![]() It took a while for me to realize that consistency was lacking, so, like you would be on a new instrument you only pick up every few weeks, I was never getting better. I never understood why the odd weight training session never got easier. You see, a walk is great, and weight training is great, but you can't do just one or the other if you want to get/stay in decent shape. No more exercise for me!" On days with bad weather, I'd head to the basement and do some bodyweight and free-weight exercises and, again, I'd consider myself done so long as the rings got filled. However, since I meet those goals on those days, I think to myself, "Okay, done. For instance, I try to take a walk every day when the weather allows, which fills the exercise and move rings easily. That leads to not doing a good balance of exercises. A long walk is nothing like lifting weights, yet both will help you meet your goal on the Watch. The truth is that workouts are different, and target different muscles. It's just one number on the screen, so as long as you do some form of exercise, you're good. The first, and perhaps biggest, trap I found is the idea that exercise is exercise. ![]() It's just not as tailored as the specific ones are. Plus, your heart rate and movements are factored in (as far as I know), so it's not like this "other" kind of workout is completely generic. Instead, it credits you with the same work you'd do during a brisk walk. ![]() This monitors your heart rate more closely than normal, like any other workout type, but doesn't do any additional customization to its algorithms as it can for workout types it knows about. Instead, you use the "other workout" setting. Weight training, body-weight exercises, yoga, marshal arts, and other common forms of exercise simply aren't available. While the Watch can track several types of workout, it has a limited set. When I talk about "rings" or "numbers" in this article, this display is what I mean. For VoiceOver users, the percentage of each goal is spoken aloud, such as "Moving, 50%, exercising, 27%, standing, 75%". These three metrics are displayed as rings on the Watch's screen, and your job is to fill those rings in each day. Apple wants you to do at least thirty minutes of exercise, twelve hours where at least a minute was active, and-by default-350 calories burned per day, though you can raise or lower the calorie burn goal if you want to. Your "move" goal is how many calories you burn, your "exercise" goal is how many minutes you spend with your heart rate above a set threshold, and your "stand" goal is how many hours during which you are active for at least one minute. In case you aren't familiar with how the Apple Watch tracks activity, the system is simple. Check in with real health/wellness pros before listening to me. Basically, I'm not a professional, and I don't intend to sell myself as such here. Everyone is different, and you know yourself the best. Check with your doctor/trainer before taking any of my suggestions, and don't think that just because something works/doesn't work for me, it'll work/not work for you. ![]() That said, please don't consider anything in this post to be medical advice. Both of them have helped me with this post, and given it their okay. My sister has a dietetics degree and takes an intense interest in fitness, and a good friend of mine is a fitness nut studying to be an adaptive physical education teacher. I just wanted to share my experiences, to help others not follow me off the path we should all be on. I don't have all the answers in fact, I'm still in the process of changing my own fitness habits even as I write this. Hopefully, these will serve as warnings and/or reminders, so you don't make the mistakes I did. Here are the fitness-related traps I've found while using the Apple Watch as a health and fitness companion. But at the end of the day, it's still a computer, not a personal trainer, and it can't know or do everything. The Watch has done all that, and done it well. Plus, I wanted a simple way to log and track my workouts so I would have the data and so I could look back at trends. I wanted my movements and exercise to be tracked, I wanted calorie burn estimates, I wanted heart tracking, and I wanted to be reminded to move every so often. I got it for a few reasons, but a major one was fitness. I've had my Apple Watch for about ten months as of the time of this writing.
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