TrueFeel isn't built on vibes. It's built on five pillars of sports science — each one backed by systematic reviews, IOC consensus statements, and neuroscience research. Here's the evidence.
“I wake up and my Garmin tells me base ride. TrainerRoad says rest day. Intervals.icu says optimal. Then my Edge wants intervals.”— RockMover12, r/cycling
A systematic review of 56 studies published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found negligible correlation between subjective and objective measures of athlete well-being. This isn’t a flaw in wearables — it’s a fundamental feature of human physiology. Your body integrates signals (stress, nutrition, motivation, life context) that no device can measure.
More recently, a year-long study of elite endurance athletes confirmed high individual variability between subjective recovery and wearable data, with external life stressors frequently disrupting any correlation. And research on nocturnal HRV from wearables showed it only weakly predicted next-day perceived physical fitness — and failed entirely to predict mental fitness.
What TrueFeel does
Instead of ignoring the conflict or forcing you to choose one signal, TrueFeel detects the disagreement and resolves it — using your personal history of how similar conflicts played out for YOU.
“I have tried whoop, garmin and oura. All were less accurate than a 'how do I feel today' metric.”— 7wkg (56 upvotes), r/cycling
The International Olympic Committee published a consensus statement endorsing integrated monitoring of both subjective and objective loads for injury prevention. A separate systematic review concluded that subjective monitoring outperforms objective monitoring for detecting maladaptation — the point where training stops helping and starts hurting.
A 4-year study of 182 athletes confirmed that mood, sleep quality, and energy were reliable indicators of training response and predicted injury risk. Session-RPE (how hard you feel a workout was) often correlates better with actual readiness than heart rate data.
What TrueFeel does
We treat how you feel as a first-class data source — not a secondary “nice to have.” Your check-in is captured before you see any data, so it stays uncontaminated. Then we cross-reference it against your objective metrics to find where they agree and where they conflict.
“It took me a while to 'calibrate' my 'how do I feel today.' At the beginning I'd try writing down a number from 1 to 10 and it was pretty random.”— mikekchar, r/cycling
The neuroscience of interoception — the ability to sense internal body states — shows that athletes have large individual differences in this skill. But crucially, it’s trainable. Athletes with better interoceptive accuracy regulate training intensity more effectively and make better pacing decisions. One study found that runners with higher interoceptive awareness ran faster 800m times because they could sense their effort levels more accurately.
A 2025 preprint introduced the concept of “Interoceptive Intelligence,” proposing that wearables should calibrate rather than replace athletes’ internal sensing — which is exactly TrueFeel’s approach.
What TrueFeel does
Every morning check-in is a structured interoception exercise. Over time, TrueFeel shows you when your instincts were right (“your ‘meh’ resolved into a good session 80% of the time”) and when your data caught something you missed. This feedback loop trains your body awareness — making you a better self-coach, not a more dependent app user.
“I mix HRV with how my sleep and mood were. If all three tank, training goes down a notch. Keeps me healthy and hitting goals.”— Zander125, r/running
A study on training loads and injury risk found that high loads increased injury risk only when HRV was suppressed — meaning you needed both signals to see the danger. Combining subjective load data with objective readiness outperformed either alone.
Research on elite rowers went further: biochemical markers of severe muscle damage were best predicted by looking at friction between subjective and objective data. When the two signals disagreed, it was more informative than when they agreed. The disagreement itself was the signal.
What TrueFeel does
This is our core differentiator. The conflict-resolution engine doesn’t average your signals or pick one. It identifies the specific type of disagreement (there are 6 distinct conflict types in our taxonomy), explains why each signal says what it says, and resolves the conflict using your personal history and training context.
“The devices always seem to think I'm dying when I feel great or tell me I'm recovered when my legs feel like concrete.”— Civil-Independent623, r/cycling
A comparison of commercial wearables against ECG (the gold standard) found that Oura rings showed the highest agreement, but Garmin and Polar watches had larger HRV errors. Smartphone PPG apps showed error rates up to 17%. Device quality directly affects how trustworthy your “objective” data actually is.
Beyond accuracy, even perfect wearable data captures only partial readiness. Research showed that HRV during sleep did not significantly predict next-day mental fitness after controlling for sleep quality. Your device sees your heart — but not your mood, your stress, your motivation, or the argument you had last night.
What TrueFeel does
We don’t replace your wearable — we contextualize it. We know which devices are more reliable for which metrics (Oura for HRV, Garmin for training load). We factor in the limitations. And we fill the gap with the one sensor that captures everything: you.