Running and walking are my favourite ways to get exercise. Seriously it’s so simple. It’s straightforward to throw on a pair of shoes during the late spring, summer, and early fall, walk out of my front door and wander around my neighbourhood for a while. I particularly like running with my Apple Watch. Having the Apple Watch tracking my workouts allows me to explore different things that I would never have considered before.
1) The workouts are effortless – Whether you have the workout app on your watch face or if it’s in the background somewhere, Apple has made it very easy to get to the workout app. Once you ar win the app itself, there are a number of different workouts that you can choose from, and if you can’t find the one you are looking for specifically, there is an “Open Goal” workout that you can also use. If you can’t find the workout you’re looking for in the main menu, there is an extra workouts menu with a few specialty ones and every other one you can think of alphabetically. Everything from football (both European and American) to Barre and track and field. It feels like nearly any activity you would need; they have available for you to track.
2) Tracks time, distance, and run rate – I’m all about stats. I like knowing where I am and how far I’ve gone. Using the apple watch is an excellent way for me to track my distance and how long it’s taken me to get there. One of the exciting bits of info that I can keep an eye on while I’m doing a walk or a run is my pace. This means how much time it takes me to walk or run a Kilometre. a little game I like playing with myself is seeing how fast I can go in my first kilometre and then seeing if I can beat it. I also like having a general idea of how long it takes me to do a run which I go outside, so I will try and go the same route. This means that I can keep track of how long each workout took me and try and get a better time in.
3) Keeps track of my progress – One of the offset advantages of using the Apple watch for your workouts is that the Activity app on your phone tracks how much work you’ve done. If you look in your activity app, you will be able to scroll down to “trends,” You will see all manner of information that you can keep an eye on. What I like is that from a glance, you can see all the stuff that you are most improving on or need work on. The quick way to know if you’re improving or not is if the arrows are pointing up or down. Up means you’re doing better; down means, you have some work to do. In either case, you will get informative information that will allow you to know what to focus on with your workouts.
For me, exercise (particularly cardio) is the best way to get my exercise. I like the freedom of walking around, I like the endorphins that I get from it, and I like how I can feel energized even after a workout. Having a ready source of data tells me how I’m doing. However, that is the real value add for me. Having more information is usually better, and I know that I’m not alone on that one. I also like knowing when I’m improving, and having the data to tell me is a great start.
How do you track your workouts?
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