2024 in Exercise
Since another year has come to an end, I can’t help but ask the question: What does my exercise data have to tell me? I did very similar things in 2023 2022, 2021, 2020 and 2019.
Executive summary
Some background on the metrics
Endurance measures how many endurance sessions (e.g. running, cycling, swimming, ..) I performed per day.
Variety reflects how broadly my exercise activities were spread out over various disciplines. Concretely, this is measured by the entropy of the empirical distribution of exercise activities over disciplines. The maximal value is $\log_2(\#disciplines)$ – in this case approximately 4.32 for $ \# disciplines = 20$ – and the minimal value is $1 \cdot \log_2(1) = 0$.
Strength measures how many strength sessions (e.g. weight lifting or climbing) I performed per day.
Consistency measures the standard deviation of the durations between two consecutive exercise activities, measured in hours. Note that this truly only reflects the regularity - not the actual value of the duration between two activities.
The following radar-plot compares the past three years in terms of endurance, variety, strength and consistency:
So, in short, I’ve been slacking!
While both previous years had more than half an endurance session per day (.55), I fell below half an endurance activity per day (.48) in 2024.
Moreover, the consistency has been noticeably worse in 2024 than in 2023. While the standard deviation between two exercise activities was below 16h in 2023, it grew by more than 50% to 25h in 2024.
Overall 2024 was worse than 2023 - though not by a massive margin. I’m not sure to what extent that was signal or noise.
More details on variety and consistency
The left-hand side plot shows the empirical distribution of exercise activities over disciplines. We see that overall, they were fairly similar in 2023 and 2024. Some of the endurance mass has been shifted from running in 2023 to cycling and football in 2024. Also, some of the strength mass has been shifted from climbing in 2023 to lower body and upper body weight lifting in 2024. Overall, 2024 had slightly more variety according to the metric from above.
The right-hand side plot shows a histogram of the durations between two consecutive exercise activities for each year. We see that all three years have their mode around the 24 hours mark. Yet, while 2023 is more narrowly concentrated around said mark, 2024 and 2022 lash out to the right – i.e. there was often just one day between exercise activities but also often way more – and 2022 lashes out to the left – i.e. there was often one day between exercise activities but also often less. Therefore, the standard deviation of these durations is smallest for 2023, mirrored by a high consistency score in the radar plot above.
Discipline-level comparison
| discipline | metric | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| running | distance [km] | 1403 | 1148 | 1312 | 1076 |
| #activities | 127 | 127 | 139 | 113 | |
| share of running activities among all activities [%] | 54.27 | 38.89 | 39.60 | 35.53 | |
| cycling | distance [km] | 660 | 1340 | 1264 | 1609 |
| #activities | 18 | 36 | 41 | 45 | |
| weight lifting | #activities | 82 | 113 | 115 | 118 |
| climbing | #activities | 1 | 7 | 29 | 18 |
| overall | #activities | 234 | 324 | 356 | 318 |
| #discipline kinds | 11 | 17 | 16 | 14 |
While running has seen ups and downs, weight lifting has remained surprisingly stable and cycling has been consistently growing. I’m very curious to see what the next year in exercise has in store for me.