**My Apple Watch Ecosystem: A Journey of Fitness and Recovery**

As I sit here with my Apple Watch, I'm reminded of how far it's come since I first started using it. It was the iPhone 10 and Apple Watch Series 3 that finally convinced me to switch from being a die-hard Galaxy Note fan to embracing the Apple ecosystem as my ultimate choice. In this article, I'll share my personal journey with the Apple Watch and explore how it has become an integral part of my fitness routine.

**Fitness Apps: The Backbone of My Routine**

I've always been fascinated by the numerous fitness apps available for both iOS and watchOS. For me, none have compared to the likes of Yoga With Janelle and Pilates With Daryl on Apple Fitness Plus. These workouts have become a staple in my daily routine, helping me stretch scientifically and improve my recovery. I also use WatchOS's built-in workout feature, paired with my yoga mat and a healthy dose of self-discipline. My trusty Apple Watch is always by my side, tracking my progress and providing valuable insights into my body's readiness to take on the next day.

**Sleep Data: The Missing Piece in Apple Watch**

While I've had great success using my Apple Watch to track my fitness metrics, there's one area where it falls short: sleep data. I wish I could see more detailed information about my sleep stages, such as how many hours of deep sleep I'm getting or if I'm entering REM sleep too quickly. Currently, the watch provides basic data points like heart rate and breathing rates during sleep, but I find myself relying on third-party apps like Autosleep to get a more comprehensive understanding of my rest patterns.

**Garmin and Fitbit: The Standard-Bearers**

I've had the opportunity to try out various fitness trackers and smartwatches over the years, including those from Garmin and Fitbit. While both have their strengths, I find myself drawn back to the Apple Watch's seamless integration with my iPhone and other Apple devices. But even with its limitations, I appreciate how these other brands provide more detailed sleep data and advanced features like sleep stage tracking.

**My Personal Story: Why I Embraced the Apple Ecosystem**

For me, the switch from Galaxy Note to Apple was a gradual process. It wasn't until I started using the iPhone 10 and Series 3 that I realized how much I had been missing out on with my previous phone choice. The combination of testing these devices together made all the difference – I finally found a phone that fit my size preference, and the watch became the perfect complement to my daily routine.

**From Data Points to Insights: How Apple Watch Helps Me Track Progress**

As someone living with type 2 diabetes, monitoring my heart rate variability (HRV) is crucial. The Apple Health app provides me with valuable insights into my cardiovascular health, helping me track my progress and adjust my fitness routine accordingly. And while I've been struggling with sedentary work due to COVID-19 restrictions, the watch's tracking features have motivated me to stay active.

**The Power of Ecosystem: How All the Pieces Fit Together**

When it comes to my fitness journey, I believe that having a cohesive ecosystem is key. Just as a rainforest or reef requires all its individual parts to function harmoniously, my body and gadgets need to work in tandem for optimal results. Whether it's a phone, watch, or third-party app, each component plays a vital role in helping me reach my goals.

**The Editing Process: Bringing it All Together**

Now that I've finished recording this article, it's time to edit the footage and compile it into a cohesive piece. I'll be using Adobe Premiere Pro on my iMac Pro to create the final cut, and once I'm satisfied with the result, I'll share it with all of you through AirDrop.

**The Future: Exploring New Features and Possibilities**

As I look to the future, there are several features that I'd love to see integrated into Apple Watch. One key area is sleep data – more detailed insights would go a long way in helping me better understand my body's needs. Additionally, I think it would be fantastic if the watch could track my recovery progress and provide personalized recommendations for improvement.

**Conclusion: A Journey of Self-Discovery**

My journey with the Apple Watch has been nothing short of transformative. From fitness apps to sleep data, each component has helped me develop a deeper understanding of my body and its needs. As I continue on this path of self-discovery, I'm excited to see where the future takes us and how our trusty gadgets will enable us to reach new heights in our pursuit of wellness.

**The Final Thoughts**

If you have any questions or comments about this piece or anything else related to fitness apps, Apple Watch, or wellness, please feel free to leave them below. Constructive criticism is always welcome, and I love chatting with you all on social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter. Thanks for watching, and I'll catch you in the next article!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eni'm really excited to talk to you this week about that ecosystem we love or lament or both you've seen videos which talk about the products and hardware analysis on apple watch or being the gateway to apple addiction blinding us to the much valley-hood apple tax but i really want to take a practical look at what it is that locks so many of us in you know where the rubber meets the road or or stair climber my heart is definitely in this and i know many of you might say the same so let's discuss apple's ecosystem through a little project i'm calling apple for life and i i know i know if that sounds too much like hyperbole little corny hold on tight i'll make it make sense i don't live to tech i use tech to help me live it's a tool thus apple for life so this started out as me doing a getting fit for summer piece but that's kind of like yo-yo dieting it isn't sustainable and the longer outlook is better for you over the long haul life is a marathon not a sprint right so you want to get metabolically fit and stay that way metabolically fit meaning what you look like on the inside is more important than what societal standard you meet on the outside in order to do that you might need to do some planning and maybe some research check you want to track and keep up with your progress to ensure what you're doing is actually working check you need something mobile so that you can keep things light if you choose to go for a fast walk a jog or or want to jump rope check apple's ecosystem has you covered on all fronts and i'm going to walk you through how i use it all the hardware my favorite fitness apps some third-party connections all of it let's get into it now a portion of this is going to be a diversion from my usual pieces this is going to be part review part vlog i'm going to try to walk you through things as i use them so some of this will cover right here in the studio and some of it's going to take place inside the gym matter of fact i'm on my lunch break and headed there right now but back inside the studio let's take a look first at the hub of it all the product which accounts for apple's largest sales according to bloomberg the iphone this is the alpine green iphone 13 pro max with the green silicone case though the good news is what i'm going to show you here works on every recent ios device on down to the se now while a lot of tech reviews tend to focus on apps like strava or runtastic maybe even nike run i see a lot of people out there hitting the iron you see it all over ig or tick-tock women want those booty or glute gains dudes want arms that look nice in a t-shirt or short sleeve button down but how do you get that one very effective route to go is resistance training moving some weight for me that means progressive overload or lifting a bit heavier each session set week month whatever works for you my favorite ios and watch os app to help me with that is called strong now i had to take a break when the pandemic hit because you know jim shut down and that was kind of my thing so i'm going to be sharing some data and graphs from 2020. i'm now back in the gym but i'm working back up to the connective tissue strength and muscle strength i'll need to get through some of those workouts i was doing so not a whole lot of chart data at the moment strong is a workout journal but so fully featured it is so much more than that first you can use it free and get access to some workout templates and some charts the depth of features here require review all its own to fully explore this app but the high level overview is that you can create a workout and start it then have rest timers between sets change weights and reps on the fly during a workout and it all sinks back to apple health after a period of time you'll be able to look at chart data showing your progress over time even giving you estimates of your one rep max based on how much you've been lifting but as we talk about apple and its ecosystem it's really the watch component the apple watch component of this iphone app which has me in love i do pay for the pro version so that i can create unlimited workout templates and access all the charts available to me but being able to create all of that on my phone then leave my phone at home or at work while i go across the street to the gym is worth its weight in gold the watch app never gets in my way follows apple's watch os design language and has a short learning curve sidebar i'm an la fitness member and their ios app also has an apple watch companion app which lets me leave the key tag and the phone behind and check in with my watch no need to download anything to apple wallet or screenshot a membership card's barcode of course the apple watch will take care of your standard cardio and it has a really good built-in interval timer for workouts but my favorite app is actually one called seconds seconds has timers that you can program that you can customize you can set it so that it it does all kinds of things for boxing workouts for jump rope workouts it has all kinds of bells and and different sounds you can use it it's very customizable and that's the one i use for like i said my boxing days or my jump rope days but on the days that i don the gloves the watch just doesn't do it i don't really like wearing it high up on my forearm because it's a little bit uncomfortable so for that i have a polar h-10 chest strap that will connect to either the watch or my phone via bluetooth obviously i use it for the phone in this case when i'm recording and working out on the bag using the seconds timer app in this case i use it connected to my iphone and then set seconds to two minute rounds with a one minute rest five rounds for a total fourteen minute workout for both my boxing workout and jump rope all data heart rates etc is sync back to apple health so not using my apple watch or apple's native workout app doesn't penalize me in terms of keeping my health logging consistent and this is another app which deserves its own review because the amount of granularity with the timers timer countdown settings sound settings and sources is phenomenal and i honestly don't feel like doing all this each time i head out but music definitely makes it easier so i rely on it heavily to get that work in and right now beats fit pro are my earbuds of choice for working out replacing my old favorites the powerbeats pro because they don't budge no matter how dynamic my activity like the powerbeats pro but now i get active noise cancelling what's great about them is that once i've connected them to any one of my icloud connected apple devices they show up as a connected device on the others and more importantly i can control their functions directly from the phone or my watch in this case i have the buds set so that i can control volume directly from them and if i need to go active noise canceling because the jim bros or giga chads are getting too loud when they miss a represent i can just hit the watch and turn that active noise cancelling on with non-apple buds that's probably the biggest missing piece is that ability to control all the functions from the watch itself but moving on to the next puzzle piece in my connected health ecosystem the rest of this i'm going to bring in the most important aspect of this exercising and that is rest and recovery as you can see here people have massage guns now yes i bought one on a day when it was on a deep sale deep discount and i do love it in addition to that i have foam rollers and occasionally i get a massage but all of that is extra unnecessary but nice if you have it in the budget but if you actually take the time to stretch scientifically speaking research shows that it does more for your recovery than all of those things and for me part of that is using the yoga workout on my watch and just doing some basic stretches on my own and the other part of it is using my apple fitness plus subscription and their yoga and pilates workouts yoga with janelle is a treat and having done pilates and always been the only guy in the room pilates with daryl is a refreshing change and the connections between watch os and tvos are everything unlike me i'm terrible at yoga everything just works my dad is right there on the screen no need to glance at my watch and i really like the trainers apple has selected they look like all of us and i actually like the playlist they curate which i can download to my ios and watch os devices to listen to outside of the workouts yeah that ecosystem apple music subscription required for that by the way after a good stretch it's time to get to bed now this is the main area where i'd actually like to see more from apple i want to see how rest affects my recovery and my body's readiness to get after it again the next day or not with apple watch i get heart rate and breathing rates for sleep data along with a couple other data points but i'd love to see sleep stage info and of course that hrv data used to help determine along with sleep data how ready my body is to be tortured again products from garmin and fitbit offer this already both free and with a subscription for detailed sleep data though no worries because autosleep is a beautiful app which provides sleep stage info and is one of the most beautifully designed watch os apps i've used it follows the circular watch os design language with an aesthetic that is bright easily readable and feels consistent with the rest of the watch experience and best of all it has my favorite feature which i'd also like to see added to apple watch and that is smart alarms basically an alarm which wakes you according to your sleep cycle when implemented properly this has worked very well for me on other platforms the watch wakes you within 30 minutes or so of your desired wake-up time based on when you're in a light sleep cycle i've found i wake up less groggy when i use this and i don't know if that's the placebo effect or if it's really working but i can tell you that i've been using this for years and that it would be a long standing placebo effect if it isn't actually effective but i'll take it either way now we all may have data points which are most important to us but for me after accumulating all this data i'm coming back to the hub which is my phone the two most important metrics for me are vo2 max and heart rate variability in the apple health app i have type 2 diabetes and that makes me a higher risk for coronary issues so making sure my ticker is strong is very important and thanks to kovit and his sedentary job my cardio fitness is lacking but i'm working on it and this helps me track that progress and at the end of the day that's what's most important not the tech itself but what the tech enables and just like any ecosystem whether it's a rain forest a reef your body or your gadgets it's important that all the individual parts make the hole better because when one part dies or stops pulling its weight you wind up having to over compensate another area and with tech that may not be as catastrophic as it would be in a rain forest but if i'm spending hard and money i don't want to have to rig things and try to fit square pegs into my program to make things work my own personal story i was a die-hard galaxy note fan until the iphone 10 and apple watch series 3. i'm a big phone guy and the combination of testing the series three with a phone which finally fit my size preference from apple the the watch was the final piece i needed to get me to switch and make apple my overall ecosystem of choice now i'm gonna finish all this up all this shooting and all the footage i'm gathering and collecting here for this and and then i'm gonna edit it all on my imac pro here and when i'm done i'm going to export at ease to you know get y'all to watch this piece by air dropping it to my iphone after i've cut it in premiere pro then i'm going to post that to my ig and my twitter feeds i'll see you all there and if you have any questions about this piece about the ecosystem about fitness apps about anything i've talked about please feel free to leave those in the comments constructive criticism too sure or hit me on ig or twitter i love chatting with you all thank you for watching i'll catch you on the next videoi'm really excited to talk to you this week about that ecosystem we love or lament or both you've seen videos which talk about the products and hardware analysis on apple watch or being the gateway to apple addiction blinding us to the much valley-hood apple tax but i really want to take a practical look at what it is that locks so many of us in you know where the rubber meets the road or or stair climber my heart is definitely in this and i know many of you might say the same so let's discuss apple's ecosystem through a little project i'm calling apple for life and i i know i know if that sounds too much like hyperbole little corny hold on tight i'll make it make sense i don't live to tech i use tech to help me live it's a tool thus apple for life so this started out as me doing a getting fit for summer piece but that's kind of like yo-yo dieting it isn't sustainable and the longer outlook is better for you over the long haul life is a marathon not a sprint right so you want to get metabolically fit and stay that way metabolically fit meaning what you look like on the inside is more important than what societal standard you meet on the outside in order to do that you might need to do some planning and maybe some research check you want to track and keep up with your progress to ensure what you're doing is actually working check you need something mobile so that you can keep things light if you choose to go for a fast walk a jog or or want to jump rope check apple's ecosystem has you covered on all fronts and i'm going to walk you through how i use it all the hardware my favorite fitness apps some third-party connections all of it let's get into it now a portion of this is going to be a diversion from my usual pieces this is going to be part review part vlog i'm going to try to walk you through things as i use them so some of this will cover right here in the studio and some of it's going to take place inside the gym matter of fact i'm on my lunch break and headed there right now but back inside the studio let's take a look first at the hub of it all the product which accounts for apple's largest sales according to bloomberg the iphone this is the alpine green iphone 13 pro max with the green silicone case though the good news is what i'm going to show you here works on every recent ios device on down to the se now while a lot of tech reviews tend to focus on apps like strava or runtastic maybe even nike run i see a lot of people out there hitting the iron you see it all over ig or tick-tock women want those booty or glute gains dudes want arms that look nice in a t-shirt or short sleeve button down but how do you get that one very effective route to go is resistance training moving some weight for me that means progressive overload or lifting a bit heavier each session set week month whatever works for you my favorite ios and watch os app to help me with that is called strong now i had to take a break when the pandemic hit because you know jim shut down and that was kind of my thing so i'm going to be sharing some data and graphs from 2020. i'm now back in the gym but i'm working back up to the connective tissue strength and muscle strength i'll need to get through some of those workouts i was doing so not a whole lot of chart data at the moment strong is a workout journal but so fully featured it is so much more than that first you can use it free and get access to some workout templates and some charts the depth of features here require review all its own to fully explore this app but the high level overview is that you can create a workout and start it then have rest timers between sets change weights and reps on the fly during a workout and it all sinks back to apple health after a period of time you'll be able to look at chart data showing your progress over time even giving you estimates of your one rep max based on how much you've been lifting but as we talk about apple and its ecosystem it's really the watch component the apple watch component of this iphone app which has me in love i do pay for the pro version so that i can create unlimited workout templates and access all the charts available to me but being able to create all of that on my phone then leave my phone at home or at work while i go across the street to the gym is worth its weight in gold the watch app never gets in my way follows apple's watch os design language and has a short learning curve sidebar i'm an la fitness member and their ios app also has an apple watch companion app which lets me leave the key tag and the phone behind and check in with my watch no need to download anything to apple wallet or screenshot a membership card's barcode of course the apple watch will take care of your standard cardio and it has a really good built-in interval timer for workouts but my favorite app is actually one called seconds seconds has timers that you can program that you can customize you can set it so that it it does all kinds of things for boxing workouts for jump rope workouts it has all kinds of bells and and different sounds you can use it it's very customizable and that's the one i use for like i said my boxing days or my jump rope days but on the days that i don the gloves the watch just doesn't do it i don't really like wearing it high up on my forearm because it's a little bit uncomfortable so for that i have a polar h-10 chest strap that will connect to either the watch or my phone via bluetooth obviously i use it for the phone in this case when i'm recording and working out on the bag using the seconds timer app in this case i use it connected to my iphone and then set seconds to two minute rounds with a one minute rest five rounds for a total fourteen minute workout for both my boxing workout and jump rope all data heart rates etc is sync back to apple health so not using my apple watch or apple's native workout app doesn't penalize me in terms of keeping my health logging consistent and this is another app which deserves its own review because the amount of granularity with the timers timer countdown settings sound settings and sources is phenomenal and i honestly don't feel like doing all this each time i head out but music definitely makes it easier so i rely on it heavily to get that work in and right now beats fit pro are my earbuds of choice for working out replacing my old favorites the powerbeats pro because they don't budge no matter how dynamic my activity like the powerbeats pro but now i get active noise cancelling what's great about them is that once i've connected them to any one of my icloud connected apple devices they show up as a connected device on the others and more importantly i can control their functions directly from the phone or my watch in this case i have the buds set so that i can control volume directly from them and if i need to go active noise canceling because the jim bros or giga chads are getting too loud when they miss a represent i can just hit the watch and turn that active noise cancelling on with non-apple buds that's probably the biggest missing piece is that ability to control all the functions from the watch itself but moving on to the next puzzle piece in my connected health ecosystem the rest of this i'm going to bring in the most important aspect of this exercising and that is rest and recovery as you can see here people have massage guns now yes i bought one on a day when it was on a deep sale deep discount and i do love it in addition to that i have foam rollers and occasionally i get a massage but all of that is extra unnecessary but nice if you have it in the budget but if you actually take the time to stretch scientifically speaking research shows that it does more for your recovery than all of those things and for me part of that is using the yoga workout on my watch and just doing some basic stretches on my own and the other part of it is using my apple fitness plus subscription and their yoga and pilates workouts yoga with janelle is a treat and having done pilates and always been the only guy in the room pilates with daryl is a refreshing change and the connections between watch os and tvos are everything unlike me i'm terrible at yoga everything just works my dad is right there on the screen no need to glance at my watch and i really like the trainers apple has selected they look like all of us and i actually like the playlist they curate which i can download to my ios and watch os devices to listen to outside of the workouts yeah that ecosystem apple music subscription required for that by the way after a good stretch it's time to get to bed now this is the main area where i'd actually like to see more from apple i want to see how rest affects my recovery and my body's readiness to get after it again the next day or not with apple watch i get heart rate and breathing rates for sleep data along with a couple other data points but i'd love to see sleep stage info and of course that hrv data used to help determine along with sleep data how ready my body is to be tortured again products from garmin and fitbit offer this already both free and with a subscription for detailed sleep data though no worries because autosleep is a beautiful app which provides sleep stage info and is one of the most beautifully designed watch os apps i've used it follows the circular watch os design language with an aesthetic that is bright easily readable and feels consistent with the rest of the watch experience and best of all it has my favorite feature which i'd also like to see added to apple watch and that is smart alarms basically an alarm which wakes you according to your sleep cycle when implemented properly this has worked very well for me on other platforms the watch wakes you within 30 minutes or so of your desired wake-up time based on when you're in a light sleep cycle i've found i wake up less groggy when i use this and i don't know if that's the placebo effect or if it's really working but i can tell you that i've been using this for years and that it would be a long standing placebo effect if it isn't actually effective but i'll take it either way now we all may have data points which are most important to us but for me after accumulating all this data i'm coming back to the hub which is my phone the two most important metrics for me are vo2 max and heart rate variability in the apple health app i have type 2 diabetes and that makes me a higher risk for coronary issues so making sure my ticker is strong is very important and thanks to kovit and his sedentary job my cardio fitness is lacking but i'm working on it and this helps me track that progress and at the end of the day that's what's most important not the tech itself but what the tech enables and just like any ecosystem whether it's a rain forest a reef your body or your gadgets it's important that all the individual parts make the hole better because when one part dies or stops pulling its weight you wind up having to over compensate another area and with tech that may not be as catastrophic as it would be in a rain forest but if i'm spending hard and money i don't want to have to rig things and try to fit square pegs into my program to make things work my own personal story i was a die-hard galaxy note fan until the iphone 10 and apple watch series 3. i'm a big phone guy and the combination of testing the series three with a phone which finally fit my size preference from apple the the watch was the final piece i needed to get me to switch and make apple my overall ecosystem of choice now i'm gonna finish all this up all this shooting and all the footage i'm gathering and collecting here for this and and then i'm gonna edit it all on my imac pro here and when i'm done i'm going to export at ease to you know get y'all to watch this piece by air dropping it to my iphone after i've cut it in premiere pro then i'm going to post that to my ig and my twitter feeds i'll see you all there and if you have any questions about this piece about the ecosystem about fitness apps about anything i've talked about please feel free to leave those in the comments constructive criticism too sure or hit me on ig or twitter i love chatting with you all thank you for watching i'll catch you on the next video\n"