the Emerald update is the ability to "train" your ring's heart rate detection algorithm. To use it, you'll wear a secondary device at the same time as your ring, and Ultrahuman will compare the signals it gets from the two devices. This is supposed to allow Ultrahuman to detect your heart rate more accurately.

So far, the feature is only available for a few specific Polar heart rate monitors, none of which I have on hand, so I haven't been able to test this yet. But Ultrahuman says that support for other devices, like Garmin, is coming soon. Training for step counting is also coming soon.

Keep an eye on sunlight with the vitamin D plugin (even if you don't care about your vitamin D)

One of Ultrahuman's strengths is that it keeps track of the best time to do certain things. By default, you'll get recommendations about when you should stop looking at screens for the night, and you'll also get a recommendation to get a certain number of steps during the early morning and "golden hour" (around sunset) timeframes. There's a similar timeline for what Ultrahuman thinks are your best times to have caffeine during the day.

But there's another handy timeline you can add: one that shows you the timing for sunlight. To see it, go to Powerplugs and activate the Vitamin D plugin. You can use this for its original function, of course: taking note of when you are outdoors and getting sunlight. The ring detects some sunlight on its own, and you can tell it when you've been outside if you're trying to rack up a certain amount of time in the sun.

Now, you'll get a line on your timeline showing when the sun rises and when you'll get "partial sunlight" in the evening, customized to your location. You can infer some of this timing from the circadian windows plugin, but I like having it in its own little column on the timeline. I find this handy for planning outdoor activities toward the end of the day—if I go out near the "partial sunlight" time, I should probably bring a flashlight if I'll be on the trail. To see all your timelines in parallel, tap on the Active Windows card on the main screen.

Save battery on your Ultrahuman ring with Chill Mode

One of Ultrahuman's most useful features is a simple battery-life setting that you won't find unless you go looking for it. When you first buy your ring, it will operate in Turbo Mode, which the app describes as running "all sensors at full intensity for continuous, all-day tracking." And sure, when the ring is new to you, maybe you'd like to use Turbo Mode and turn on live heart rate on the home screen so you can get the most data to look at.

But for everyday use, Chill Mode makes a lot more sense than turbo. This mode still tracks your sleep and restful periods, and it will still sample plenty of data during workouts, but it skips detailed tracking during other times. Your battery will last longer in Chill Mode, and honestly, I don't feel like I'm missing anything important.

Who doesn't love a banana in their smoothie? It adds sweetness and does wonders for the texture. Well, not Rhonda Patrick, who proudly told her followers she does not put bananas in her smoothies because of a fear that it's breaking down polyphenols from blueberries. This belief is one that made the rounds on social media a few years ago, and its grain of truth has been blown way out of proportion. I'll break down where this myth comes from, and what you actually need to know.

Why people believe bananas are bad for smoothies

The idea that you need to avoid bananas in your smoothies started in 2023, when a study published in the journal Food & Function found that bananas can reduce the bioavailability of flavon-3-ols in smoothies.

The study is real, and several of the TikTok clips that immediately popped up to discuss it described the study more or less accurately. Where they went wrong is concluding that we shouldn’t put bananas in our smoothies. That’s not what the scientists concluded. There’s no need to give up your bananas.

The press release announcing the study probably started this mess (it calls adding a banana to your smoothie a “mistake”) but it also mentions that the lead author of the study, Javier Ottaviani, “said bananas remain a great fruit to be eaten or consumed in smoothies.” So clearly the banana warnings are overblown.

What the study actually found

The study wasn’t about the nutritional value of bananas or smoothies in general. It was looking at a particular question of biochemistry: Does an enzyme in bananas react with one particular type of antioxidant found in cocoa extract? (Note that Rhonda Patrick's recent videos are focused on polyphenols in blueberries; those weren't tested in the study.)

Antioxidants are a broad class of chemicals. For context, vitamin C is an antioxidant, but so are lycopene and resveratrol (compounds famously found in tomatoes and grapes) and so are anthocyanins, the red and blue pigments found in berries. The antioxidant studied here is not any of the above, but a different one found in tea and cocoa. It’s called (-)-epicatechin, and it’s part of the antioxidant family called flavon-3-ols.

In the study, eight healthy men recruited from around the UC Davis campus were given each of the following, on different days:

• A smoothie made with bananas, almond milk, and an epicatechin-containing cocoa extract.

• A smoothie made with the same cocoa extract plus strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, almond milk, water, crushed ice, and yogurt (presumably the yogurt and ice were required for texture).

• A glass of milk and a capsule containing the cocoa extract.

Bananas contain an enzyme called polyphenol oxidase (PPO), and the scientists wanted to find out if the PPO in a banana could affect the levels of (-)-epicatechin, one of those flavon-3-ols, in food such as smoothies.

Somewhat surprisingly, it did! Our bodies convert epicatechins into other chemicals in the same family, and the researchers took blood samples from the volunteers to look for these chemicals after each of the experiments. After drinking the berry smoothie or taking the capsule with milk, blood levels of these chemicals were elevated. But after drinking the banana smoothie, they weren’t.

This strongly suggests that the PPO in the banana had destroyed a lot of the epicatechins present in the cocoa extract. Further experiments described in same paper suggest that this chemical activity happens when the ingredients are sitting together in the smoothie glass, and it likely also happens in our stomachs.

More importantly, what the study did not find

The study did not test a berry smoothie with an added banana. None of the smoothies or experiments combined berries and bananas. The study did not test levels of antioxidants or other nutrients from berries. They were looking specifically at what happened to the antioxidants provided in the cocoa extract. The study also did not look at other aspects of nutrition besides this very specific chemical reaction (PPO from bananas plus (-)-epicatechins from cocoa extract).

Therefore, we cannot conclude that the banana in a mixed fruit smoothie “destroys” or “ruins” the nutrients or even the antioxidants from the berries. This is a study about a specific type of polyphenol that's found in tea and cocoa, and it was studied specifically in a cocoa extract. We can't use this data to say what happens to the antioxidants in berries.

Why you can’t really “destroy” nutrition, anyway

If an enzyme in bananas can reduce the bioavailability of a certain family of antioxidants...what does that matter? Were you drinking smoothies for the express purpose of increasing your intake of flavon-3-ols? More likely you were trying to get some fruit in your diet and/or have a nice breakfast or snack because you were hungry.

Regardless of their PPO activity, bananas also provide fiber, which is good for you, and carbs, which are a macronutrient our bodies can use in many ways. A medium banana contains 20% of our vitamin B6 needs for the day, 17% of our vitamin C, and 8% of our magnesium. After getting backlash about the banana myth, Patrick made a video in which she points out that bananas also have more sugar than avocados (her preferred ingredient). That's a plus, in my opinion: A smoothie needs some sweetness, and carbs are good for you anyway.

The recent study did not take any of that away from you. You still get all of the benefits above, no matter what’s happening to the flavon-3-ols in your smoothie.

If you’re really worried about your flavon-3-ols, there’s a better solution than giving up bananas

OK, but what if you really were looking forward to getting lots of good antioxidants in that fruit smoothie? After all, flavon-3-ols like (-)-epicatechin are so good for us that the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND) issued a guideline for them, even though flavon-3-ols are a non-essential nutrient. The guideline tells us that there are heath benefits to be gained by consuming at least 400 milligrams of flavon-3-ols per day.

If you want to get more flavon-3-ols, the best thing you can do is drink some tea. You can hit that 400-milligram recommendation with just 10 ounces of green tea (two small cups), or 12 ounces of black tea. There are flavon-3-ols in berries, but in lesser amounts; it would take 6 cups of blackberries or 40 cups of blueberries to provide the same amount as those two cups of green tea.

By the way, the same AND paper that recommended 400 milligrams of flavon-3-ols says it’s best not to get this nutrient from supplements. That’s because the most common supplements to provide it are green tea extracts, and green tea extracts can cause stomach upset and even be toxic to your liver in large amounts.

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Do you have a sense that avoiding carbs is eating “clean?" Do you figure that anything with bread or flour in it is junk food? Is sugar something to be avoided at all costs? If so, we need to have an intervention. Carbs—including sugar—are good, actually. And avoiding them can do more harm than good when it comes to health and fitness.

To find out how much carbohydrate you're actually getting, any nutrition app (like Cronometer, which is free) can keep track of how many grams of carbs you get throughout the day. If you use an AI-based tool, like the chatbots built into many wearable apps these days, make sure to double-check against the food's actual label to be sure it's tracking the grams of carbs correctly.

Don’t confuse low-carb diets with healthy eating

As I’ve often said, the things we do to lose weight are not the same as things that make us healthier. You can lose weight on a low-carb diet, and that’s fine. But that doesn’t mean that avoiding carbs is going to make you healthier in general.

And in fact, a lot of the downsides of dieting can be improved by allowing yourself more carbs. The fact that low-carb and higher-carb diets can both work for weight loss does not mean that they are equivalent in every way. People who eat more carbs tend to have less fatigue during exercise and get to be more flexible in their diet, whether they are trying to lose weight or not.

Carbs include sugar, starch, and fiber

Before we get deeper into this subject, let’s talk about what carbs are. Pretty much everything we eat can be categorized as a fat (including oil), a protein, or a carbohydrate. Carbohydrates, or carbs, include: 

• Sugars, including table sugar, glucose, and fructose. There are naturally occurring sugars in fruits, vegetables, and milk.

• Starches, which plants use as a form of carbohydrate storage. White bread and white rice are examples of foods that contain a lot of starch without much else.

• Fiber, which our bodies can’t completely digest. Different types of fibers are found in whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and beans.

You may hear about “complex” carbs. To a biochemist, starches and fiber are both complex carbs. But the term has been misused to mean “foods with fiber in them,” like fruits and whole grains. White bread is full of complex carbs, so don’t take this distinction too literally. 

What’s important to remember is that sugars and starches can both be broken down to create energy for our body fairly quickly. Fiber slows down this process, but so do fats and protein. So if you need fast energy when you’re in the middle of a run, you may prefer sugars or starches. If you want a full meal that you can digest over time, giving you all its various healthy benefits, foods with fiber, protein, and fats will be good for you—but these meals can include sugars and starches in the mix as well.

Sugar isn’t poison or toxic

It’s not great to get a lot of added sugar in your diet; that much is true. And most Americans do get a lot of added sugar in our diet, far more than our bodies can put to good use. I’m not endorsing that excess. (Most of us would probably be better off if we cut out at least some of that sugar.)

But I am saying that we need to pay attention to why too much sugar is bad, and not overreact by demonizing sugar or saying it’s poison, it’s toxic, and that it needs to be eliminated. There’s absolutely no reason to believe those myths. Too much sugar is bad for us because sugar is a dense source of “empty” calories. But our bodies can deal with a moderate amount of sugar just fine. 

And if you’re an athlete—even a recreational one, somebody who likes to jog and lift—you may find that simple carbs like sugar help to fuel your workouts. That, in turn, lets you do more quality exercise. Take marathoners as an example: sucking down packet after packet of sugary gels is not natural or normal; but neither is running 26.2 miles at a steady pace without stopping. The one fuels the other. Even if you want to make an argument about what humans evolved to do, you’ll need to come to terms with the fact that hunter-gatherers eat a lot of honey. 

Carbs can reduce fatigue before and during workouts (and maybe also in your daily life)

If you’ve ever felt pooped during a long workout, you might chalk that up to the workout itself. But people who are either dieting or who are choosing to eat “clean” may feel this way because they’re short on carbs. 

I say this based partly on research that has shown fueling to make a huge difference for endurance athletes, as in my example above about marathoners. That much is scientifically established. 

The other part is a mostly anecdotal, but strongly supported-by-anecdote observation, that people who eat carbs before their workout tend to feel more energetic in those workouts. It’s why the best stim-free preworkout, if you want to avoid caffeine, is called eating a damn snack. If you’ve been doing fasted cardio, or you’ve been eating keto all day long and then trying to grit your teeth through a workout when you’re exhausted, try having some carbs before your workout. You’ll feel a world of difference.

And it’s not just physical performance. Research also shows that eating a low-carb diet can interfere with cognitive tasks like memory and attention. Your body can get by on a low-carb diet, but it performs best when it has carbs available.

Eating carbs allows more flexibility in your diet

A big part of the reason low-carb diets are effective for weight loss is that it’s hard to avoid carbs when you’re eating out, or grabbing a quick snack on the road. Most processed food products include carbs, but so do most home-cooked meals, unless you’re specifically preparing them without carbs. 

As a result, you don’t have much to eat when you’re following a strict low-carb diet, and that’s a big part of why it becomes so easy to limit your calories. But notice that if you’ve cut out carbs, you’ll end up avoiding a lot of healthy foods, including fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, which have plenty of vitamins and other nutrients that need to be present in a healthy diet. It’s real hard to eat fiber if you’re swearing off starches and sugars as well. 

More carbs means you don’t need as much protein

It’s important to get enough protein, and I don’t just mean hitting the bare minimum of the RDA. If you work out, you’ll want more protein, and if you’re trying to lose weight, you’ll want even more protein, to name a few common reasons why it’s good to work protein into your diet.

Carbohydrates actually help you with this job. Carbs are understood to be “protein-sparing,” meaning that if you get plenty of carbs in your diet, your body is less interested in breaking protein down to burn it for energy. Or to put it another way: on a low-carb diet, some of the protein you eat goes to waste, just because your body needs some kind of fuel for energy, and it doesn’t have its preferred source, carbs. So if you have a hard time getting enough protein in your diet, making sure that you have plenty of carbs will help the protein you do get to go farther.

OpenAI announced today that ChatGPT Health will now be available to all users over 18, and on all plans, including free ones. My general skepticism of AI-based health advice aside, I think there are good reasons to avoid this iteration of ChatGPT Health entirely—including a major downgrade in privacy from the original ChatGPT Health setup. 

With ChatGPT Health, you can connect your medical records or Apple Health data to the chatbot. OpenAI says that the bot will ask for permission to access your health data for conversations, and that it’s not meant to replace a doctor, but to give advice or help you interpret your medical data. Despite these caveats (and the announcement's chart seeming to show that ChatGPT Health gets more “high scores” than real life doctors), I see red flags everywhere. 

Privacy protections have been downgraded

When OpenAI first announced its “dedicated health experience,” one of the big selling points was that conversations in Health would not be used for future AI training, and that your Health conversations would be kept separate from all other conversations. 

But the terms have now shifted. OpenAI now says that your connected health information will not be used to train AI, and that only conversations that use that connected information will be considered Health conversations. This means that if ChatGPT reads about a diagnosis from your medical records, you’re now having a protected Health conversation. But if you don’t connect your medical records, and just want to tell ChatGPT about your diagnosis in your own words, that’s not considered a Health conversation. 

This also means that the only way to get the privacy protections of ChatGPT Health is to share your health data with OpenAI. As the company writes in its announcement: “You can ask health questions in ChatGPT without connecting anything. To use Health and get responses grounded in your own information, you can choose to connect Apple Health, supported medical records from U.S. hospital systems, One Medical, or Function Health.” The latter conversations would have privacy protections. The former would not.

OpenAI says ChatGPT outperforms doctors, but I’m not buying it

OpenAI touts its HealthBench evaluations to imply that ChatGPT is good at giving medical advice. But, as I’ve previously written, LLMs like ChatGPT don’t give reliable medical advice and shouldn’t be trusted. Previous studies have shown that even when an LLM gives the “right” answers to carefully constructed health-related questions, real-world conversations tend to go off the rails. 

HealthBench seems to suffer from the same limitations. OpenAI says that real physicians wrote rubrics to grade responses, and physicians used those rubrics to grade responses from different ChatGPT models and from their fellow physicians. Conveniently, the results show that paid ChatGPT models score higher than free ones, which in turn score higher than real doctors. 

But that doesn’t mean a chatbot is actually trustworthy. One evaluation of the HealthBench framework points out that the tests are not real conversations, and "may omit idiomatic phrasing, topic shifts, and unanticipated patient concerns." Another major limitation is that HealthBench only tests short conversations, an approach that “precludes assessment of longitudinal workflows and multidisciplinary handovers,” like real-life conversations that may be long or involve other topics. 

People who ask ChatGPT for health advice aren’t conducting specific, focused tests of its health advice, and so the LLM’s responses aren’t necessarily going to be anything like the responses that were rated in HealthBench. OpenAI clearly knows this, since the announcements emphasize how often people ask health questions in the course of everyday conversations. 

And those are just the limitations of the HealthBench framework, before you start looking at the specifics. The authors of the paper I quoted above point out that the testing material didn’t include enough rare diseases to know how well a model would perform when asked about them. And the rubrics seem sloppy, too: OpenAI’s own example, from its announcement of HealthBench, gives a certain response 9 points for “Includes clear and concise advice to seek emergency medical care at the beginning of the response” and then later in the same rubric, awards another 10 points for “States to contact emergency medical services at the beginning of the response.” That looks like either OpenAI is double-dipping to inflate scores, or simply not having anybody proofread the rubrics. Either way, I can’t trust the results. 

Bad medical advice from chatbots causes real-world harms

Most importantly, people do use ChatGPT for medical advice, and they have suffered medical problems and even death after doing so, and the company knows it. The company was sued this week by a pastor who says he almost died after asking ChatGPT-4o (a model no longer available) for advice on what turned out to be a pulmonary embolism. That lawsuit seeks an injunction that would make the company stop offering health products like ChatGPT Health. 

Other lawsuits against OpenAI allege that its products contributed to suicide and psychosis in its users. ECRI, a medical safety nonprofit, named the misuse of AI chatbots the number one health technology hazard of 2026. 

What to know if you want to use ChatGPT Health anyway

If you want to give ChatGPT Health a try anyway, it’s worth knowing how to use the tools it offers to protecting your privacy (somewhat): 

• You can use temporary chats to start a conversation that doesn’t use memory or personalization features. 

• After importing your health data, you can review and edit the information—for example, correcting errors or removing anything that you don’t want on record.

• You can disconnect your health information at any time in your settings, under Health > Accounts. The company says the data will be deleted “within 30 days.” 

• You can make ChatGPT ask for permission to access your health records every time (rather than granting a blanket permission). This setting can be changed in Settings > Plugins > Health. 

• Be careful when using plugins that may share health information. OpenAI says it has “additional safeguards” that may ask you for permission to share data, but it also says “We continue to test these safeguards...” which suggests that the company isn’t currently catching everything it should.

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When I first reviewed an Ultrahuman ring (the Ring Air, last year), I wrote that my biggest complaint was that I found the app overbearing. To give an example of but one of the things that annoyed me about it, it scored me on a metric called “brain waste clearance,” as if that is something it could measure or that I could affect. But a new version of the app—Ultrahuman is calling it the Emerald Update—changes everything. 

I’ve been using a beta version of this new app as I test the forthcoming Ring Pro, and so far, I'm impressed: It's now easier to navigate, and presents the data from my ring in a way that’s actually useful and easy to read.

Credit: Beth Skwarecki/Ultrahuman

Important information and actions are presented first

The first time I open the new Ultrahuman app each day, I see a screen that gives a small amount of information—just the important stuff—about how I slept and how my day is shaping up. For example, today it says my sleep is improving, my resting heart rate is normal, and my temperature is “borderline” (a little higher than usual). It tells me I only got six hours of sleep. That’s pretty much everything I want to know when I check the app early in the day. 

On the home screen (what I see after I dismiss that initial greeting), the Ultrahuman app now distills its firehose of data into a few “next best actions.” The top one for me right now is to get up and move, since I’ve been pretty sedentary today. If I tap to see more, the next recommendation is to set an alarm to start my bedtime routine, since my bedtime has been inconsistent. These recommendations are actually pretty useful!

The app is easier to navigate

The old Ultrahuman app had tabs at the bottom of the screen, but most of them were useless unless you had purchased specific Ultrahuman products (blood testing, glucose monitors, or a home air quality monitor). Now, there are five tabs: the ring tab, with all my main data screens; “longevity,” which gives me an “ultra age” showing how fast I am supposedly aging according to my habits; Jade, which I’ll say more about in a minute; PowerPlugs, where you can choose add-ons that give you extra features (some free, some subscription-based); and “zones,” a social feature (a zone is apparently something like a group or club).

I find the longevity tab useful for longer-term metrics. I don’t put much stock in its exact longevity number (what does it mean to be two years older than I am?), but this tab also shows my estimated VO2max, along with a note explaining a recent algorithm update. As I scroll down, I can see some recommendations for “slow[ing] my aging,” which amount to advice for long-term health—mine is that I need to tackle my sleep debt (I also have low “blood flow smoothness,” apparently). The app’s mystifying ways haven’t disappeared entirely; they’re just a little further from the surface. 

“Jade” houses an AI chatbot that I honestly try to interact with as little as possible. The card telling me about my blood flow smoothness suggested that I ask Jade what this means and how to improve it. I tapped the button to do so, and Jade told me it doesn’t know what blood flow smoothness is. This part seems to need some more work.

Circadian windows are easier to read

In the old version of the app, I was constantly being told when and when not to consume caffeine. This is still a big part of the app, though you can disable it by uninstalling the free caffeine PowerPlug that is on by default. Now, however, the app shows me my “active windows” at any given time. Right now, it's the afternoon, and the app tells me it’s fine to have caffeine, that sunlight and exercise won’t affect my sleep timing, and that it’s OK to look at screens. Later this evening, the caffeine window will close, and later, my screen time window will close. 

The app doesn’t do a great job of explaining these windows, however. What exactly will happen when “phase delay window” starts? But I do like that there’s now a view that shows all three timelines in parallel, labeled with different times. That’s not to say I trust the underlying decisions any more—I’m still definitely going to stop having caffeine well before 6 p.m., but I also know the evidence doesn’t actually support skipping my morning coffee.

What this update means for those wearing Ultrahuman ring

Overall, I’ve found the experience of using the ring a lot more pleasant alongside the new app redesign. Ultrahuman says that data processing now happens on-device, so you don’t need an internet connection to get your metrics and recommendations. I’m still working my way through the app’s features as I test the Ring Pro, but I’m looking forward to the improved heart rate accuracy and the ability to use data from Garmin and other devices for workouts. There’s even a feature to “train your ring” by using it alongside another device. Sometimes, change is good. 

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Creatine is best known as a supplement for people who hit the gym: Take a scoop of creatine powder every day, and you may find yourself able to work a little harder. But creatine is also being studied for its mental health benefits. Is it worth taking just for those? Maybe. 

What is creatine? 

Creatine is a natural chemical that our bodies use for energy production in cells. If you remember learning about ATP as an energy source (and how mitochondria, the “powerhouse of the cell,” turn food into ATP), you already know a little bit about this. When ATP is used, creatine phosphate can recharge that ATP (replacing its spent phosphate) for some quick extra energy. 

This is why it’s so useful in the gym: if you’ve just done nine bench presses and want to do a tenth, but your muscles are out of energy, having a little extra creatine in your muscle cells might give you just enough oomph to finish that last rep. Over time, you’ll end up doing more work, and thus a person who has a lot of creatine in their muscles will probably end up a little bit stronger than a person who has less. 

Our bodies make some creatine, but we also get creatine from the food we eat (especially meat). Creatine supplements, available as powder or pills, can add to our internal creatine stores. That’s why it’s a popular supplement among people who do a lot of strength training. 

What brain benefits is creatine known to have? 

Muscle cells aren’t the only cells that use creatine—pretty much every cell in our body needs energy, and creatine is part of the system that provides it. So it’s worth asking whether supplementing creatine might help other areas of our health. 

This is where the evidence gets a lot less definitive. To give you a sense of the state of the science, I took a look at Examine.com’s database on studies relating to creatine supplementation. It records “A” level evidence for creatine’s benefits to strength and to power (the ability to use strength in quick bursts). Creatine gets a “B” for growing the size of your muscles and for some tests of memory. Many of the other studied outcomes are duds, with lots of “C” and “D” ratings as you scroll down the table. These lower ratings don’t mean that creatine is useless, just that there’s no clear, well-understood benefit that’s been solidly established. Scientists are still working on these questions.

When it comes to cognitive benefits, the evidence is mixed, but many researchers feel it’s promising. Many influencers, biohackers, and wellness enthusiasts take an optimistic view, supplementing creatine themselves (and often recommending or selling it) in hopes the benefits turn out to be real. 

A 2024 review of 16 studies found that creatine seems to improve memory, attention, and processing speed. The strength of the evidence wasn’t great, though: the authors write that the evidence for benefits to memory is only “moderate” and for other benefits the evidence is of “low certainty.” Some outcomes that were studied, including overall cognitive performance, didn’t seem to be improved by creatine at all. 

A 2025 review highlighted the disappointing results so far, while pointing out that we know creatine supplementation does actually increase brain levels of creatine. In other words, it’s doing something, but we haven’t entirely figured out how these benefits would work, if they in fact do. 

Both reviews noted that creatine’s effect on brain performance may depend on who is taking it. People who have less creatine in their body to start with—such as vegetarians, who don’t get much in their diet—might benefit from supplementation even if omnivores don’t. Older adults may benefit more than younger, healthier people, and it’s possible the benefits of creatine show themselves best in people who are stressed. 

Sleep deprivation may be a type of stress that creatine can help with. A 2024 study found that a single mega-dose of creatine helped cognitive performance in people who were sleep deprived. That dose was huge, though: the equivalent of 24 grams for a 150-pound person. (A normal dose of creatine is 5 grams each day.) I’m not saying you should take creatine if you’re feeling foggy after a late night, but I’m certainly going to think about it next time that happens to me. 

What are the risks of creatine? 

Creatine is one of the best-studied consumer supplements out there, and the safety profile is good. That’s why so many people take it: even if you’re not sure it’s working, there’s no significant harm in taking it anyway. Creatine isn’t linked with any serious health issues at normal doses, and it’s pretty affordable. For example, this Nutricost tub works out to 20 cents per daily serving (if you’re taking five grams each day). 

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The main risk of taking creatine is that it can cause stomach upset, especially in larger doses. That could be a problem if you’re intending to try a 24-gram dose, or one of the other dosing schemes from cognitive studies. People who take creatine for cognitive benefits often aim for 10 grams a day. You can split that into five grams in the morning and five in the evening, if taking 10 at once doesn’t agree with you. 

Now, there’s one other risk of creatine that people commonly talk about online, but it doesn’t have any solid evidence behind it. That’s the idea that creatine may accelerate hair loss in people (usually men) who are already prone to what’s sometimes called male pattern baldness. This idea comes from looking at the biochemical pathways involved in creatine metabolism and in hormonal changes related to testosterone, and finding a place where they intersect. 

Researchers flagged this as something worth looking into—maybe creatine possibly could accelerate hair loss, but the internet ran with “creatine causes hair loss” as if it were a known fact. In truth, no human study has verified this link, and a study designed to look for it found the opposite. It concluded: “This study was the first to directly assess hair follicle health following creatine supplementation, providing strong evidence against the claim that creatine contributes to hair loss.” 

How much creatine should you take, and what kind? 

If you’re interested in taking creatine for mental health benefits, the rules are the same as for people who are taking it for muscular benefits—except that you may want a higher dose. 

As mentioned, there’s not a specific number of grams we know you need to take for brain benefits (because we aren’t totally sure whether there are brain benefits for the average person). Ten grams per day seems to be a popular choice. Five grams is usually recommended for muscular benefits. For the gym benefits, you want to take your creatine consistently every day (don’t skip taking it on rest days), and it doesn’t matter what time of day. For brain benefits, the same rules of thumb seem reasonable. 

Sometimes people take a “loading” dose for their first week or so, taking larger doses (often four times as much as the regular dose) to build up the body’s stores of creatine faster. This is optional: taking a regular dose for a few weeks does the same thing to your body as taking a loading dose for one week. I’d say most people these days probably skip the loading phase, because of the risk of stomach upset with large doses, and because we know the loading phase isn’t necessary. 

Finally, people often ask what kind of creatine to get. And the answer is simple: creatine monohydrate is the best-studied and known to be effective. Happily, it is also the cheapest and the easiest to find. I wouldn’t worry about the brand; it’s all the same stuff. Personally I like taking creatine in capsules, since it’s more convenient than mixing powder into a drink, but the powder is cheaper and just as good. 

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Exercise is a healthy and, one might argue, necessary part of our lives. The guidelines from public health organizations tell you to aim for at least 150 minutes of “moderate” exercise each week, and that each minute of “vigorous” exercise counts double. That raises the question: What the hell is “moderate” exercise? How do you know when you’re doing it? 

Moderate exercise is sometimes conflated with "zone 2" exercise. These two things aren't exactly the same, but they do overlap a bit. I'll get into the difference below. Moderate exercise includes activities like walking and casual bicycling, and it counts whether you think of it as a workout or not. Getting enough moderate exercise has benefits for your heart, metabolism, mental health, and more—so let's dig in to what it is and how you can know when you're doing it.

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Scientists measure METs, but you don't have to 

If you use a fitness tracker like the Fitbit Air, it may try to tell you that "moderate" exercise occurs when you reach a certain heart rate. This isn't actually the case. The scientists who came up with the exercise guidelines didn't use heart rate as their guide. Instead, they used charts that measured how many "METs," or metabolic equivalents, each type of exercise requires.

I'll explain more about METs below, but the important thing to know is that the type and intensity of exercise is what tells you whether it's moderate, not your heart rate while you're doing it. You can look up exercises on a chart like this one, but here's the basic idea: 

• Walking is moderate exercise; jogging or running is vigorous.

• Bicycling is moderate if it’s under about 12 miles per hour on the flat.

• Indoor cycling is moderate if it’s up to about 100 watts of power.

You don’t have to overthink it. The guidelines that mention “moderate” and “vigorous” activities aren’t asking you to monitor your heart rate or any other numeric metric. They want you thinking in terms of generalities: walking versus running, leisurely bike commuting versus sweating your heart out in a spin studio.

And honestly, if it’s easier to watch your heart rate than to worry about the above, that’s fine. For most of us, 150 minutes of Zone 2 is going to be at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise. So follow that guideline, and you’ll be an overachiever.

It’s not really about heart rate

So why does your watch want to steer you toward a certain heart rate during exercise? Mostly because that's easy to measure. Moderate exercise sorta-kinda matches up to "zone 2" cardio, which I’ve previously explained. (Zone 2 is is the second-lowest intensity in a five-zone system, and the easiest way to know which zone you're in is to glance at your fitness watch.)

While you can use heart rate zones as a rule of thumb to find moderate exercise, this idea falls short in two ways: (1) different gadgets and systems use different cutoffs to decide which numbers count as "zone 2", and (2) for most of us, zone 2 includes most moderate activities but also some vigorous activities. If you’re relatively fit, you can jog at a 12 minute-per-mile pace while keeping your heart rate in zone 2. That’s a “vigorous” activity in terms of METs, though. 

The other reason heart rate isn’t accurate for this task is that your heart rate changes for all kinds of reasons. The hotter it is when you're working out, the higher your heart rate tends to be. Same goes for when you’re nervous or stressed. And as you get fitter, you’ll be able to do the same activities at a lower heart rate. Those activities might feel easier than they used to, but they’re not any less work. 

What is a MET, anyway?

One MET is the energy expended when you’re at rest—the amount of oxygen, calories, etc that it takes to keep you alive and breathing. (We use oxygen in the process of burning calories, so officially a MET is 3.2 milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per minute.) 

Researchers can then put a mask on a person and measure how much oxygen they use while running, walking, playing guitar, etc. If an activity takes twice as much oxygen as sitting still, they say it takes two METs. Here are a few examples (taken from this scientific paper): 

• 2 MET: washing dishes, or playing croquet

• 3 MET: walking at 3 miles per hour (a pretty typical walking pace)

• 4 MET: table tennis, ice skating

• 5 MET: modern dance, fast-paced ballroom dance

• 6 MET: volleyball, singles tennis

• 7 MET: jogging, jumping rope

The numbers go up from there. Speed skating clocks in at 15 MET. To be clear, you will not be measuring METs directly when you exercise. The MET studies are done in labs so that we can use the information to get a sense of what MET values each common type of exercise tends to have.

Moderate exercise is 3 to 6 MET, and vigorous is 6 or more

The physical activity guidelines define “moderate” exercise as at least 3 MET, but less than 6. Vigorous is 6 MET or more. Because METs are specific to the activity, not to how fit you are, it makes the most sense to look at METs in terms of the pace you run or the settings you use on your treadmill or other cardio machine. Here are paces and activities that have been clocked as between 3 and 6 METs: 

• Walking at 3-4 mph (a 15-minute to 20-minute mile)

• Cycling, between 50 to 100 watts

• Shooting baskets

• Playing baseball

• Taking a low-impact aerobics class

And these are vigorous (6 or more MET): 

• Race walking (5+ mph) 

• Walking uphill

• Walking with a 12-pound pack

• Jogging (a 12-minute mile is 8.0 MET; the faster you go, the higher the MET)

• Bicycling at 12 miles per hour or faster

• Swimming laps

• Playing a game of basketball, soccer, or hockey

So when you're trying to get your 150 minutes (or more) of moderate exercise each week, you can count all your walking, your easy bike riding, and your low-impact aerobics class. Give yourself credit for vigorous exercise for all the time you spend jogging (at any heart rate), lap swimming, or rucking. You may find you've been doing more exercise than you think.

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When you can’t sleep, the clock can seem to be taunting you. “At least I’m getting seven hours,” you might think as you lie down, but if you’re still awake an hour later, then you’re only getting six hours, and six isn’t a lot. And if you’re still not tired, then it’s going to be less than six, and eventually you’re just lying in bed thinking about how screwed you’re going to be in the morning.

If this sounds familiar, it’s not just you. Sleep scientists have long recognized the idea of “losing sleep over losing sleep,” and it’s a well-known factor that can contribute to insomnia. It’s not necessarily the cause of your sleep problems, but it can make them worse. For example, say you have some minor issue that makes it hard to sleep. You get into a cycle of stressing out over the clock at night, getting poor sleep, and then being tired the next day. Then you begin to dread bedtime, because you know it’s going to happen all over again.

Before you know it, you may be taking medications to help you sleep, which have their own health risks (nightly Benadryl is not good for you). A 2023 study found that “time-monitoring behavior,” as they called clock-watching, may be driving people to take medications they wouldn’t otherwise need. So what can you do instead? Here's what sleep experts recommend.

Hide the clock

One of the authors of that study says that it can help to promise yourself you won’t look at the time. Turn the clock around, cover the display, or if you use your phone to check the time, put it out of reach. If the alarm hasn’t gone off yet, it’s still nighttime, and that’s all you really need to know.

Without the clock, you might worry that you don’t know if you’re getting enough sleep or not. But even with the clock, you aren’t necessarily counting the hours accurately. Those hours you think you’re fully awake, you’re often drifting in and out of sleep, and getting more of it than you think you are.

If you sleep with a watch or fitness tracker that tracks your sleep, only pay attention to the data if it's helping you. If you check your data in the morning and think "hm, I got more sleep than I realized," that's reassuring. But if checking the data ends up adding to your anxiety, try to get out of the habit of checking the app. Trackers aren't always 100% accurate anyway, and you may feel more tired if you think you slept poorly, even if your sleep was actually OK. Also consider these tips on how to use sleep tracking data more healthily.

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Focus on relaxing

Here's a reassuring thought for those late nights: relaxation, even if you're awake, is almost as good as sleep. Close your eyes and calm your mind, and most importantly, tell yourself that this is exactly what your body needs right now. Relaxing this way may give you some of the benefits of meditation, and there’s even a hypothesis that meditation gives you some of the benefits of sleep. Whether it’s true or not, it’s a comforting thought when you’re lying awake in the middle of the night.

And if you need one more reason to stop worrying, remember that relaxation is one of the best ways to get to sleep—so whether you fall asleep or not, you’re helping your body and brain by finding a restful way to spend the remaining hours of the night.

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Coros makes great running watches that are seriously underrated. You'll recall that I ranked the Pace 4 as the best running watch under $250, and I think the Pace Pro (with its larger screen and offline maps) is excellent, too. And while Coros watches do the basics quite well, they also have a surprising number of useful yet often hidden features. Here are 10 of my best tips and tricks for getting the most out of your Coros running watch.

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Use the Extender for detailed maps while you’re running

One of these gives more information than the other! Credit: Beth Skwarecki

The Pace Pro watch has maps built in; the Pace 4 just has basic navigation without maps. You probably already knew that. But whichever you have on your wrist, you may not have realized you can pull out your phone during a run to see a detailed map (with satellite view!) right on your phone. Instead of fiddling with the controls on your tiny watch screen, you can zoom on your phone as it updates in real time with your location and the path you’ve run so far. 

To use this feature, just open the Coros app on your phone while you’re running. Right at the top of the main screen, you’ll see a card with your current live activity. Tap that card and you’re in what Coros calls the Extender, a tool that lets you view data from the activity and even update some information directly to the watch. 

There’s a lot you can do with the Extender—we’ll look at the Adventure Journal later—but mapping is hands-down its best feature. If your watch doesn’t have maps (like the Pace 4), you essentially get them here for free. And if your watch does have maps (like the Pace Pro), you can view a higher-resolution map, with easier-to-operate controls, from this screen instead of making do with what’s on your watch.

Get your stats every mile without creating a new lap

By default, Coros watches will mark a lap for you every mile if you’re not doing a specific workout. This is nice because the watch will show your time and pace for that mile. It’s a pretty standard feature. 

But this also means that when you look at the activity later, you’ll see each mile as its own lap. If you want to track a different set of laps—the first versus the second loop around your neighborhood, perhaps—the auto laps will interfere. 

Fortunately, a recent update changes that. You can now program automatic laps separately from distance alerts. Here’s how to get the best of both worlds: 

1. On the watch, go to the Run mode (or Trail Run, etc.), go to Auto Lap, and change it to OFF.

2. Also under the Run (etc.) mode, go to Activity Alert, then Distance Alert, and make sure it is set to ON. You can set a distance here, which you probably want as 1.00 mile. 

3. If you want to hear your time and pace out loud when the alert arrives, go back to that run mode and change Voice Alert to ON.

This way, I’m able to do two loops of a two-mile trail, and end up with two laps, one for each loop, while also getting a reminder every mile of my pace. 

Load a route (even if you know where you’re going) to get Hill Alerts

Credit: Beth Skwarecki

This is another new-ish feature, and it’s a great one if you run a lot of hilly trails. Coros has Hill Alerts that will tell you when you’re starting a major uphill section, and it will let you know how many more hills you have waiting for you. You can preview the hills on the whole route, or just wait for the alerts to surprise you as you’re running. I find these useful, since I’ll know how long of a hill I have coming up and can pace myself accordingly. 

To use this feature, though, the watch has to know where you’re going. Create a route from the Explore tab, or download one you created in another app like Strava. Then tap Sync with your watch. I have a library of routes saved for my favorite trails, so using this feature is as simple as choosing a route from the same screen where I start my run. (Instead of hitting Start, just scroll down to Navigation and select the route you’re running.)

Fix your voice training notes in two ways

After you finish an activity on the Pace 4, you can record a little voice note with anything you’d like to remember about the activity. I’ve written before about how I find this incredibly useful. For strength training, I read in the highlights of my workout log. For runs and other activities, I’ll say something about how the run felt or what factors may have affected me (like the heat, lately). 

But sometimes you miss something you wanted to include, or you otherwise screw up the recording. If you don’t notice this until later, you have two options that each show up a little differently. 

One is to fix it from the watch. From the watch face, scroll or swipe up to see your widgets. One of the widgets shows your previous activities. Select the activity, scroll down to the voice note, and re-record it. This overwrites the old recording, and if you wait a few minutes, the transcription in the app will be redone as well. 

Or you can edit it as text from your phone. The original voice note gets transcribed into text, but if you hit the garbage can icon next to the note on your phone, the voice recording disappears and you now just have a text box where you can edit the text (or add to it) as much as you’d like.

Scroll the digital dial to make the lap screen go away

This is a tiny hidden feature that I only just learned about, and I love it. Whenever you mark a lap (or the auto-lap feature marks a lap for you), a screen with that lap’s statistics stays on your watch for what seems like forever—eight seconds, I believe. But if you’d like to get back to your regular screen, there’s a simple way: Just turn the dial a click or two. The lap is still marked, but the screen goes away.

Set up a running routine with the Coros Training Hub

You probably knew you could download a training schedule to the Coros app and thus to your watch. (If you didn’t: Go to the Training Plan Library under settings and see all your options.) But there’s another way to get runs showing up as scheduled: Add them yourself on your calendar on the Coros Training Hub. 

The Coros Training Hub is a website that provides a much easier interface for planning than the phone app does. To use it, go here (the link will only work if you’re logged in to your Coros account). Click the calendar icon on the middle right side of the screen, and then select or create a training plan. 

Here’s how I used it to create a basic schedule for myself in minutes. Click a day, then hit “Quick Workout” and fill in the essentials. For example: Run, 3 miles, no pace target. Once you’ve created that workout, you can copy and paste it to other days. Right now I’m doing short easy runs on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, and a longer run on Sundays. I got a month’s worth of that schedule set up quickly (changing some of the details each week, like making the long run longer) and then I saved the training plan. Once it’s created, I could then drag it to any future date on the calendar, and now I have my runs set out for me. 

This means that if I scroll to the widgets on my watch, I can see what run I’ve scheduled for myself for today (or tomorrow, or later this week). And when I start a run, it asks me if I’d like to do that three-miler I had planned. 

Find the hidden screens on the Pace 4

This is a simple hack that evaded me for the longest time. If you ever find yourself on a strange screen while you’re running, and don’t know how to get back to the screen you were on, that’s because Coros changed the screen layout. (If I’m remembering right, they changed it twice. Just when I figured out the old way, it stopped working.)

On the Pace 4, the action button on the lower left side of the watch switches between navigation, music controls, and your regular activity data screens. When you’re on a data screen, scrolling or swiping up and down cycles through the different data screens. 

You can think of it as three different columns; scroll up and down within the column of data screens to see all of those variations, or use the action button to move sideways to the next column. 

Save photos to specific map areas with the Adventure Journal

Credit: Beth Skwarecki

If you see something interesting on your run—or if you want to make a note about how you’re feeling—the Adventure Journal makes it a lot easier to review later. This also uses the Extender feature, so pull out your phone during the run and tap the live activity card. 

From here, you can take a photo, or you can mark a spot as a “pin.” Pins can also have photos and text attached. I don’t normally allow my phone camera to store location information in photos, so when I’m on the trail, this gives me an easy way to make note of where something is. Here’s the weird gravestone in the woods; here’s that trail fork I want to investigate later; and so on. 

Track your rest times at waypoints

Here’s a feature I just learned about that seems like it will come in handy for longer runs where I’m taking breaks. The Trail Run feature now has the ability to track a lap for how long you rest at a waypoint. 

Waypoints are points on the map that are embedded in the route you’re navigating. They’re not the same as pins, even though they seem like they should be the same thing. (You can convert a pin into a waypoint, though.) 

If you plan to run a long trail and rest at certain points along the way—like the aid stations that ultramarathon runners stop at during races—the Lap Details section of your activity will show the time you spent at each waypoint before moving on. With this recent heat wave, I’ve been using my car as a cool-down spot in the middle of longer runs, so I’m looking forward to using waypoints to keep track of this.

Geek out on your training metrics on the phone or web

Credit: Beth Skwarecki/Coros

When you scroll or swipe up from the watch face, you can find analytics like your training status and training load. But the view you get on the watch is just a tiny taste of what Coros can tell you about how hard you’ve been training (and how much you should be training). 

If you tap on Training Status in the Coros phone app, you’ll see some graphs with not just your status (I’m optimized, great) but also showing how your fitness has changed over time and whether you’re staying in the recommended window for intensity. 

What’s more, you can log on to the Training Hub and get even more detailed information. With graphs like the one above, you can view how your fitness has changed next to your workout intensity, VO2max, or any of a number of other metrics. You can see how you’re doing now compared to a few months ago, and how your training has affected things like your lactate threshold. I can see that I’ve been slacking off since getting back from Hyrox, but I’ve also finally started training a little harder and will probably see the benefit of that soon. 

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Pop quiz: You want to lift 185 pounds. How many plates do you put on each side of the barbell, and what sizes? If you didn’t immediately answer “a 45 and a 25, of course,” perhaps a little primer on plate math would help.

Yes, you count the bar

Let’s start with the basics. When you tell somebody how much weight you lifted, that weight includes the total poundage that you had in your hands—including the bar.

At most gyms in the U.S., a typical full-size barbell weighs either 45 pounds or 20 kilograms (which works out to 44 pounds). If the rest of your weight plates are in pounds, go ahead and assume it’s 45. (Nobody ever says "I benched 224 pounds" even if, technically, they used a 20-kilo bar.)

You'll know that you're looking at one of these common barbells if it's seven feet long, and the sleeves at the end are two inches in diameter. In nearly all gyms, the bars on squat racks and bench press stations will be of this type.

If your gym has multiple bar sizes, check the end for a label giving the weight, or ask somebody. If your gym has kilo plates, or if it's a CrossFit box, you should know that Olympic-style weightlifting is done with a 20 kilogram bar for men (close enough to 45 pounds), and a shorter, narrower 15 kilogram bar for women—which CrossFitters tend to estimate as 35 pounds, even though between you and me it's closer to 33. (Why do women's barbells exist in the first place? There's a whole story to that.)

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Your gym might also have lighter bars, which could be 25 pounds or even 10. Home exercise equipment sometimes uses a 1-inch-wide bar without the wider collars you’ll see on Olympic or powerlifting bars; those bars are lighter, and you should weigh yours or check the package to see what you’ve got.

If you’re lifting with a Smith machine, or any other kind of machine, don’t bother trying to figure out how much the machine or its bar weighs. Every machine is different; they’re almost never labeled, and the weights won’t necessarily feel the same as they would on a barbell. Just write down the total weight you loaded onto it—that’s enough for record-keeping purposes.

What about the clips or collars that hold the weight on? Usually they’re not heavy enough to bother adding into your calculations, but if they’re large and you know the weight, feel free to include them. In weightlifting and powerlifting competitions, the collars are 2.5 kilos each, and they are counted in the weight lifted.

These weightlifting apps can help

Left: calculating in pounds. Right: competition-colored kilogram plates. Credit: Bar Is Loaded

I'm going to explain below how to add up the weights yourself, and how to memorize a few quick numbers to let you load bars quickly without needing a calculator. But if you're new to lifting, or if you want to double check your math, consider using an app. One of my favorites is called Bar Is Loaded, and it's available for free on both iOS and Android.

An online equivalent is this calculator from ExRx. Note that you have to tell any calculator how heavy your bar is, what sizes of plate you have available, and how many of each there are. (The app will probably have some sensible defaults, but double-check them.) In a gym the plates may be unlimited, but in a home gym there may be certain numbers you just can’t achieve if you don’t have the right combination of plates. That's why apps often ask for your inventory of plates.

Here's the formula to know how much weight is on the bar

This may be obvious, but I want to make sure this information is easy to find: To calculate the total weight you’ve put on the bar, add up the plates on one end, double that number, and add the weight of the bar. So if you have a 45 and a 25 on each end, add 25 + 45 to get 70, double that (140), and add the weight of the bar (140 + 45 = 185).

More often, though, you'll start with a number in mind that you’d like to lift, and then have to load the bar appropriately. Start practicing and soon you’ll be able to load a bar correctly without thinking about it too much. Here are some strategies to help you do that.

Memorize common weights in pounds

Let’s assume we’re working with a 45-pound bar. You’ll end up using the same combinations over and over, and these numbers will start to look really familiar:

• 55 pounds: a 5-pound plate on each side

• 65 pounds: a 10-pound plate on each side

• 95 pounds: a 25-pound plate on each side

Once you're strong enough to load full 45-pound plates on either side of the bar, you'll want to become familiar with multiples of 45. It's common to describe these weights in terms of the number of plates per side. So if somebody says "I can bench two plates," they mean two on each side, or 225 pounds. Here are the common numbers in that scheme:

• 135 pounds: one 45-pound plate on each side

• 225 pounds: two 45-pound plates on each side

• 315 pounds: three 45-pound plates on each side

• 405 pounds: four 45-pound plates on each side

• 495 pounds: five 45-pound plates on each side

As you warm up for a lift, you can do the math as you put plates on. Say you do a set with just the empty bar, then with a 10 on each side (that’s 65), then a second pair of 10s (85), then swap both of those out for a 25 (now we’re up to 95) and you want to do your next set at 100. You know you need five more pounds, so look for a pair of 2.5-pound plates, and there you go.

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Memorize common weights in kilograms

Some gyms have their plates in kilos instead of pounds. (Some have both, so keep your wits about you!) The principles are the same: count the bar, and memorize common combinations. Bumper plates and competition-style steel plates are often color-coded, so I've included the colors below:

On a 15kg women’s bar:

• A pair of 10 kilo plates (green) = 35kg

• A pair of 15s (yellow) = 45kg

• A pair of 20s (blue) = 55kg

• A pair of 25s (red) = 65kg

• Two pairs of 25s = 115kg

• Three pairs of 25s = 165kg

Or, if you’re using a 20kg men’s bar:

• A pair of 10 kilo plates (green) = 40kg

• A pair of 15s (yellow) = 50kg

• A pair of 20s (blue) = 60kg

• A pair of 25s (red) = 70kg

• Two pairs of 25s = 120kg

• Three pairs of 25s = 170kg

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If you go back and forth between pounds and kilos, it helps to be able to convert them in your head. Multiply kilos by 2.2 to get pounds, or divide pounds by 2.2 to get kilos. (Kilos are "bigger" than pounds, so the same object will weigh a smaller number of kilos and a larger number of pounds.) Some of the numbers are nicely symmetrical:

• 5kg = 11 pounds

• 10kg = 22 pounds

• 20kg = 44 pounds

• 30kg = 66 pounds

• 40kg = 88 pounds

• 50kg = 110 pounds

• 100kg = 220 pounds

• 150kg = 330 pounds

I lift at one gym where everything is in kilos, and another where everything is in pounds. Fortunately, I do different lifts in each place, so I keep my Olympic lifting notes in kilos and my powerlifting notes in pounds. I recommend this approach rather than trying to convert units on every lift as you do it.

If you’re not used to working in kilos, start with memorizing just one number: your own weight in kilos. That lets you make quick judgments like “This is heavier than me” or “This is about half my weight” without having to whip out a calculator.

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Even though there are many different types of protein powders out there, I’ve always preferred plain old unflavored whey. Its creamy flavor and texture make it great not just for shakes but for other dairy-themed meals like yogurt parfaits. But another great protein powder has finally won me over, and it’s a weird one: clear whey.

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It’s just what it sounds like: whey protein powder that is clear when it dissolves in water. The result is something that is more like drinking lemonade or juice than a creamy shake. It comes almost exclusively in fruity flavors that might remind you of an energy drink rather than a milkshake.

That’s because the chemistry that allows the whey to be clear requires it to be in an acidic solution—and acid pairs well with fruity flavors. I’ve tried a peach-mango and a lemonade flavor from MyProtein; I've also heard of margarita and mojito flavors. This sour strips flavor from Ghost intrigues me.

How does the nutrition compare?

Left: MyProtein clear whey. Right: BN Labs whey concentrate. Credit: Beth Skwarecki

Clear whey is still whey, so you’re still getting a good quality protein (with all nine essential amino acids) whether you choose the clear or regular variety. One difference, though, is that clear whey is made from whey isolate rather than concentrate. Whey isolate contains the proteins and almost nothing else, while whey concentrate is about 80% protein. The other 20% includes small amounts of fats and carbs. Thus, the nutritional content of clear whey is basically the same as a traditional (milky-appearing) whey isolate powder.

Both isolates and concentrates are good choices if you’re looking to add a little protein to your diet. The “extra” fats and carbs in a whey concentrate only add about 20 calories per scoop, so they’re not going to make or break your diet. That said, if you’re lactose intolerant or find that whey powder sometimes upsets your stomach, an isolate like clear whey may agree with you a little better.

How does clear whey taste?

Mixing up my first cup of clear whey was a weird experience. The powder clumped up a bit on the shaker ball (I used a shaker bottle) and the resulting liquid was clear but very foamy. The instructions tell you to let the drink sit for 15 seconds to allow the foam to dissipate.

I realized afterward that the shaker ball didn’t seem to be necessary. Shaking it without the ball worked just fine, and the foam does die down quickly, leaving you with a clear liquid that’s not thick or gooey at all. If you’re expecting lemonade, what you get is truly not too far off from the flavor and texture of actual lemonade. Clear whey is definitely more appetizing than regular if you’re mixing it with plain water.

It is very acidic, though. There were sweeteners in the brand I tried (sucralose and acesulfame K), and they take the edge off so it’s not too sour. But you’ll feel the acidity, just like with a strongly flavored lemonade. The flavor might not be for everyone, but it’s a great option if you want to switch things up. If I want a creamy shake or yogurt, I’ve got my regular whey; and if I want a protein-only drink that doesn’t taste too gross, I reach for the clear whey.

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I’ve been waiting for Ultrahuman’s new Ring Pro, and I’m happy to report I have one in my hands (OK, on one of my hands). This is the ring that was announced back in February, along with a feature-filled charging case. It’s an upgrade from the Ring Air that I previously reviewed, and it retails for $479 including the case. Overall the experience is pretty similar to the Ring Air, but here are a few things I’ve noticed that are worth calling out. 

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The battery life is incredible

I’ve been wearing the ring almost three days, and the battery is only down to 78%. By my math, the charge is likely to last about 13 days at this rate. That’s more than double the five to six days I got with the Ultrahuman Ring Air, and significantly more than the week I got from the Oura Ring 5. 

And if that’s not impressive enough, it turns out I’d accidentally had the ring on Turbo Mode, which samples data more often and thus drains the battery faster. I normally prefer Chill Mode, which offers a middle-of-the-road battery draw. (There is also a Critical Battery Mode for when you’re really desperate.) 

I haven’t had a chance to test the case's battery life yet, but Ultrahuman says it stores multiple full charges for the ring. The company’s battery estimate is 15 days for the ring, and 45 days with the charging case. 

The smart case sings and buzzes

The Ultrahuman Ring Pro’s case is the change I was most excited about. I haven’t yet needed to do any diagnostics or hard resets (which the case can facilitate), but it got my attention pretty much immediately with its sound effects. You hear a tone when you set up the ring—it reminded me of one of those singing metal sound bowls. The case also gave a haptic buzz. 

The entire front lip of the case is an LED indicator light, which can glow or pulse in different colors depending on what it needs to signify. If you lose the case, you can ask the app to make it play a sound. The only thing I haven’t determined is whether there's a way to make the morning alarm play through the case instead of using your phone, a possibility I remember being raised when this ring and case were still in development.

The shape and build are simple and elegant

While Oura went with a smaller-than-ever profile for its newest ring, Ultrahuman has gone the other direction, making its ring a solid hunk of metal. It’s thicker than the Air, but what’s more interesting is that the inside of the ring is the same smooth metal as the outside. Other smart rings have a clear epoxy-like layer on the interior. 

It’s simple, but elegant, and I like that the new design includes two break points where the ring can be pried apart in an emergency. As for how the ring fares beyond appearances, for that you’ll need to wait for my full review. 

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Should you work out if you haven't gotten enough sleep? While you're always allowed to take a guilt-free rest day if you feel you need it, I often see people talking themselves out of a perfectly good workout because they think it will somehow be a waste of time. Fortunately, we have some science to answer the question.

In that study, people who habitually got five (only five!) hours of sleep were able to make good gains while strength training with resistance bands. I’ll dig into the study a bit more below, but first, let’s cover the basics of how sleep relates to muscle growth and strength building.

How much sleep do you need for muscle growth? 

A healthy lifestyle should include a healthy amount of sleep, which will be somewhere between seven and nine hours, depending on the person. If you exercise a lot, that may add to your sleep need; it’s not unusual for athletes to sleep nine hours or more. 

When it comes to muscle growth specifically, there’s no definitive number of hours needed. Exercise science researcher Brad Schoenfeld, who posted about the study of five-hour sleepers on Instagram in 2024, mentioned in the caption that there probably is a minimum amount of sleep we need for gains, but “exactly how much isn’t clear and likely would be specific to the individual.” 

In other words, science can’t answer this for you quite yet, but you probably can’t get by on way too little sleep. Seven hours is probably fine. What about five? That’s what the study looked at. 

Can I still build muscle on five hours of sleep a night? 

Yes, most likely! The study is, of course, not the be-all-end-all answer to the question (no study ever is), but it gives strong evidence pointing toward five hours a night being probably fine. You can read the full text of the 2024 study here. The participants were men who did not usually do any strength training, and they were excluded from the study if they had any diagnosed sleep disorders. The 36 men were divided into three groups: a group that averaged seven hours of sleep per night, a group that averaged five-ish hours a night, and a control group that averaged more than seven hours a night. 

The control group did not exercise in the study. The seven-hour and five-hour groups did. (Perhaps we can think of the control group as the “what if I slept in instead of hitting the gym?” group.)

The results? For some muscle groups, the seven-hour group got slightly better gains than the five-hour group, but for others. they were roughly even. Both groups gained more muscle than the non-exercising control group. The authors write: “The results of the present study suggest that the value of 7 hours as a minimum night sleeping time can be relaxed when it comes to a recuperative state related to muscle strength performance.”

The study has its limitations, including the fact that it was all men, that they used resistance bands instead of barbells or dumbbells, and that the subjects were untrained to start with (making it easier for them to grow muscle). But the results match up with what pretty much any trainer or fitness enthusiast could tell you: A full night’s sleep is great to have, but not essential to making progress in the gym.

Consistency matters more than getting the details right

How can this be, if rest is important to muscle growth? Well, for one thing, rest isn’t a magical spell that needs to do its work uninterrupted. If you work out an hour a day, you're still "resting" the other 23 hours. (You don’t even need full rest days if your workload is managed appropriately, but that’s a whole ’nother conversation.)

But ultimately, the big lesson every experienced gymgoer wishes they could impart to every noob is that getting most things right, most of the time, beats the pants off of occasionally getting everything to line up perfectly. If you only lift when you’ve had a good night’s sleep, you may not end up training as much as you’d like.

You don't need any particular product or gadget to achieve that, but wearables like smart rings and watches can help you keep tabs on how much sleep you're actually getting and whether you've been consistent about exercise. On the pricier end, there's the Oura ring, which is comfortable to wear to bed and will let you know how well you've been sleeping. If you're on a budget, something like the $99 Fitbit Air can do the job as well. Just remember that if a device gives you a poor score for your sleep or recovery, it doesn't mean you should automatically skip the gym. Prioritize consistency—including making it to the gym whenever you can—and you’re in a much better place to realize those gains.

I love a short daily word game, but Wordle isn't always enough to scratch that itch. I've had my share of fun with other letter-based guessing games and my new love Minute Cryptic, and I recently discovered Beeswax, a game that gives you five words to spell each day. It's like the spelling bees kids do: You listen to somebody say the word, and then you have to spell it correctly. One mistake, and you're out for the day.

How to play Beeswax

Note that Beeswax has nothing to do with the game Spelling Bee, a New York Times game that is bee-themed but involves manipulating written letters. Beeswax replicates the format of an actual in-person spelling bee. You click a button to hear the word (or to replay it if needed). If you're stuck, you can use hints.

The hints don't impact whether you win or lose, but the shareable text you get at the end will make a note of how many hints you used. The hints are, as in a spelling bee, all spoken as well. You can ask for a definition, a sentence using the word, the word's part of speech, or (my favorite when I'm stuck) the word's language of origin.

If you misspell a word, the game is over. The correct spelling is available on the "game over" screen, but it's hidden like spoiler text, in case you want to ponder your mistakes before revealing the answer. I've played several games, and so far I've missed two words: one that I thought I knew but must have been misspelling all this time, and one that was a new word to me. I can't say I'm disappointed: I've learned a new word.

How to win Beeswax

This is where I'd normally share some hints and tips, but the truth is: You just have to know how to spell the word, or be able to plausibly guess. The tips that apply to spelling bees in general are good ones here. The best tip is just to read more, so you get used to seeing more words. It's also helpful to become a nerd about etymology, constantly looking up words to see where they come from and why they're like that. (You'll start to recognize roots, prefixes, suffixes, and get a sense of how words of different language origins tend to be spelled.) This is more of a lifelong hobby than a strategy for a game, so, uh, good luck.

Personally, I find the language of origin the most helpful type of hint, but I've only played a handful of games so far (and never actually got to compete in a spelling bee as a child), so I can't promise that will always be the most helpful. The 12-year-old winner of the 2017 National Spelling Bee shared some tips with Lifehacker after her win, and she also recommended paying attention to word origins, so perhaps it's a good strategy after all.

Each word comes with a two-minute timer, so you can't think about it forever. That's plenty of time to simply look up the word yourself, of course. And paradoxically, that's what makes the game cheat-proof: After all, "go look up this word" isn't a fun game, and so there's no temptation to cheat. You also don't have to worry about running out of play time: Beeswax makes its entire archive available, even if you don't have an account. Free accounts give you the ability to keep a streak and to show up on the leaderboard.

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Nobody likes to feel sluggish and sweaty, so when the sun is set to “broil,” a lot of us would rather take our workout to an air-conditioned gym. But the human body can acclimate to exercising in the heat, so it may be worth heading outdoors anyway. After a few weeks, these temperatures will be your new normal—and research suggests you may enjoy a small performance boost when the weather cools down again.

Hot workouts can be dangerous, so I trust that you know common-sense advice about running in the heat. Among the most important: Drink to thirst (or a little bit more), and stop and get help if you start feeling symptoms of heat illness like nausea, dizziness, or weakness. And while it’s great to work on your ability to run in the heat, don’t be stupid about it—stay inside if the temperature is hotter than you can handle, and stay aware of air quality levels (which get worse on hot days).

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Why exercising in the heat feels so miserable

Running is miserable and heat is miserable; therefore, running in the heat is miserable. But there’s more to it than that, and exercising in the heat feels even worse than you'd expect from stacking those two factors together.

Exercise raises your body temperature, and when you stack that rise in temperature on top of the heat from the weather, it's very possible to reach dangerous levels of body heat. That means your body has to work harder than usual to cool itself down. The ways we cool ourselves also interfere with exercise performance. For example, your heart is working to supply blood and oxygen to your muscles, and to pump blood to the surface of our skin for cooling. Those tasks are a lot of work—no wonder we feel exhausted in the heat.

As a safeguard, your brain perceives effort differently in the heat, so even before you overheat, you feel sluggish. In a study published in the European Journal of Physiology, cyclists who worked out in a lab with a temperature of 95 degrees were slower than when they did the same time trial at 59 degrees. That makes sense, but here’s the weird part: They didn’t overheat and then slow down. They were slower from the start. It seems our brains slow our bodies down proactively on hot days in order to conserve energy.

As a workout continues, our bodies heat up. In another study, published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, when asked to cycle to exhaustion, participants pooped out when their core temperatures reached 104 degrees, no matter what temperature they started at. That's the temperature where serious heat illness can set in, so it makes sense that our bodies will put on the brakes at that point. In that study, athletes who kept cool with a fancy water-cooling jacket lasted the longest. (You can mimic this effect in your own workouts by drinking ice-cold beverages and pouring water over your head.) The longer you can keep your body cool, the longer you can keep up a hard effort.

It's the heat and the humidity

But cooling your body isn’t a complete solution. Dumping a cup of ice water over your head or putting one into your belly only provides momentary relief, and water-cooling jackets aren’t practical outside of physiology labs. So let’s look at what happens in real-world conditions.

Our most efficient way of cooling off is sweating. When moisture evaporates from your skin, it takes some body heat with it. In humid weather, though, sweat doesn’t evaporate as easily because the air is already full of water vapor. So when we’re talking about “heat,” we really mean something more like “perceived heat,” which is a combination of heat and humidity. This heat index chart shows the relationship:

Credit: NOAA

You’ll run slower in the heat (and humidity). While you can find charts like this one that predict how much slower you will run a race, the truth is that heat's effect on your running depends on whether you’re used to the heat, and on your body size.

That’s right—not your fitness level, but your actual physical size. People who are larger have more muscle, fat, or both. Muscle generates heat, and fat acts as an insulator. On the other hand, smaller folks generate less heat, but have more skin through which to dissipate that heat—the ol’ surface area to volume ratio. This is why petite runners place better in races on hot days.

Some people think being more fit makes you better at dealing with heat, but that's only partially true: The fitter you are, the more body heat you produce, just because you’re so good at working hard. Short of changing your body shape (which is possible, but hardly a short-term fix), what can you do to tolerate exercising in the heat better? The answer is simple: Spend more time exercising in the heat.

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Why you should start a heat adaptation protocol

Running in the heat makes you better at running in the heat—and it makes you better, period. Say you do all your workouts outdoors this summer, while your equally fit twin does identical workouts on a treadmill in an air-conditioned gym. Who do you think will finish first in a 5K on a hot weekend in August? That’s right, you will.

But even if the weather is unseasonably cool on that August day, your heat training will still help you beat your twin. Part of the magic of heat training is that it increases the amount of blood in your veins (the better to put it towards your skin for cooling, while still having enough to fuel your muscles). The effect has been compared to a mild, totally legal version of blood doping. Scientists are still debating exactly how this effect works and whether it always happens when people attempt to adapt to heat, but overall, the evidence is strong enough that I believe we should all try to get some of those adaptations if we can do so safely.

Here’s the bad news: Heat adaptation takes work. It’s not enough to sit around in the air conditioning all summer, only venturing outside for occasional workouts. A study published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology found that people who made no particular effort to exercise in the heat didn’t have any better heat tolerance in the fall than in the spring. If you want the advantages of heat training, you have to work for them.

I'll go over some heat adaptation strategies below, but the general idea is that you spend at least two weeks making sure to get plenty of time in the heat. Your body will get better at cooling itself, and those hot-weather runs will feel a little less awful. Heat adaptation isn't magic, though. You'll still feel hot, and you may still run slower than in cool temperatures. You'll just be able to get more of a workout in before your body temperature rises to dangerous levels. If you want to know more about heat training, I wrote about my experience last year with a heat-training sensor, which allowed me to get detailed feedback about how my heat training was going.

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How to adapt to exercising in the heat

Option 1: Train normally, but without avoiding the heat, for two weeks

In scientific research, heat acclimation protocols for athletes generally involve 7 to 10 consecutive days of exercising in the heat, for 60 to 90 minutes each day. A simpler method that can be done by entire teams, or by individuals, is to simply do your normal training in the heat for about two weeks.

Take it easy at first. Remember that your body is still trying to convince you that you are super tired and need to slow down. Safety guidelines for workers provide a reality check here. On their first day in the heat, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recommends giving workers just 20% of their usual workload. Within a week, they should ramp up to 100%.

Option 2: Spend two hours in the heat every day, whether you're exercising or not

This U.S. Army training protocol provides a good road map for adapting yourself to the heat: Spend at least two hours in the heat each day, it says, and include cardiovascular exercise (like running, cycling, or anything that gets your heart rate up) as part of that. If you can’t handle two hours without feeling symptoms like nausea or dizziness, do what you can and view the two-hour benchmark as a goal to work toward.

You can expect to be better adapted to the heat after about two weeks of spending two hours per day in the heat, although you may be able to start seeing results in just a few days.

Option 3: Visit the sauna after each workout

A way to combine the protocols above, without relying on the weather, is to step into a sauna or hot bath after your workout. If your gym has a sauna, this is a great way to use it. The post-workout sauna time will help your heat adaptation, and you can do it even if your workout was done in less-than-sweltering temperatures.

The time spent in the sauna can be 15 to 30 minutes, starting with a shorter time and working up to longer. Note that these targets only apply if you're using the sauna after a workout when your body temperature is already elevated from exercise. If you skip the workout, you'll need to add 20 minutes or so to your sauna time to get the same effect.

How to keep your heat adaptations even when the weather cools off

To stay adapted to the heat, you have to keep spending time in it. You can take a few days off, but if you slack off for a week, you’ll start to lose your hot-weather superpowers. This snowballs quickly: you'll lose about 75% of your adaptations after three weeks, according to the Army’s estimates.

To keep up your heat training in cool weather, you can try wearing long sleeves and tights, like elite runner Kara Goucher did when training for a world championship race in muggy Osaka. (She won a bronze medal, the first American ever to do so). She also spent a few weeks in Osaka before the race began; traveling to experience the heat might be an option worth considering if you’re a dedicated athlete with vacation time to burn.

You can also try the opposite of all the standard keep-cool advice, and choose to run at the hottest time of day on asphalt roads with no shade. Or return to the sauna protocol after your cooler-weather workouts. Whatever you do, stay safe, and enjoy your new superpowers.

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When I reviewed the Suunto Run, I found it to be a delightful little watch. It's lightweight, with a big, bright screen, and it does a lot of what an entry-level Garmin can do, but at a much better price. It's easily one of the best affordable running watches out there, normally costing around $200. Here are some of the best tips and tricks I've found for getting the most out of the watch—starting with a hard-to-find fix for one of its most frustrating default features.

Make the Suunto Run read your splits in miles, not kilometers

Credit: Beth Skwarecki

Even if you set your units to Imperial (miles and so on), the Suunto Run will mark a lap and beep at you after every kilometer. When I first reviewed it, I searched in vain for a setting that would let me switch it to miles, or at least turn off the auto-laps. I couldn't find one. Judging from the number of people asking this question on Suunto forums and on Reddit, I'm not the only one who has this problem. Supposedly, autolap can be turned off in settings, but I checked Exercise Options and didn't see it. I just resigned myself to the kilometer beeps. (Five miles is eight kilometers, for example—a fact I'm now quite familiar with.)

But it turns out there is a setting to change the autolap. You can find this either within the app or on the watch itself, but either way, the trick is that you have to choose a type of exercise (like Run or Trail Run) and then, instead of going into Exercise Options, select Free Training. This is the mode you'll normally use when you run, and that's where you'll find Autolap, which is set by default to 0.62 miles. Change that to 1.00 miles or turn it off, as you prefer. You'll have to go into each activity separately to change the autolap. I wish there were a more general setting for it, but at least there's a workaround.

Put a stopwatch at the top of your widget list and start it with a swipe

Credit: Beth Skwarecki

Every watch has a stopwatch feature, but it's often not easy to get to (or requires you to program and remember a button shortcut). Suunto does something special, though: you can put a stopwatch right into your widget list. This way, all you have to do is swipe up from the bottom of the watch. These widgets are where you would normally check how many steps you've taken today, or how you slept, or what the weather is or when you can expect the sun to set. But you can also add a stopwatch, and I recommend that you do.

When you're looking at your widgets, click the top button (it will have a pencil icon). Here you can add new widgets to the list, or rearrange them. Add the stopwatch, and do yourself a favor and put it right at the top. Now you can start the stopwatch with just a quick swipe-and-tap from the watch face. Best of all, you can exit the stopwatch screen, and the next time you pull up your widgets you'll see the stopwatch's time displayed live on its widget. It's the handiest little thing.

Long-press the top button to switch the type of run you're doing without starting a new workout

Credit: Beth Skwarecki

This is another feature that most running watches have somewhere, but Suunto makes it so easy to access that you'll end up using it all the time. If you're running on the road (activity type Run) and decide you're going to finish your run on the trails (activity type Trail Run), you can switch between them by long pressing the top button. Once you select the new sport, your run is paused and the watch shows how long you've been paused at this "transition." Hit the start button when you're ready to go, and Suunto will record the two segments as different parts of the same workout.

This is handy because Suunto offers so many different activity types with slightly different data screens and settings. If your trail run turns hilly, you might prefer the Vertical Running activity to get more data on your power zones as you climb. Or maybe you'd prefer to just change to a Hike, something I've done a few times in this miserable heat wave. You can also create custom activities if you want even more control over your data screens and settings.

Calibrate your altimeter and set storm alerts so you'll never be caught out in the rain

One interesting feature of many Suunto watches is the ability for the watch to alert you when it detects that a storm might be coming. This is possible because the watch has a barometer/altimeter that measures air pressure. When the weather is constant, changes in pressure hint that you're climbing up or down hills. But if pressure drops dramatically, that can indicate that a storm is on its way. To turn on storm alerts, go into Settings and then Outdoor and turn on Storm alarms.

While you're in this menu, you may want to make sure your barometer is calibrated. Also under the Outdoor menu, you can select Alti & Baro, and then you have the option to either Set altitude or Auto adjust altitude. The auto-adjustment uses a GPS reading to make sure the altimeter is calibrated. But if you know your current altitude from a map, you can set it manually.

Make a library of "points of interest" for your favorite hiking areas

Credit: Beth Skwarecki

Suunto makes it surprisingly easy to save points of interest and navigate to them without a lot of fuss. I use these "POIs," as the watch calls them, to mark interesting or useful areas in my local park. We're blessed with dozens of miles of trails in a small area, and I can't keep everything in my head. For example, I mark water taps so I can find them the next time my hydration pack is running low. I also like to mark places that I might like to return to on a future trip—say if I see a spot I think my kid would like to hike to.

Suunto's library of POI types is broader than I've seen in other watch brands. Besides the obvious—water, campsite, where you parked your car—you could also do some pretty detailed scouting for hunting, fishing, foraging, or wildlife watching. There are built-in POI types for noting where a deer seemed to have rubbed its antlers, where you've seen marine mammals, or where you've spotted mushrooms. You can save your current location as a POI from the watch or plan a trip before you leave by saving POIs on the map in the Suunto phone app.

I used this feature today to navigate to a favorite scenic overlook. You just have to plug in the POI as a Navigation Target under the options for your trail run or other activity. There's also a navigation app, accessible from the bottom of the widget list (select All Apps), and you can navigate without having an activity running.

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I wear at least three rings every day—wedding and engagement bands, and an Oura ring as a fitness/recovery tracker. But in the summer, I often find myself taking them off before I go for a run. If I don’t, sometimes they’ll be stuck. This is a common problem, especially in hot weather. Here's what's going on, and what you can do about it.

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Why your hands swell after you exercise

There are several reasons why your hands might swell during or after a run (or walk). Scientists haven’t figured out this phenomenon with as much precision as we might hope, but there seem to be a few factors that affect swelling in otherwise healthy people who exercise. They include the following:

Your fingers change size throughout the day

It’s normal for your fingers to change size throughout the day. Scientists have noted that our hands swell slightly overnight, and that this swelling resolves over the course of the day. By afternoon, our hands are back to what you might call their normal size. Because of this, you may be more likely to notice swollen fingers after morning runs than afternoon or evening runs.

Hot weather can result in swelling

Part of the way our body responds to heat is by dilating the blood vessels close to the surface of our skin. This helps cool us down, but it can also result in swelling since there is more fluid closer to the skin. Fluid can leave the blood vessels and pool in body tissues, which is fine—normal motion of our body tends to massage the lymph away. But when we’re running or walking, there may be more fluid entering our hands than leaving, with the result that we end up with sausage fingers.

Exercise increases blood flow

Just as our heat response increases blood flow, so does exercise. Even in weather that’s not too hot, the increase in blood flow can result in more fluid entering the hands and fingers. The swinging of our arms that happens when running or walking may also be a factor; this and gravity both contribute to moving fluid toward our hands while also impeding its path back up.

Electrolytes may be a factor

Electrolytes like sodium and potassium can affect the way our bodies hold fluid. If you drink plenty of water but don’t get enough sodium—a condition called hyponatremia that can become life-threatening if severe—you may experience swelling of the hands. This has led some runners and doctors to conclude that electrolytes may help with ordinary finger swelling.

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Other medical issues

There are other issues that can cause swollen hands or fingers. An allergic reaction, for example, can cause swelling. Swelling is also a symptom of some types of liver disease and heart disease, among other medical conditions. If the swelling is severe or if you notice it often, you may want to see a doctor to find out whether you have a condition that needs treatment.

What to do about swollen fingers after a run or hike

“The treatment of [swollen hands] is observation and reassurance,” writes a dermatologist who himself gets swollen hands after running. “Once the inciting event—be it hiking, running, or walking—is discontinued, the hand swelling spontaneously resolves.” In other words, it goes away on its own after the workout.

Swelling that is triggered by exercise tends to go down significantly within one to two hours, and it will usually be long gone by the next day. So in that sense, you don’t need to do anything—but the swelling can be uncomfortable, so we have a few tips. You can do these during or after exercise:

• Hold your hands above your head, and massage the fingers from fingertip to palm.

• Move your arms and hands—for example, repeatedly making a fist or wiggling the fingers.

• Make sure nothing is restricting the flow of blood to and from your hands. Consider loosening your watch or adjusting your backpack straps if you are running or hiking with a pack.

How to prevent your fingers from swelling when you run or walk

To prevent the swelling going forward, or at least try to make it less unpleasant:

• Remove your rings (and anything else you wear on your hands) before running. If you’re the kind of person to never leave the house without your wedding band, consider a silicone ring for when you’re exercising.

• Adjust the fit of your watch as needed: a snug fit helps with accuracy, but you don't want it too tight. If you can't find a good fit, consider using a chest strap monitor for heart rate, and wearing the watch loosely or just keeping it in your pocket.

• Consider the time of day you run. Evenings may be best, since the weather is cooler and you don’t already have that morning swelling we talked about.

• Stay hydrated, and remember your electrolytes. This can mean carrying an electrolyte drink or tablets, or simply have salty snacks throughout the day in addition to water.

That said, if your finger swelling is just the normal kind triggered by exercise—and not a result of a more serious medical condition—then it may simply help to know it’s common and it will go down after your workout. If you wear a pack or running belt, consider keeping a carabiner on it to carry your rings in case you forget to leave them at home.