with the release of iOS 16 and Apple watch OS 9 Apple has added plenty of enhancements to the workout and fitness apps so now I thought was a good opportunity to go over some of those new features and some of the older features that you might have missed and just some overall tips and tricks but getting the most out of your watch and the workout app time tags are in the description below to skip ahead so let’s get started and first up is to ensure that the fitness data your watch is displaying accurate your watch will measure and
monitor all sorts of fitness and health related information whilst you’re exercising and throughout the day from your heart rate and the calories that you burn to the amount of oxygen in your blood and how well you recover after a workout but for these measurements to be accurate your watch needs to be calibrated correctly and the information that you provide about yourself also needs to be accurate if you haven’t updated your information in a while now is a good opportunity to check that it’s still correct there’s a good chance that your watch is
making calculations and drawing conclusions based on incorrect data if you are new to Apple watch the first time you open the fitness app on your iPhone you’ll be asked to enter your age height and weight for those of us who have been using Apple watch for a while you can update your details by clicking on your profile icon and choosing Health details it’s also worth noting that the health app needs similar information with some additional Fields such as blood type and whether you’re taking medication that might affect your heart rate
with your personal information updated it’s also worth checking the various permissions that must be enabled to make use of your watch’s different sensors start by opening the settings app on your iPhone click on privacy and security followed by location services turn on location services if it isn’t already and you want to enable location access for Apple watch workouts then scroll to the bottom of list and choose system services and here you want to ensure that motion calibration and distance is also enabled having done all
of this go into Apple Watch app on your iPhone and open the privacy settings here I recommend enabling all the sensor information but at a minimum you’ll want to ensure that Fitness tracking is enabled Apple then recommends going for a 20 minute outdoor walk or run on flat Terrain in an area with good GPS reception on a nice clear sunny day to calibrate your watch you should do this even if you intend to do most of your Fitness sessions indoors or on a bike this outdoor workout will provide your watch with the information that it needs
to accurately measure your daily activity if measurements in your personal data have been incorrect for some time say you’ve recently gained or lost a little bit of weight it might be worth considering resetting your calibration data you’ll see this warning but it does only affect your calibration data you won’t lose any of your workout or activity history however this will result in slightly inaccurate data whilst your watch recalibrates so for the next few workouts I recommend doing as much exercise as possible Outdoors on
flat Terrain to start a workout you can of course just open the app choose a workout from the list or customize it by tapping on the three dots apple offers a range of suggestions or just scroll all the way to the bottom of list to create a completely custom workout if you regularly choose the same workout routine then a quick alternative to opening the app is to create a shortcut and add it to your watch face start by opening the shortcuts app on your iPhone and click on the plus icon to create a new shortcut search for
workout and choose start workout you can rename your shortcut by tapping on the name I’ll call mine start run like in the workout app on your watch you have the option to change your goal I’ll set mine to five kilometers having created the shortcut before clicking done add it to your Apple watch by clicking on the information icon and enabling show on Apple watch now click done and switch over to the Apple Watch app tap the watch face that you wish to edit or create a new one and choose the complication you want to replace your
shortcut should be listed as one of the options if you don’t see it in the list of shortcuts you may need to enable shortcuts in your iCloud settings having added your shortcut as a complication now when you click on it will automatically start your workout another quick way to start a workout is to ask Siri set how you want to activate Siri in your Apple Watch app there are three different options to choose from and I like to have them all enabled then it’s just a matter of saying something like hey Siri start a 10 kilometer
outdoor bike ride you can skip the three second Countdown by tapping the screen another useful series setting in the watch app is to prevent Siri from responding through your watch’s speaker this is particularly useful for those occasions when you inadvertently activate Siri such as during a meeting which seems to happen me far too often click on responses and you can choose to have Siri always respond or only respond when you’re wearing headphones which is my preference or you can use silent mode to control Siri
another useful automation if you listen to music while working out is to have your playlist begin automatically at the start of a workout again in the Apple Watch app open the workout settings and choose workout playlists if you don’t see your playlist in this list it’s probably because you haven’t downloaded it to your watch for offline listening open the music app settings click add music and select your playlist it’s worth noting that your playlist will only start downloading to your watch whilst your watch is charging and
in range of your phone and this only works for Apple music there’s no option to add Spotify playlists unfortunately during a workout you can use the crown to scroll through real-time information about your session the information shown on these screens will be relevant to the type of workout you’re doing so on the running workout you’ll see information about your heart rate zones pace and your current altitude to measure your pace the watch will add splits every kilometer or mile you can add splits such as the halfway point of
your session by double tapping on the screen to change the information displayed on screen and the updates that Siri provides during a workout customize the workout by clicking on the three dots followed by the edit icon here you can add additional alerts like for example if your pace slows below a certain range and you can also add remove views such as Cadence and your average stride length to reorder all of your different views scroll to the bottom of display and select reorder if like me you have a habit of forgetting to end your workout
session then jump back into the workout settings in the watch app here you can enable reminders for both starting and ending a workout and there’s also an option to pause a workout by pressing both the crown and side button simultaneously if pressing these two buttons sounds like too much of an effort during your workout you can also enable auto pause for all day workouts such as hiking or a long bike ride you may want to turn on low power mode this will turn off the always on display and disable heart rate and blood oxygen measurements if you’d
rather keep these enabled another trick to conserving your watch battery is to bring your phone with you on workout this allows your watch to hand off a number of the battery intensive tasks to your phone and instead use the Bluetooth connection between the two devices to receive updates another useful feature is the ability to combine multiple workout sessions so for example if you tend to cool down with a few stretches or a walk after exercising you can include this into your routine and have your watch continue to measure
your stats instead of swiping right and clicking on end click the plus icon choose your next workout routine I’ll choose cool down and now your watch will continue recording your stats whilst you recover if you always warm up and cool down then you can add these permanently to your exercise by creating a custom workout choose your usual workout routine I’ll go with outdoor run and scroll all the way to bottom create workout click on custom and here you can add warm up and cool down periods I’ll give myself five minutes either side of my
main session having added your entries give custom workout a name and Away you go if you tend to remove your watch immediately after a workout say to give it a quick rinse under the tap then I recommend leaving it on for an extra three minutes during this time your watch continues to monitor your heart rate to measure how well your heart rate recovers after exercise you’ll see this information in the fitness app on your iPhone click on your workout then your heart rate and there at the bottom of the window is your post workout
recovery measurements if you have a tendency to accidentally tap your watch face whilst working out you can lock the screen by swiping out and tapping lock once you’ve finished working out to unlock the screen press and hold digital crown this is essentially the same as turning on the water lock option in the control center which you’ll use when going for a swim or when washing your watch finally a quick word about the fitness app on your phone which is called the activity app on your watch here you can quickly see your daily stats by default
the app sets you a target of burning thousand calories per day each week your watch will provide you with a weekly summary showing how often you manage to reach your daily Target if you’re not reaching your daily Target the amp will recommend a new move Target for the following week you can also manually set your move goal in the activity app on your watch by scrolling to the bottom of your daily stats and choosing change goals on your phone in the fitness app you’ll find the setting under your profile icon where we were earlier changing our
personal details here you can also change the units of measurement if you prefer to measure in Miles rather than kilometers for example so those are my tips for getting the most out of workouts app on your Apple watch if you found the video useful I’d appreciate you giving me a like and hitting subscribe for lots more useful videos and you might also be interested in my tips for using the messages app on iPhone and popular subscription apps that you should never pay for price until next time
