Two days ago I received the Morpheus Recovery band created by Joel Jamieson . This piece of tech tracks everything from recovery, fitness and lifestyle and so far has been pretty darn easy to do so. All you do is wear the cuff either around your forearm or calf when you do your workout/session and for 2 minutes and 30 seconds when you check your stats in the morning.
Morpheus Recovery Band
It pairs with other tech like my Garmin Fenix 3 HR (best all-around watch out there IMHO) to gather data on sleep, steps, HR, etc and then calculates recovery and HRV based on the morning scan. It might seem like over-kill to use Garmin, Morpheus, as well my Oura Ring to track my stats. However, since the fitness thang is sorta what I do it’s good to learn more about the state of my body and how it relates to everything that I enjoy doing like hiking, bjj, GMBing, playing, exploring, and especially sleeping. Yeah, I like sleeping a lot. 🙂
Garmin Fenix 3 HR
Today I decided to go for a ruck with 20lbs in my backpack. Rucking is a term used in the military and has seen a huge following thanks to the company GORUCK. Basically, it’s hiking with a heavy-ass backpack and I love it. During my days as a boy scout I used to love getting outdoors as far away from civilization as I could with everything I needed to survive on my back. Nowadays I settle for short jaunts in the Mino or Rokko Mountains near my home. Being able to escape from the concrete jungle for at least a little bit is one of most important things I can do for my physical and mental health and I try to do this once a week with Bree.
On today’s one-hour outing I hooked up my Morpheus and hit the [Hiking] setting on my Garmin Fenix 3 HR to see how the two compared to each other. Mainly I was looking at time in HR Zone and seeing how similar the two devices were. Garmin Fenix 3 HR is obviously going to be more accurate paired with a chest strap but for today I just wanted to get a general reading so I didn’t use my chest strap monitor.
Morpheus app on my iPhone
I connected the Morpheus to my forearm and after awhile I didn’t even realize it was there. It didn’t slip or cause any discomfort at all which is a very good thing. I rucked around Hattori Ryokuchi Park which is one of the largest parks around here and Bree and I went at a pretty quick pace. At the end of it I let Bree take a rest and with my backpack still on decided to do 5 hill sprints to test the HR zone tracking. Morpheus did a great job of immediately tracking while Garmin took a little bit of time to catch up to my increased HR after each sprint. For the majority of my ruck I stayed within the Recovery phase of my training which was my plan today. Via the Morpheus iPhone app it was easy to know what zone I was in throughout the entire walk and stick to my training plan for today.
So far the Morpheus Recovery band seems like it will be a benefit to my training and I’m looking forward to seeing how things go after a month of use.
