Apple’s latest smartwatch update focuses on health and fitness features including one to help progress training, a new app for tracking vitals, and a new feature for rest days.
Apple announced all the new features slated with the release of watchOS 11 at its WWDC keynote on Monday, June 10.
Training Load
One of its most exciting features will help users better understand how the intensity and duration of their workouts affect their bodies. Called Training Load, this feature provides insights into workouts over the past 28 compared to the last seven days so users can see progress and adjust goals.
The Training Load feature can help runners prepare for a 5k so that they can make appropriate training decisions to keep their bodies healthy and at peak performance.
This helps athletes and exercise enthusiasts identify when they should increase the intensities or efforts of their workouts or when to take time to recover. It will use an algorithm to estimate effort during the workout, and use vitals that include age, height, weight, heart rate, and elevation. Athletes will be able to make adjustments based on if they are feeling sore or dealing with stress.
Apple will measure the intensity of a workout based on a difficulty scale from 1 to 10. When strength training, the user can manually enter their effort.
Activity Ring Pause For Rest Days
Rest days are another aspect of the new health and fitness updates in watchOS that Apple is adding. Users will be able to pause their activity rings based on specific goals without losing streaks. This means not being able to exercise because of illness or injury will no longer affect completion streak awards. This allows users to take a day off, a week, or even a month off, promoting rest and recovery when needed.
Other watchOS 11 Fitness and Health Features
There also will be the ability to set custom activity goals for days of the week. So if a student knows they can’t make a practice one day, they can adjust that daily goal and then increase it for a higher goal on a day when they can get their workouts in.
An update to the Fitness app allows users to see metrics like running and swimming metrics, further making the Summary tab more personable and customizable.
Apple also announced the new Vitals app that tracks health data during sleep. This includes respiratory rate, heart rate, blood oxygen, and sleep duration. When two or more metrics are not in that user’s average range, the Vitals app will alert to user. It will also suggest how these metrics can be linked to factors like illness or elevation changes.
Other fitness and health updates with watchOS 11 include a redesign to Apple Fitness+. This includes personalized For You space and more awards. The Workout app will soon include more sports in its GPS distance tracking. This includes soccer, football, outdoor hockey, lacrosse, downhill skiing, cross country skiing, snowboarding, golf, outdoor rowing, and more. Users will also be able to customize their Pool Swims workouts to include intervals and recovery time.
Apple will launch watchOS 11 this fall.