Affirm on the Run: Wearable Technology as a Tool to Improve Mentality in Endurance Athletes

Abstract

Running is currently experiencing its second major boom as a pastime. It has been rapidly increasing in popularity at both the competitive and recreational level since the early 2000s. The development and rapid adoption of wearable technology for endurance athletes has accompanied this boom. Most runners now view wearable technology as integral to their sport. The wide adoption of this technology, in conjunction with the mental nature of endurance sports, makes it imperative for wearable technology developers to understand the potential for their technology to affect the mentality of endurance athletes. Current research on wearable technology investigates how it is used to benefit and track physical performance. This aligns with wearable technology's primary purpose, to track the physical aspects of endurance sport performance. The use of this technology as a tool to improve mentality during endurance activities has not yet been explored, despite psychological factors being one of the biggest determinants of physical performance in endurance sports. Wearable devices have yet to be used to their full potential. The goal of this study is to perform initial exploratory analysis of wearable devices as a psychological intervention tool in endurance sports. I created an application, called the Affirm on the Run App, for use on Global Positioning System (GPS) enabled sport watches. The Affirm on the Run App pushes positive affirmations to users with the goal of improving their mentality during activities. In a two-week user study, I analyzed the experiences of seventeen runners, ten men and seven women, using the Affirm on the Run App on their watch. The participant group encompassed both competitive and lifestyle runners. I explored how the app affected their psychological state with relation to their training, their perceived exertion on runs, and their cognitive strategy. I found that runners had an overall positive experience using the Affirm on the Run app on their wearable device. Participants' experiences with the app left them feeling calmer and more motivated on runs. The results of this study show that runners experienced benefits to their psychological state that are linked to increased performance. I conclude that using wearable technology as a psychological intervention tool is beneficial to runners and recommend that development be done to integrate these tools more seamlessly into wearable device infrastructure. I also suggest future investigation of these findings via longitudinal and competition studies. The results of this study serve as a strong starting point to help wearable technology for endurance athletes to reach its full potential, so that all runners can bolster their mentality via the wearable devices they already use every day.