You’ve invested in an Apple Watch or you’re interested to know if this wearable tech is right for you, your main goal (aside from telling the time) is tracking your health and fitness. Here are the top 5 features and apps you can use on your Apple Watch to get better insight into your workouts and daily movement as well as motivate yourself to set and achieve goals.
Aside from the standard heart rate zones, the time elapsed during a workout and motion tracking (great for picking up exercise such as jogging), these are some handy tips and tricks to get more from your tech when it comes to wellbeing.
1. Fall Detection and Emergency SOS Contacts
The potentially life-saving feature often goes underused but we think it’s something that people of every age should activate on their device. It’s simple to turn on and you select which contact gets alerted to make sure help is available if you ever need it. The feature does exactly what you’d expect; it detects if you have had a fall and gets in contact with the emergency services and your SOS contact. Don’t worry, only hard falls are recognised by the device so a small trip or bump won’t send alerts to your contacts. To enable this feature open the Watch app, then tap Emergency SOS and enable Fall Detection. Next, tap Edit These Contacts in Health, add your basic medical information, and then tap add an emergency contact to be sure that your close ones are alerted. It’s important to have this feature set up as you never know when a feature like this could be useful.
2. Want to use your Apple Watch to manage your stress levels?
A couple of minutes of guided breathing each day has proven health benefits so it is worthwhile using your tech to help you relax. The app Breath partners well with the Apple Watch and allows you to set reminders for daily guided breathing sessions as well as completely customise how your sessions go. The length and amount of breaths taken per minute can be customised within the settings to best suit what is relaxing for you.
3. Looking to push yourself to be a healthier person this year?
Make sure you’ve turned on Cardio Fitness Notifications. These notifications will send you a gentle push if your cardio fitness levels are low, essentially this is a gentle nudge asking you to get fitter! However, be aware that you need to log at least two outdoor walks or runs of at least 20 minutes each, using your Apple Watch for this feature to work. If you don’t do that, the watch won’t be able to calculate your VO2 Max levels which is the data it needs to calculate your overall cardio fitness
4. We’re a nation obsessed with sleep
From room sprays to help us drift off or extravagant mattresses designed to give us the best sleep, every element of our nightly routines can be monitored. The Apple Watch has sleep tracking which might help you get a better night’s sleep. This feature will be automatically turned on when you start using your watch but you can get even more from it by creating a customised sleep schedule. This will help you build a healthy routine that puts your watch into Do Not Disturb mode around your bedtime in order to help you wind down. Plus many users prefer waking up to the vibrating alarm of an Apple Watch to a loud phone alarm that can be quite startling.
5. If you’re looking for a third-party app that is a great companion in the gym we recommend SmartGym.
The gym is a great way to burn calories and get fit but having a structured routine to help you achieve your goals can be difficult. With the SmartGym app, you can create custom routines with more than 250 exercises that have images and animations to help you with your form or use one of the pre-made workouts created by professionals including HIIT options for all levels of gym users. Whether you’re a beginner who signed up to the gym for the first time or a loyal gym goer this is a great option to get from your workout and really push yourself during every session.
We hope these features have given you some inspiration to get more from your Apple Watch. If you are in the market for a new watch take a look at refurbished devices from The iOutlet, the perfect way to get a great quality device for less.
