By, Chloë Lane

It’s not too much of a reach to say that many athletes in 2026 are emotionally dependent on their smartwatches. If your Garmin says your body battery’s low, chances are you will be tired. Sleep score below 60? You may feel more irritated than usual today. Don’t exercise for two days in a row? You get told you’re unproductive.

As consumers, we wouldn’t put up with this level of blatant bullying from any other product. If your airfryer started telling you that you weren’t cleaning it properly, you’d probably start using the oven. But smartwatches are the exception. By wearing them, athletes are investing in their health, improving their fitness and becoming more in tune with their body’s needs.

But what if this wasn’t true? What if your smartwatch was actually hindering your athletic performance? If, instead of helping you reach that PB, it was doing the exact opposite?

This shocking reality is what Aalto University School of Business has found in new research. They discovered that smartwatches are hindering athletes’ performance by distracting them from how their body feels.

Why smartwatches may be hindering athletes’ progress

Aalto’s study, conducted by Tatsiana Padhaiskaya and Henri Weijo, investigated how ultra-runners learn to tune into their bodies and found that many participants felt that their devices were limiting their ability to do this.

This is because the advice given to them by their smartwatches, especially in the early stages, is based on standard rules and not always tailored to each individual. This standardisation can lead to wrong pacing and overtraining, which is limiting at best – and dangerous at worst.

They also found that smartwatches can lead to a sensory overload for runners due to their notifications about pace, feedback, and constant reminders to move.

One runner in the study abandoned their watch race predictor altogether as it was distracting them from what their legs were telling them.

Others, after becoming more in tune with their body, were able to adapt more effectively to unpredictable race conditions, which is crucial in ultra-running.

Cultural obsession with outward appearances

The researchers say consumerism may be to blame for this.

Padhaiskaya, explains that digitalisation, social media, and the cultural obsession with outward appearances have all pushed us away from sensing what is actually going on with our bodies.

“In recent years, digitalisation has pushed bodily detachment to new heights. Algorithm-driven feeds, nonstop notifications, and ubiquitous connectivity shorten attention spans, overstimulate the nervous system, and pull body awareness outward rather than grounding it inward,” she explains.

She adds that consumer culture does nearly everything in its power to estrange people from their bodies. “Businesses ‘sell’ the cure to this, which actually makes things worse,” she says.

Once runners in the study reduced their reliance on the smartwatches, they turned their attention inwards, and started to notice subtle signals in their body before injuries occurred.

Some runners were even able to anticipate problems before they occurred, adjusting their pace or hydration based on how their body felt that day.

For example, noticing a ‘little niggle’ in the knee before it became a problem, or sensing their precise heart rate without checking the watch.

The results made people more sceptical of recommendations and advice from businesses, and they reported caring less about brand prestige.

Staying in tune with your body

These findings are supported by recent research from Nanyang Normal University and Qilu Institute of Technology in China, which says that bodily awareness is central to consciousness, balance and decision-making.

The study, which surveyed 152 adults, finds that humans function best when they are tuned into internal bodily signals – heartbeat, breathing, fatigue, stress, instinct and physical sensations.

The results showed that individuals who reported stronger awareness of their internal bodily signals also tended to have a more balanced sense of time, one that integrates past experiences, present awareness, and future planning. That balance, in turn, was linked to better sleep and, in some cases, improved digestion.

In other words, our minds and bodies are constantly working together to shape how aware and emotionally balanced we feel.

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