What makes Firstbeat Life Ideal for Wellness Coaching?

The common goal shared by health and wellness professionals is to make a positive impact on clients’ lives. Understanding clients’ physiological condition can have a great difference as it helps to personalize wellbeing advice, but at the same time bringing complex physiological data into wellness services is not simple. Firstbeat Life has been developed with the specific goal of enabling the use of physiological measurements in personalized wellness services. We believe that best client outcomes can be achieved by combining measured physiological facts with personalized coaching advice.

Unique Physiological Insights for Coaching

Firstbeat test provides a high-accuracy look at client’s stress and recovery balance. The accuracy of the HRV assessment makes it possible to identify the exact moments that cause stress reactions and what type of activities help the client to recover. This helps develop personalized strategies on how to overcome stress and improve stress balance.

The analysis is not limited to stress and recovery assessment as the test provides also a broader picture on lifestyle and wellbeing. Because of 24h-accurate measurement, it is possible to get a detailed view on sleep (e.g., sleep rhythm, sleep duration, bedtime, recovery during early sleep), physical activity and other wellbeing factors as well. Getting comprehensive insights into clients’ lifestyles can be very valuable in addressing the real-life issues that clients face.

This is, however, not all. Most remarkable asset for the coaching practice is the service’s unique ability to identify topics and wellbeing elements that need development. This is done by unique assessment of 25 different wellness factors, highlighting risks and challenges in stress-recovery balance and other lifestyle elements. This assessment shows also individual’s strengths and positive wellbeing factors that can have an important role for client’s wellbeing. Examples of such factors include Recovery while awake, Regularity of sleep timing, Fitness level (VO2max). The key physiological findings are shared with the professional, providing valuable insights that contribute to developing actionable advice, ultimately leading to positive impacts on performance and wellbeing. This is something unique that we offer and can be very useful in prioritizing client’s wellness goals.

As a pioneer in physiological analytics, we have over two decades of experience in developing physiological analytics for professional use. Our heritage is deeply founded in science, including thousands of laboratory tests, millions of measurements, and over 300+ peer-reviewed scientific publications applying Firstbeat. All this cutting-edge knowledge is available to wellness coaching clients through Firstbeat test.

Physiological Results That You Can Trust

We use ECG sensor technology because of its high reliability and 24-hour accuracy on heart rate variability. We have learned over the past decades when working with both consumer products and products for professional use that confidence is an absolute requirement when using physiological information in wellness or sports coaching. The ECG based device, being the gold standard in clinical use, can measure accurate HRV under any condition, at any time, and for anyone. Although optical measurement-based products are convenient for consumer use, the actual accuracy varies a lot from person to person and from time to time (it is well known that factors such as device fit, activity, anatomy, and skin tone highly influence the accuracy of optical measurement and bring significant inconsistency to measurement).

Furthermore, while consumer devices are great for long-term personal use, the results are often based on heavy averaging and “guesswork”. For example, when using optical signal, HRV can be reliably detected only during rest. Again, this is not a major concern for consumer use, but this does not allow us to have a closer look at, for example, the exact time of stress reactions. Since ECG-based method works well in any condition, during night, day, and physical activity, we can provide a comprehensive 24h view on client’s lifestyle and wellbeing.

While the accuracy itself is important, even more crucial is the consistency the ECG provides for professional services. If the accuracy varies depending on the individual and timing, it will make it very difficult to use the results as a basis for coaching advice. For example, an optical device may sometimes provide heart rates that are off by 50 beats, and it may be able to measure HRV accurately even as little as 10% of an active day, as evaluated by some studies. This is again not so much of a problem for a product intended for personal long-term use, but it is a completely different matter to provide personal coaching advice based on results that are potentially inconsistent and unreliable.

Firstbeat always displays the exact percentage of bad or missing data, so that the results can be used confidently. The accuracy of the ECG-based measurement allows for substantially more detailed analysis of stress and recovery, enabling precise identification of individual risks and targeted areas for development. Our goal simply is to provide unique results with unmatched accuracy and consistency for every client.

Designed for Wellness Coaching

Firstbeat Life provides detailed reports to coaching and wellness services, highlighting each client’s unique wellness risks and resource factors. The reports also include reference values that help contextualize the results. These reports give focus and enable precise, data-driven coaching and provide professionals with easy-to-understand insights for guiding clients toward their wellness goals.

All in all, Firstbeat Life is a comprehensive service designed to support health and wellness professionals in their work. Firstbeat’s 24h-accurate professional stress and recovery assessment combined with personalized coaching based on data is guaranteed to improve performance. Firstbeat Life service is available in over 50 countries worldwide.