Train with Morpheus: 90-Day Review
Learning to do less with greater effect is an important skill. When you always want to do more, always want to go harder, eventually you stop getting better. HR monitors offer an accurate, objective way to develop a subjective intuition of training difficulty and recovery need.
My trainer certification with 8-Weeks Out included the Morpheus Heart Rate Monitor (HRM). Typical optical devices (smart watches, rings, bands, etc.) are notably less accurate than chest strap types of devices, particularly at higher heart rate ranges.
What’s more is that the device itself cost about $100, uses a free app, and doesn’t require a subscription like Oura or Whoop.
Additionally, the application’s platform provides an intuitive way to guide your training, not just by providing a recovery / readiness score but also weekly duration recommendations for it’s three heart rate zone categories.
I spent about one month just tracking a baseline of data without using the platform to “guide” my training, then gradually started paying closer attention and actually using the data over the next month and a half.
Let’s dig in to some of the major upsides, and a few draw backs of these types of devices and how they can benefit our training.
Recovery Scoring:
One of the most important and valuable aspects of the Morpheus platform is it’s measurement of “recovery score.” Other platforms refer to this as a “readiness score.”
It’s a proprietary formula involving sleep quantity and quality, mood, soreness, heart rate, and heart rate variability. The assessment itself uses a combination of subjective and objective measures which can integrate with other devices (below), or be manually entered.
Recovery score isn’t a feature unique to Morpheus, but Morpheus does allow you control over when the measurement is taken.
For example, you can take your recovery score first thing in the morning, or before your workout for that day; rather than whenever the device arbitrarily decides to take the measurement for you — likely while you’re sleeping and as a snapshot rather than a 2-minute observation.
One important note here is that a low recovery score doesn’t mean you can’t train hard that day. It means that you’re spending more energy on recovery; which is in direct contrast to performing at a high level.
The obvious example is being injured: high recovery need, low performance threshold.
Adaptive Zone Training:
One feature of Morpheus that is unique and helpful for developing some nuance to your intuition is adaptive heart rate zones. Typically these are expressed in standard, fixed percentages of your max heart rate (e.g. Zone 2 = 70% MHR). Morpheus simplifies the standard 5 zones down to three: Recovery (Zones 1 and 2), Conditioning (Zones 3 and 4), and Overload (Zone 5).
The fixed zones can be good general benchmarks, but depending on one’s recovery status (above) there can been significant variability in how hard 70% MHR “feels.”
For example, Morpheus usually clocks my thresholds at about 100, 150, and 170 bpm. However, that middle “Zone 2/3” threshold of 150 has been as high as 157 and as low as 145.
For my standard 10 min bike warm up, that’s a difference of plodding at 45 rpm and revving up to 55 rpm; which is a significant change even over a relatively short 10 minute interval.
However, these measures aren’t just important day-to-day. As you can see in the graph above, the amount of “conditioning” and “overload” time you can tolerate (or recover from) changes based on trends in your overall fitness and recovery habits.
App, Integration, and Interface:
Overall the app offers a very clean and clear interface that’s easy to navigate. Unlike other fitness apps, it’s not over bloated with “social” features, it just sticks to what’s important.
It has the ability to pull sleep and step-count data from other fitness devices and apps like Garmin, but you can also manually input this information.
On the flip side, the app is relatively slow to load, and I often have to force-close it between checking my recovery score and starting a training session. Fairly often I have to toggle bluetooth off-and-on as well to get things started.
I also wish there was a web / browser-based interface to view and export data as well.
On the whole, the “live” display is simple and easy to read yourself or for a client, particularly if you’re doing an activity that doesn’t allow you to look at a watch (e.g. boxing).
Monthly Challenges:
This is as close as Morpheus gets to a “social” feature; which I think is a good thing. I didn’t find the “challenges” particularly motivating regarding competing with other people across the globe. What I did find was that it was a good way to highlight and emphasize (deficits in) habits.
Uniquely, the monthly challenges reward “streaks” rather than “averages.” This is often under emphasized and can be lost in other data. Sleep, for example, may average out to about 8 hours per night; but if that’s because it’s 15 hours one night and 3 the next, that’s not good thing.
For myself, I have no problem training, “learning”, or checking my recovery scores. Usually step counts aren’t a problem, though I do have to stay a little more vigilant now that I’m working from home.
The big goose egg is my sleep.
My average does pan out to over 8 hours / night; but there’s usually at least one hairball night during the week that throws things off. Sometimes I’d catch the 7-day streak bonus here, but almost never got the 14-day and certainly not the 28-day bonuses.
Overall Impression:
The Morphesu platform offers a huge value for $125 (sometimes on sale for $100). The app has it’s glitches and quirks, but that’s easily made up for with a lot of high quality data.
What’s more is the chest strap functionality isn’t limited by your preferred type of exercise. I wore it for dozens of regular gym workouts and dozens of grappling sessions as well. I do have to admit that the elastic band does seem to stretch / wear out somewhat easily and requires frequent readjustment.
Now, here’s the important thing. I will not continue using Morpheus…. for a while. Why?
The goal, in my opinion, is not to stay married to “objective” tools. The goal is to develop an accurate subjective intuition. I can attach myself to an arbitrary power output (watts, rpm, etc.) just as I can an arbitrary “recovery score” threshold or HRV value.
A simpler answer to the question of can / should I train hard today might be bettered answered by checking two of the following three questions:
Did I train hard yesterday? (no)
Am I in a good mood, not stressed, and stoke / psyche is high today? (yes)
Am I sore or fatigued? (no)