The Wattson Blue score has been developed to give you a very quick overview of your readiness to take on the day. We analyse your recent metrics and activities, and give you a score of between 0 and 100:
- Above 90: Your are more prepared than usual to take on the day.
- 60-90: Your body is well-recovered and you are within your normal range of readiness.
- 35-60: You are less recovered than usual, you may be OK to proceed as planned but do prioritise recovery and sleep.
- 0-35: You seem to have taken a hit in the readiness front. Prioritise you and your recovery for long-term improvements.
Although such a score might make your life easier in planning your average day, be aware that one score cannot possibly cover everything, so always consider the bigger picture and be aware of your body and how you feel before blindly accepting feedback from any app!
You can dive further into your recent metrics under the Metrics tab to see a more detailed breakdown of areas that might need some attention.
What drives the Score
Here are all the components that go into Wattson Blue Score:
- Morning heart rate variability and resting heart rate
- Sleep duration and quality
- Your subjective well-being
- Your alcohol consumption and subjective nutrition.
Do you just use today’s metrics to calculate the score?
No, we combine the data from today/last night, last few days and last few weeks to come up with your final score. Some other apps put a high emphasis on today’s values – however, our data suggests that even if you are ‘down’ one day, you don’t necessarily need to stop training or dial down your activities completely.
Is a high score bad and a low score good?
No. For example, if you are in the middle of a very hard training block, your score will probably be low. But is that a bad thing? Almost definitely not; it just means you need to prioritise recovery modalities to maximise training response.
Similarly, if your score is always in the 90’s, it might mean you can push yourself more to maximise your long-term performance. So you don’t necessarily always want to be in the very high green either.
Using your score before competition
We would encourage you to ignore your readiness score before a competition. In many athletes, competition stress and excitement might cause a drop in your ‘readiness’ metrics, and hence a drop in your Wattson Blue readiness score.
Our own internal data, and research on other athletes, have shown that such a low readiness score does not translate into lower athletic performance. In fact, many of our athletes have broken their personal best despite a low readiness score.
Stay on top of your sleep, nutrition and other recovery modalities and just aim to enjoy the event.