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Could your smartwatch make you mentally tougher? The military is hopeful that it can Could your smartwatch make you mentally tougher? The military is hopeful that it can

Could your smartwatch make you mentally tougher? The military is hopeful that it can

Luke Benedictus

In the line of duty, soldiers are routinely subjected to wildly stressful situations. How they handle that mental strain can make a vital difference to how they perform under pressure. Even when enemy bullets are whizzing about their heads, soldiers are required to maintain the necessary composure to think clearly and act decisively. Military training will help them to navigate that type of stress, but there are growing suggestions that additional support could also potentially come from a smartwatch.

Could your smartwatch make you mentally tougher?

That’s the hope of some new US studies that are exploring how smartwatches can assist with cognitive training to help soldiers to cope with stress more effectively. Essentially, it all comes down to biofeedback. A smartwatch can pick up on the physiological cues that you’re stressed like a racing heart or sweaty palms. Becoming aware of those physical signals is useful because, once alerted to them, you can then attempt to control your nerves by taking some deep breaths or using positive self-talk to try and make a situation feel less overwhelming.

Researchers from the US military and the consultancy firm Booz Allen Hamilton are getting soldiers to trial smartwatches with the goal of empowering them to handle stress better. Several studies are currently ongoing in which soldiers are using smartwatches that track heart rate, body temperature and other physiological data to evaluate how they respond to mental and physical strain.

Could your smartwatch make you mentally tougher?

“We know that performance originates in the brain,” said Lindsay Blaine, a cognitive performance coach at Booz Allen Hamilton. “By knowing that, we, as performers, can either set ourselves up for success or failure simply based on these conscious thoughts.”

“The biggest thing to understand is these conscious thoughts affect our emotions and our physical state and usually impact our physical performance.”

Arielle Davis, another cognitive performance coach at Booz Allen told military.com she has seen the benefit of wearable biofeedback sensors when working with future first responders. Davis explained, for example, how she’d received an alarm on her phone that showed the heart rate of one of her first-responder candidates was spiking. The smart device gave data on how they are doing physically, she said, “but it also sheds some light on how they are doing mentally as well.”

Could your smartwatch make you mentally tougher?

From the biofeedback, Davis could tell that the woman was struggling to maintain focus and motivation despite not being close to her physical limit. “She would say things like, ‘I can’t do this. Why am I doing this, because I am too tired, and I don’t want to.'”

The device also showed that the woman’s heart rate would increase each time she expressed self-doubt. “She lost focus and her attention was all over the place; emotionally, she was giving up.”

Alerted to the problem, Davis intervened and got the woman to stop and focus on her breathing. In a conversation they reframed her counterproductive thoughts and helped her to refocus on the task at hand. “She was physically tired — and those wearables show us that — but we can talk ourselves out of good performance,” Davis said.

A number of studies are currently being conducted to see how else these smart devices can help. One military division in New York, for example, are participating in a year-long human performance study to track not just physical exertion but also how their heart rate responds to stress.

The underlying idea here is that once something is measurable it becomes manageable.  Whether you’re behind enemy lines or simply enduring a rough day, with stress management, knowledge is power.