The Apple Watch Workout?

I got my shiny new Apple Watch in the mail about a week ago and decided to take some time to acquaint myself with all of it's magical ways.

This is the watch face I chose for now (there are so many depending on your preferences), I am not reviewing the watch functionality as a whole, but rather the fitness geared stuff, so excuse the lack of description.

For years now I have used Polar heart rate monitoring devices (ft4 & ft7) and decided that I'd give the Apple device a go. I love my other Apple devices, so why not?

I have decided that for the purpose of deciding the Apple watche's fitness functionality, I am going to do a two week challenge where I use this device to track my exercize and I make sure that I meet the minimum requiremnt's for Apple's three main fitness categories. You can see the circle in the middle on the bottom of the screen in the photo above. This is how the watch shows you your progress. Allow me to elaborate.

The activity screen on the Apple watch.

The quality of this photo is below average. But the basic idea is that you have three fitness categories to consider each day. The small center circle (which is a vibrant, light-blue color in real life) is your "stand" tracker. This reminds you to stand up for at least one minute each hour. The watch gives you haptic feedback (a gentle tapping sensatio on your wrist) to remind you to stand once per hour. The goal is to do this for at least 12 of the hours in the day.

The middle ring is a vibrant, lime-green color in real life and this is your exercise ring. This is a goal that you set for yourself for a number of minutes each day you'd like to get your heart pumping and focus on exercise. I set mine to 30 minutes. You can use the workout app to track your calorie burn/heart rate/distance/time etc.

From this morning's indoor cycling workout.

A list of various exercises to track. Outdoor exercises use GPS to track distance. Indoor exercises use the watche's accelerometer to track the workout.

You can pair your current heart rate monitor to the Apple watch, but thus far I've found the readings to be more accurate than my old Polar ft7, so I haven't paired it yet. Today, as you can see, I did some indoor cycling to start my morning off.

The app for your iPhone which allows you yo track your progress.

The third, exterior circle is a vibrant, reddish-pink color and it is your movement tracker. It sounds similar to exercise, but it is different in that this is not tracking when you are putting an all out effort into burning calories. This is tracking when you are walking longer distances in the parking lot, taking the stairs at work, or cleaning the kitchen floor. You can adjust this goal to whatever number you choose. I chose a goal of 400 calories per day.

For the next two weeks I will post an update every day chronicling my journey to hitting each of Apple's three goals daily. I will post before and after photos and maybe a few progress photos too, just to keep us all on the same page. Here's to seeing if the "Apple Watch Workout" is effective ;)

Disclosure: I'm long AAPL, haha ;)

#howisweat