“Be careful not to become a slave to your connected watch”, warns coach Olivier Gaillard

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42.195 km! THE Paris Marathon 2023 expects tens of thousands of runners. Faced with the challenge, many will be equipped with a connected watch. Beginners or experts, this ally must help them cross the finish line. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this type of equipment? For the knowledge, 20 minutes asked Olivier Gaillard, sports coach, trainer at AS Caluire (Rhône) and… marathon runner!

First to practice

Running the marathon with a smartwatch on your wrist, yes! But according to Olivier Gaillard, the watch is first and foremost important in training: “For novices, it will provide access to more information to improve self-knowledge and compare performance. ” The coach recalls that ” when you start, you have no benchmarks. Thus, equipping yourself with a running watch allows you to better calibrate your outings. No longer necessarily need to go to an athletics track to do splits, either.

During training, the connected watch helps to improve self-knowledge and find benchmarks. -Garmin

Watch on the wrist, you can work on a 5 km loop around your home, monitor your travel time, but also your heart rate. “Even if you don’t run faster after a month of training, your heart rate changes, becomes lower. If you run 10 km in an hour and fail to improve your time, your heart rate is probably improving from 155 beats per minute to 148. This is an indicator of endurance gain, a real progress ! For the same distance, the heart is thus muscular, ”explains the trainer. If you are more diligent in running, the watch is also a tool to better understand your performance or your periods of fatigue.

Measure your ideal stride… or not

What other data should be taken into account? That of the ideal stride frequency which would be 180 steps per minute. But Olivier Gaillard tempers: “I find it complicated to want to impose on all individuals an ideal stride, when we have different sizes, different leg lengths, different foot attacks. I recommend rather to work on your stride, according to your physiology, to adapt it to your activity. On this point, the connected watch should therefore be used sparingly. “But it’s a valuable tool, which can be a stimulus. Especially since with social networks and an application like Strava, the sharing of his performances is exciting. But the watch also has a perverse effect by pushing us to do more and more, always faster”, regrets Olivier Gaillard.

Paris Marathon 2023: 20 Minutes is a partner of the competition.<br />” width=”648″/><figcaption>Paris Marathon 2023: 20 Minutes is a partner of the competition.<br />– 20 minutes</figcaption></figure></div><p>Indeed, real progress must include the ability to alternate workloads with recovery phases. Thus, with networks, the risk is never to respect these recovery periods. “It’s a mistake, insists the coach, the watch must remain a well-used tool and not prevent us from focusing on our pleasure. »</p><h2>Pleasure first!</h2><p>That of a marathon is essential. During the competition, you will use your connected watch to check the times and paces. The goal is to ensure that we are in line with the objective worked on in training. Olivier Gaillard adds: “With a watch, we will also check that we are in the right heart rate zones and avoid leaving too quickly. The first 5 or 10 kilometers too fast, we pay for it at the end! The watch is going to be a safeguard. ” With the euphoria, the adrenaline, the crowd, you feel your wings growing, but watch on your wrist, the runner must stay in his comfort zone until kilometer 30. And above all, according to Olivier Gaillard, “he doesn’t don’t get carried away and stay lucid about your race management”.</p></p></div><p><a href=source site