Best Fitness — Curated from The Hiro Report

A few years back, I read Breath by James Nestor, and it had a massive impact on me, leading me to rethink everything about how I breathe, work out, and sleep. As I've been getting back into running the last few months, I have been looking for tools to help me improve my oxygen efficiency and VO2 max, and stumbled across FivePointFive last week. It's unique in that it's a breathwork app built specifically for athletes — not meditators or yogis (I am both of these things). While the app does offer some of the usual restorative box breathing-type exercises, it really stands out in also having some great breathing exercises to build up CO2 tolerance while you walk or run in place, working on breath holds, etc. You can even sync up your Apple Watch with the app to see how your heart handles the various exercises over time.

After last week's health tech issue, a reader (hi Gord!) kindly reached out to share some of his favorite health tech, one of which was this device which had been on my radar for a while and I'd been itching to try. I took it as a sign to pick one up and I'm loving it. In short, the Muse 2 headband measures your heart rate, movement, and EEG brain waves while you do mindfulness exercises and gives you real-time feedback to help you settle into deeper meditative states. Naturally, it's not as good as a clinical device, but it seems great for detecting trends and getting some data to track one's progress in meditation.

Oura just announced the 5th generation of their smart ring, which is now 40% slimmer than previous models while still claiming an impressive 6-9 days of battery life. They have also added high blood pressure detection to their list of "Symptom Radar" alerts, where they can use your health data to warn you of chronic and acute health issues. I've been using my Oura Ring Gen 3 for a few years now and have been very happy with it. I've found it to give me generally more accurate results for sleep and recovery data than the Apple Watch, and it frees me up to be able to wear my analog watches and still get all my nerdy health data collected. I still dream of Apple making a similar offering, perhaps to pair with some smart glasses at some point.

While weight is arguably not the most useful metric for health, I do like to keep track of trend lines AND I am interested in tracking my ratios of body fat to lean mass. I've tried a ton of different "smart" scales over the years and I keep coming back to Withings. The weight and body composition data is consistent enough to find trends over time, and the effortless WiFi connection lets the scale upload my data to Apple Health every night so it's backed up and accessible to all my various health apps.

I'm trying out this new workout tracker that launched this week from Trevor, who has been building the app in public over on Threads. It's got a really clean, modern UI for tracking your weights, reps, and sets, as well as any PRs you set along the way. It's free with several popular workout routines built in, or you can pay to unlock the ability to program your own custom routines. It's actively being developed with Apple Health integration coming in the next update.

This fun indie app uses your daily step count to simulate your hiking the gorgeous 2,650-mile-long Pacific Crest Trail. As you walk/run/move throughout your day, your virtual character advances on the trail map, and you unlock cute badges commemorating famous sights you've reached. I love this mashup of health, nature, and tech.

This is a fun new app from the makers of Gentler Streak, this time bringing their same love of great design and health data to an offering meant for those really invested in increasing their athletic performance. Personally, I’ve been using Bevel for this kind of data and will probably stick with that, but I signed up for a month of The Outsiders and really enjoy the look of the app.

Bevel Health Dashboard brings you almost all the power of Whoop but without the heavy investment in yet another wearable. Bevel pulls data from Apple Health whether it's being drawn from your Apple Watch or an Oura Ring, etc., to give you insightful and well-composed analytics for strain, recovery, sleep, nutrition, and more. I've played with a few apps like this, but this one has one of the cleaner and more practical user interfaces. And I also particularly like the included nutrition scoring leveraging AI. I am a week in but already enjoying the data and how it's presented more than most other similar offerings I've tried from Whoop and Oura.

I have been on a multi-year sleep optimization kick. I’ve introduced a sleep mask and mouth tape to my routine, and my latest experiment is with ear plugs. I probably have too much tech in the house, but I can’t tell you how many nights I’m woken up by random beeping sounds either from my own tech stack or from some errant toy belonging to one of my kids that is gasping for a fresh hit of battery life. It's early days still, but these $20 plugs look to be just what I need to block out noise while I get some sleep.

This high-end sleep mask + mouth tape has completely up-leveled the quality of my sleep. I have both the Slim version and the “Pro” version—I prefer the Pro a little, but I wouldn’t say it’s 2x the price better. ~$35

For my fellow dads of a certain age who like to work out, this thing does wonders for aches, pains, and mobility. ~$145

Thanks to Alex for recommending Ladder to me. Here's the premise: choose a team and coach based on your preferred workout style—powerlifting, CrossFit, yoga, HIIT, etc.—and get daily workouts, a supportive community, and an engaged coach who checks in with texts and video messages. I’ve only been at it a few weeks, but I’m really enjoying it. The link above should get you a free week trial if you want to check it out.

- I’ve written previously about using mouth strips to help me sleep better. The short version is these weird-looking strips promote nasal breathing while you sleep, minimizing a number of common sleep disturbances like snoring and mouth dryness. They’ve been a game changer for my wife and me. After trying a bunch of subpar alternatives to the Hostage Tape brand I'd previously recommended, we’ve found this obscure third-party brand on Amazon to be as good, if not better, and at a slightly lower price point. Recommended.

After a series of injuries, I’ve been in a rut with my workout tracking. The app I’ve used for years feels abandoned by its developers and is clunky to use. Enter Dropset: a robust, Scandinavian-minimalist app that makes it easy to create and track routines so you know exactly what weight to lift, how far to run, ruck, or row, etc., on any given day. Best of all, it’s built by an indie dev who’s very engaged with ongoing updates.

Oura launched its slimmer 4th generation health-tracking ring with improved sensors and battery life this week. I’m a happy Oura 3 owner and find its data more insightful and actionable than my Apple Watch Ultra, especially when it comes to recovery and HRV. Plus, I love that the ring lets me wear a mechanical watch and still get health data sync'ed straight to Apple Health on my iPhone. Like all things in the Report, this is not sponsored, but if you’re interested in trying out Oura, this link should get up to ten readers 10% off, with no kickbacks to me.

- Through a series of unrelated accidents over the last few weeks, I’ve managed to get myself pretty banged up, with multiple visits to Urgent Care for various sprains and fractures. I found myself going through a lot of ice packs and eventually found my way over to this wonder device from Therabody. It’s a small cube that you strap on to whatever trouble spot you’re having, and it quickly chills or heats it according to your desired setting. It even offers alternating hot/cold contrast therapy. It’s been amazing.*Amazon-affiliate link.

I had caught little highlights clips from this episode over the last few weeks, but finally managed this last week to hammer out the entire nearly three hour episode of Dr. Attia's interview with Jason McCarthy, founder and CEO of GoRuck. I've been rucking off and on for a little over 10 years at this point, and consistently find it to be one of the best, low impact workouts I can do for my overall cardio and strength health. This fascinating interview covers everything from the history of the company to the health benefits and best practices for rucking. Worth a listen-- bonus points if you throw some books or rocks in a backpack and go for a long walk while you listen.

About a year and a half ago I read James Nestor's Breath and it totally rocked my world. Inspired by the book to cut out all my mouth breathing ways, I found Hostage Tape and I haven't looked back since. This thick black tape goes over your mouth at bedtime and ensures you breath through your nose while you sleep, putting an end to snoring, sleep apnea, dry mouth, and more. I'm sleeping way better, and waking way more refreshed when I use this tape than when I don't.

I don't think I'm going to surprise anyone by outing myself here as a big fan of Boba tea. It’s not something I allow myself to enjoy too often, due to the inordinate amount of sugar and other “empty” calories, not to mention the ballooning cost as boba tea / pearl tea become more trendy. Long story short, apparently Instagram’s advertising algorithm also figured out my love for Boba, and I got targeted ads for this Boba Tea Protein powder, which sounds kind of gross, but is actually amazing. I’ve tried both their Matcha Latte and Taro Milk Tea and several of their boba pearl flavors, and am already hooked. I’ve made one a day, everyday this week. I’m sold on the low/no sugar, natural ingredients, and authentic flavors. Worth a shot if you’re at all curious.