Under what circumstances does technology actually help?

“You have to ask whether the technology is being used as intended,” he says.

He compares our use of fitness tech to the recent government initiative to get more of us to use smart metres in our home to reduce domestic energy consumption.

“After much expense, there has been limited success in such trials to reduce energy consumption – most likely because even when we have good ways to measure and monitor our behaviour (such as home energy use), people either don’t use or care about the numbers to make any sort of adjustment.

“Behaviours are hard to change!”

In other words, it takes more than wearing a fancy watch to change the way you live – which ultimately is the deciding factor in improving fitness levels.

And that ties into the most important thing with any health and fitness journey: how you feel.

Improvements in physical and mental health and fitness levels are usually obvious

Are you lifting more weight?
Are you more alert?
How are your energy levels?
Is your sleep improving?
Do you recover better?
Can you run further/faster?
Are you calmer, less stressed, more able to deal with change?
Are you happier?
Do you feel good?

Unlike the damaging fitness standards of the past which have solely concentrated on how lean or built someone is, biohacking really does seem like it’s a holistic approach to health. If your body fat percentage is low but you’re not sleeping well and your mood is all over the place, biohacking will probably reveal that you’re not as healthy as previous beauty standards have maintained.

We’re obsessed with looking at things in isolation. We hear people talking about working for stronger arms, bigger glutes, faster PBs, heavier one rep maxes – but it’s all part of the same machine.

As Lee tells us, “We can’t obtain optimal fitness if we don’t incrementally improve other areas of our body and mind”.

“By optimising our sleep, we get the exact amount of recovery and time to rebuild that we need, leading to better performance, faster recovery and optimal hormone levels. To gain the maximal benefit from our fitness training, we have to ensure our cortisol is balanced at a level where it is not detrimental to our exercise and recovery, as exercise is a stressor.”

If you suffer from poor gut health, for example, you may not be absorbing your nutrients properly. That then leads to poor recovery which adds stress on the body or can result in being deficient in certain essential minerals and increased inflammation.

Aside from the decreased quality of life, all of these points also stop you from achieving your goals.

Follow @StrongWomenUK on Instagram for the latest workouts, delicious recipes and motivation from your favourite fitness experts.

(Images: Getty; Instagram)

Is biohacking the new way forward in fitness?