Using Apple Watch for Leg Day and Strength Training Workout

It's good that the watch could pick it up like this and again I couldn't do regular squats because the bench was in use but this is good enough for me again. Elevated heart rate I guess that's why they say leg day is so important. I also tried to use a leg press machine now even though the watch isn't even moving, the sensors have to be picking up some elevated heart rate because I'm still getting good calorie burn here. So while you watch me struggle with this arm workout, I thought I should mention a couple things first.

The Heart Rate Sensor: Keep it Tight

To get the most accurate readings from your Apple Watch's heart rate sensor, it's essential to keep it tight on your skin. Every time I worked out, I would tighten the watch band up just by one notch to make sure that I was getting good contact. It's still comfortable, but it makes a difference. You want it to be tight and not too loose, as this can affect the accuracy of your heart rate readings.

Before Showering: Not Just About Water Resistance

I would recommend taking your Apple Watch off before showering. It's not about water resistance; I mean, I've showered with this thing every single day, and there's no problem. However, I've noticed that every time I come out of the shower, I have like 40 or 50 calories burned, and I've had like two minutes of exercise. This is likely due to the fact that when you're showering and shampooing your hair, you're just moving your watch around, and the watch thinks you're doing a workout when you're really not.

Battery Drain: A Small Price to Pay

When using the workout app for about an hour, I drain the battery about 10%. This is because I look at the screen a lot just kind of see what I'm doing. That's what you'll get – a 10% drain for an hour.

Workout App Features and Limitations

I did some push-ups and crunches but rented a space on the SD card so I couldn't get footage of it. However, I'll put up the numbers in case you're interested. At the end of the workout, you press "end," and you get a little summary of your workout. There's something called "resting calories" that these calories are not added to your red ring. If you're just looking at your red ring to see how many calories you've burned over your workout, it'll be a little bit lower than the actual calories spent.

Strength Training App and Potential Updates

There's probably some great strength training apps out there already that I haven't looked into. However, Apple is likely to add more features to their fitness platform in the future, including the ability to challenge friends with fitness goals. For now, the current workout app for the Apple Watch is decent for casual users but might not be ideal for everyone.

Cardio vs. Strength Training

A lot of the ads for the Apple Watch focus on cardio-based fitness, such as running and biking. However, it's actually pretty decent for tracking casual strength training as well. While it may not provide the most accurate metrics for every rep you do, it's still a great tool for average gym users who want to track their progress.

Conclusion: Is the Apple Watch Useful for Strength Training?

The Apple watch still feels really optional to me; it's nice to have metrics when you're working out, and I think for a handful of Apple watch owners, this will encourage them to work out more or just be more active. However, for the average consumer, fitness is not that big of a deal. Nevertheless, I was curious to see how the Apple watch would fare for strength training, and it seems like it's decent – but not perfect.

Additional Information from the Author

I hope this answers some of your questions if you had any, and if you have other questions or comments, type them below, and I'll do my best to reply. As always, I hope you guys liked it if you liked it give me some thumbs, and if you loved it, give me some subs. It's been nice, and I'll see you guys next time.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey how's it going guys this is Dave 2d so the Apple watch has been out for a little while now and as I mentioned in one of my earlier videos I think the fitness tracking features are one of the biggest strengths of the Apple watch now Apple markets the Apple watch in a variety of different ways they mark it as a fashion thing they market it as a status thing but if you notice a lot of the marketing on this product is based on Fitness so they have a dedicated Fitness watch the sport version they have multiple bands like sport bands of different colors they had that ex model who runs marathons her name was Christy Turlington burns and they also have a dedicated workout app to track various fitness activities so things like biking rowing walking running using an elliptical stair stepper so all of these things are obviously cardio oriented but I wanted to see how this watch would do for strength training because I'm not a super fit person I would consider myself like relatively active but I wanted to know how good the Apple watch is for strength training because that's all I ever do if I make it to the gym so I made a video here it is let's take a look at how the watch tracks Fitness when you open up the activity app you can see some rings so just ignore the blue one the only two we really need to focus on are the red ring and the green ring the red ring is what Apple calls move it's basically like a calorie counter and based on things like gender weight and fitness level the watch will assign you a target goal that you try to reach each day my goal is 620 calories and the green ring is the exercise ring which is a counter for how many minutes you've exercised that day so the watch gives you an unchangeable goal of thirty minutes that's what you aim for and because I did a workout this morning I'm over the 30 minute mark and for both of these things you can swipe the screen to see an hourly breakdown of when you did what so the goal of each day is to fill up the red and the green ring by being active now to track a workout you have to start the workout app within that app underneath the list of super boring cardio workouts there's an option called other and since there's no strength training option that's what I've currently use to track these workouts if you hit that you get this message it's probably worded but basically what it means is that when you use this option the watch will rely only on its sensors to determine your calorie burn so if you're jumping around and being really active it'll record that but if there isn't much motion or if your heart rate isn't elevated then it's going to treat your workout like a low calorie walk does that make sense all right so I want to preface this part of the video with two things first I had to film this footage in some really dim lighting because other people were using the gym and I didn't want to be that douchebag turning on all the lights just to kind of film himself working out and secondly please don't make fun of my lack of fitness I made this video to be informative and not to ask if you bros lifts alright so on screen I have some numbers the calories burnt that the watch measured the time I spent doing it and the heart rate that the watch measured after the workout so for all of these exercises I did three sets around ten reps each and I just wrote down the numbers I did a lot of back exercises I don't even know why now keep in mind that I took breaks in between each set I tried to keep it around a minute but sometimes when I was setting up the camera and stuff stretched for like two or three minutes but the workout app continues to run and because your heart rate is still elevated during these breaks it still counts as calorie burn and because the workout app timer is still going it obviously counts towards that green exercise ring chest workout I couldn't use the bench because some other dude was using it that night when I filmed it but I'm pretty sure the fitness tracking would be very similar either way now my heart rate measured really low on this one and correspondingly my calorie burn was a little low as well and the same thing goes for the dumbbell flyes I tried both of these exercises for 4 sets and to be honest I had to use lower and lower weights because I was just getting super tired doing this but for whatever reason I just wasn't getting good numbers my heart rate was always low and my calories were correspondingly low so looking at the resources online I really think these should be higher numbers but I think the watch wasn't detecting my heart rate properly now interestingly my heart rate was super high during lunges I always struggled with these things because I have pretty scrawny legs but it's crazy how high my heart rate was going now I've used a Fitbit before with pretty similar results and I think this is just the way it is I think lunges are just really good workouts but it's good that the watch could pick it up like this and again I couldn't do regular squats because the bench was in use but this is good enough for me again elevated heart rate I guess that's why they say leg day is so important I also tried to use a leg press machine now even though the watch isn't even moving the sensors have to be picking up some elevated heart rate because I'm still getting good calorie burn here so while you watch me struggle with this arm workout I thought I should mention a couple things first the heart rate sensor you got to keep it tight on your skin so every time I worked out I would tighten the watch band up just by one notch to make sure that I was getting good contact it's still comfortable but it makes a difference you want it to be tight and another thing if you want your fitness tracking to be as accurate as possible I would recommend taking it off before you shower it's not about water resistance I mean I've showered with this thing every single day and there's no problem but I've noticed that every time I come out of the shower I have like 40 or 50 calories burned and I've had like two minutes of exercise I think when you're showering and you're shampooing your hair you're just moving your watch around and it thinks you're doing a workout when you're really not so unless you want to cheat I would take it off before you shower and one other thing when I use the workout app for about an hour I drain the battery about 10% I mean I look at the screen a lot just kind of see what I'm doing but that's what you're going to get a 10% drain for an hour I also did push up some crunches but I rented a space on the SD card so I couldn't get footage of it but I'll just put up the numbers in case you're interested so at the end of the workout you pressed end and you get a little summary of your workout there's a thing here called resting calories these calories are not added to your red ring so if you're just looking at your red ring to see how many calories you've burned over your workout it's going to be a little bit lower than the actual calories that you spent and there's probably some really great strength training apps out there already I just haven't looked into it you can open up the activity app and see a record of all your fitness metrics you can see metrics for the day and there's also a log of what you've done in the past I think it'll be kind of interesting for some people to see months or even years of this data you can also go into one of the previous days and see metrics for the workout you did that day and lastly there's some achievement rewards you can earn by doing fitness stuff I wish there was a way to challenge your friends and stuff with fitness goals like some fitness platforms have but I think Apple will add that feature down the line a lot of the ads for the Apple watch focus on cardio based fitness of things like running and biking but it turns out that it's actually pretty decent for tracking casual strength training as well I mean it's not super accurate you're not going to have amazing metrics for every rep that you're doing but for the average you know just average gym user this is actually pretty good device it keeps track of how much time you spend exercising and it keeps track of your calorie that you calories that you spent over the course of the workout now there are some pickups some things like heartrate sensing and the fact that your calorie count is always going to be a little bit lower than what it should be just because you're kind of burning energy over the course of the day after strength training that the watch doesn't pick up but in general this is actually a pretty good device but I'd like to see a software update from Apple just to give another option in the workout app for specifically strength training that'd be nice now does this strength training feature kind of make it a useful device I'd say no the Apple watch still feels really optional to me it's nice to have metrics when you're working out and I think for a handful of Apple watch owners this will encourage them to work out more or just be more active but in general for the average consumer fitness is not that big of a deal but I was really curious to see how the Apple watch would fare for strength training and I guess now we know so I hope that answered some of your questions if you had any and if you have other questions or comments type them below and I'll do my best to reply and as always I hope you guys liked it if you liked it give me some thumbs and if you loved it give me some subs it's been nice and I'll see you guys next time youhey how's it going guys this is Dave 2d so the Apple watch has been out for a little while now and as I mentioned in one of my earlier videos I think the fitness tracking features are one of the biggest strengths of the Apple watch now Apple markets the Apple watch in a variety of different ways they mark it as a fashion thing they market it as a status thing but if you notice a lot of the marketing on this product is based on Fitness so they have a dedicated Fitness watch the sport version they have multiple bands like sport bands of different colors they had that ex model who runs marathons her name was Christy Turlington burns and they also have a dedicated workout app to track various fitness activities so things like biking rowing walking running using an elliptical stair stepper so all of these things are obviously cardio oriented but I wanted to see how this watch would do for strength training because I'm not a super fit person I would consider myself like relatively active but I wanted to know how good the Apple watch is for strength training because that's all I ever do if I make it to the gym so I made a video here it is let's take a look at how the watch tracks Fitness when you open up the activity app you can see some rings so just ignore the blue one the only two we really need to focus on are the red ring and the green ring the red ring is what Apple calls move it's basically like a calorie counter and based on things like gender weight and fitness level the watch will assign you a target goal that you try to reach each day my goal is 620 calories and the green ring is the exercise ring which is a counter for how many minutes you've exercised that day so the watch gives you an unchangeable goal of thirty minutes that's what you aim for and because I did a workout this morning I'm over the 30 minute mark and for both of these things you can swipe the screen to see an hourly breakdown of when you did what so the goal of each day is to fill up the red and the green ring by being active now to track a workout you have to start the workout app within that app underneath the list of super boring cardio workouts there's an option called other and since there's no strength training option that's what I've currently use to track these workouts if you hit that you get this message it's probably worded but basically what it means is that when you use this option the watch will rely only on its sensors to determine your calorie burn so if you're jumping around and being really active it'll record that but if there isn't much motion or if your heart rate isn't elevated then it's going to treat your workout like a low calorie walk does that make sense all right so I want to preface this part of the video with two things first I had to film this footage in some really dim lighting because other people were using the gym and I didn't want to be that douchebag turning on all the lights just to kind of film himself working out and secondly please don't make fun of my lack of fitness I made this video to be informative and not to ask if you bros lifts alright so on screen I have some numbers the calories burnt that the watch measured the time I spent doing it and the heart rate that the watch measured after the workout so for all of these exercises I did three sets around ten reps each and I just wrote down the numbers I did a lot of back exercises I don't even know why now keep in mind that I took breaks in between each set I tried to keep it around a minute but sometimes when I was setting up the camera and stuff stretched for like two or three minutes but the workout app continues to run and because your heart rate is still elevated during these breaks it still counts as calorie burn and because the workout app timer is still going it obviously counts towards that green exercise ring chest workout I couldn't use the bench because some other dude was using it that night when I filmed it but I'm pretty sure the fitness tracking would be very similar either way now my heart rate measured really low on this one and correspondingly my calorie burn was a little low as well and the same thing goes for the dumbbell flyes I tried both of these exercises for 4 sets and to be honest I had to use lower and lower weights because I was just getting super tired doing this but for whatever reason I just wasn't getting good numbers my heart rate was always low and my calories were correspondingly low so looking at the resources online I really think these should be higher numbers but I think the watch wasn't detecting my heart rate properly now interestingly my heart rate was super high during lunges I always struggled with these things because I have pretty scrawny legs but it's crazy how high my heart rate was going now I've used a Fitbit before with pretty similar results and I think this is just the way it is I think lunges are just really good workouts but it's good that the watch could pick it up like this and again I couldn't do regular squats because the bench was in use but this is good enough for me again elevated heart rate I guess that's why they say leg day is so important I also tried to use a leg press machine now even though the watch isn't even moving the sensors have to be picking up some elevated heart rate because I'm still getting good calorie burn here so while you watch me struggle with this arm workout I thought I should mention a couple things first the heart rate sensor you got to keep it tight on your skin so every time I worked out I would tighten the watch band up just by one notch to make sure that I was getting good contact it's still comfortable but it makes a difference you want it to be tight and another thing if you want your fitness tracking to be as accurate as possible I would recommend taking it off before you shower it's not about water resistance I mean I've showered with this thing every single day and there's no problem but I've noticed that every time I come out of the shower I have like 40 or 50 calories burned and I've had like two minutes of exercise I think when you're showering and you're shampooing your hair you're just moving your watch around and it thinks you're doing a workout when you're really not so unless you want to cheat I would take it off before you shower and one other thing when I use the workout app for about an hour I drain the battery about 10% I mean I look at the screen a lot just kind of see what I'm doing but that's what you're going to get a 10% drain for an hour I also did push up some crunches but I rented a space on the SD card so I couldn't get footage of it but I'll just put up the numbers in case you're interested so at the end of the workout you pressed end and you get a little summary of your workout there's a thing here called resting calories these calories are not added to your red ring so if you're just looking at your red ring to see how many calories you've burned over your workout it's going to be a little bit lower than the actual calories that you spent and there's probably some really great strength training apps out there already I just haven't looked into it you can open up the activity app and see a record of all your fitness metrics you can see metrics for the day and there's also a log of what you've done in the past I think it'll be kind of interesting for some people to see months or even years of this data you can also go into one of the previous days and see metrics for the workout you did that day and lastly there's some achievement rewards you can earn by doing fitness stuff I wish there was a way to challenge your friends and stuff with fitness goals like some fitness platforms have but I think Apple will add that feature down the line a lot of the ads for the Apple watch focus on cardio based fitness of things like running and biking but it turns out that it's actually pretty decent for tracking casual strength training as well I mean it's not super accurate you're not going to have amazing metrics for every rep that you're doing but for the average you know just average gym user this is actually pretty good device it keeps track of how much time you spend exercising and it keeps track of your calorie that you calories that you spent over the course of the workout now there are some pickups some things like heartrate sensing and the fact that your calorie count is always going to be a little bit lower than what it should be just because you're kind of burning energy over the course of the day after strength training that the watch doesn't pick up but in general this is actually a pretty good device but I'd like to see a software update from Apple just to give another option in the workout app for specifically strength training that'd be nice now does this strength training feature kind of make it a useful device I'd say no the Apple watch still feels really optional to me it's nice to have metrics when you're working out and I think for a handful of Apple watch owners this will encourage them to work out more or just be more active but in general for the average consumer fitness is not that big of a deal but I was really curious to see how the Apple watch would fare for strength training and I guess now we know so I hope that answered some of your questions if you had any and if you have other questions or comments type them below and I'll do my best to reply and as always I hope you guys liked it if you liked it give me some thumbs and if you loved it give me some subs it's been nice and I'll see you guys next time you\n"