Transcription
The Apple watch is a great Smartwatch and a good Fitness tracker. But today I'm going to show you how to turn your Apple watch into the ultimate running companion. Let's go.
The first feature that makes the Apple watch awesome for runners is the ability to race yourself. So if you run the same route—maybe you run the same four-mile loop every couple of weeks—after you've done that route twice, it'll actually store it in your Apple watch. And whenever you get to the starting line of that route, it'll suggest that you can race yourself. You have two options: you can either race your previous attempt at that same course, or you can race your best time on that same course. This is really awesome because it gives you a chance to compare to your prior run or try to continually improve against yourself, instead of just trying to meet a certain pace. The other really cool thing is it'll show you if you're ahead of your prior time, or whatever time you're racing, or you're falling behind that time. And the other really cool feature is it'll actually tell you if you start to deviate off course, which would ruin the race or the comparison, which is really nice. Here, let me show you how to get started.
All right, so to race yourself is actually super, super easy. You just go into your outdoor run, click the three little "um" icon on the top, and scroll down. So I'm at the beginning of a 4.8-mile route that I've done recently. If I click on that, it's going to ask me, do I want to race my personal best and tell me what it was and when it was, or do I want to race my most recent time? Say "most recent," and I can just start that workout like any workout. It'll start; here's your little icon that tells you, you know, am I ahead or behind pace, how many miles are remaining—super basic, but I really love this feature because it's a great way to challenge yourself and see if you're improving or not, and by how much.
The second really cool feature about the Apple watch that makes it great for running is the ability to create custom workouts. So you can go into your Apple watch and create a custom workout trend. So maybe you always run six miles on Wednesday, and you start with a one-mile warm-up, you do four miles at a race pace, or maybe four miles worth of intervals, and then you do a one-mile cool-down. You can actually build that into your watch so you don't have to do any manual intervention—in here swiping and starting new workouts or changing to intervals or whatever—it'll just automatically do that workout for you when you select it. Here, let me show you.
All right, so if you want to create a custom workout, again you go to whatever type of workout you want to make a custom one for. So for me, I'm going to go to outdoor run, click the three dots in the top. On this one, you want to scroll all the way to the bottom, and you can create a workout here. Click that; it's going to ask you what kind of workout do you want to create. If you scroll down to the bottom again, you can say "custom." All right, and here's where you get to kind of figure out how you want your workout to look. So all right, so you can go into your warm-up, and at the bottom is the ability to just skip it and say, "Hey, I don't want to do a warm-up for this workout," but you can also pick, you know, "Hey, do I want to make it a certain distance? Do I want to have it open until I feel ready? Do I want to make it a certain time?" So I'll say "time," and then I'll say "10 minutes," and you can put an alert on it if you want an alert on certain things like how much power you're outputting, your cadence, your heart rate—you can do that here. I typically just leave that off. So I now have that. Go back, and then in the middle here, this purple icon, you click that to add whatever type of workout you want. I'm going to say I want to add "work" instead of "recovery," and now you can pick between time, distance, or just an open. For this one, I would say maybe distance, and here I can say I want to run—I don't know, we'll say four miles—done. And then you can add more workouts; say you want to do four miles, and then you want to do uh, certain other type of workout, or you want to say add um, you know, a recovery, or you can add repeats in here if you have a certain type of repeat you want to do, and then you pick your cool-down. So, "Hey, I want to do a, I don't know, quarter-mile cool-down," you say that, maybe I want to do one mile. Go back, and so now I have this custom workout where I warm up for 10 minutes, I do a four-mile run, and then I cool down for one mile. You can pick a title if you want to, which I'm not going to do, because swipe typing is terrible, and then you can pick what view you want to see if you want to update that or change that, so you see certain metrics while you do this custom workout; you can do that, and then you just create the workout. And now whenever you start that, it's actually going to start you with the 10-minute workout; it buzzes, you'll do your 10-minute workout, and then you'll go to the next workout in that custom path, or you can swipe to the right and click "next" to just jump past the warm-up if, for whatever reason that day, you don't want to do it, or you're you you just want to move past it. This is also really great because I often find myself doing like the same workout or the same type of workout repeatedly, repetitively, and by doing this I don't have to constantly like swipe at my watch while I'm in the middle of a workout and like lose my, you know, momentum. Instead, it's just already there, pre-built, ready to go.
The third really cool feature about the Apple watch for runners is the ability to add different types of alerts to your workout. So let's say you're on a run, and maybe you're trying to train zone two heart rate; you can set up alerts so when you go above that range or below that range, it'll actually alert you on your wrist with a little buzz or notification to help you keep in line with whatever your goal is for that workout. Same thing goes for pace and many other metrics. Here, let's let's look at it.
All right, so let's put the different notifications and alerts on for our workout. So for this one, if I go to a run, I can say hit the three buttons again, there, the three dots, and here if I scroll all the way down and tap "preferences," I can set up what alerts I want. So right now, for example, I have a nine-minute pace uh, alert put on, so it'll buzz at me whenever I am above or below that. I could set one up for heart rate, cadence, power—all of those things. I also can tell it when I want to be notified about splits, so maybe um, I want it to be, you know, a half mile, a mile and a half—I don't know, whatever—you can change what split timer or what split notifications you get; you can change it wherever you want. So I've been doing a lot of heart rate training lately, so for for example, I tend to put whenever I'm trying to do my zone two heart rate training, I put on the alert for that. Go back, and now whenever I go above or beyond zone two heart rate, it'll notify me, which makes it a lot easier to get that workout in and do it effectively because the watch is keeping me on track. Okay, so that's another great way you can customize your Apple watch to get the most out of the workout based on what kind of workout you're trying to do.
The fourth awesome thing about the Apple watch for runners is the ability to change what metrics it reports out to you during your workout. Maybe you want to track heart rate one day, maybe you want to track pace one day, maybe you want to check your cadence, or whatever the metric; it's likely in the Apple watch. Here, let me show you how to customize your workout screens to get the most out of your workout and get the relevant data you need.
All right, so to set up what shows up on your watch face during a specific type of run, you go to that type of workout. So let's say I want to go to outdoor run, hit the three dots, scroll all the way to the bottom, "preferences" once again, and here the first button, so "outdoor run workout view." If you click that, it's going to give you some information, and here you can change what metrics show up based on that type of workout. So let's say I want to change this screen; you can change, you know, the various different types of screens; you have your heart rate screens, split screens; you can choose if you include them or not. So you have the option to select them during a workout, but if I go in here and I go "metrics," you can click the um, pencil icon, and you can change what metrics appear. So these are the ones that would appear on my watch face, and if I say maybe I don't want heart rate, if I click on it, it'll give me different options, options of what I can do; I can do paces, I can do heart rate, uh, power, stride length, vertical oscillation—all of these in-depth metrics—I can pick which ones show up on my watch face, or I can turn them off entirely. So maybe I only want to see one metric instead of the, you know, total capacity, which I think is five—oh, sorry, four—on my watch; you can just turn them all off and just see your mileage. And this is really awesome because I know for me, a lot of running is mental, and by being able to pick what metrics I see and which metrics I don't, I can really lock in on the things that are important to me and drown out all the other noise that might be affecting my mental state during a run and causing me not to perform at my optimal level.
All right, and the fifth reason why I love my Apple watch as a runner is the ability to see my workouts and see my output and performance of my workouts on a map when the workout is done. Now this one, obviously, you don't view on your Apple watch; we're actually going to go to our iPhones for this one, but let me show you how it works.
All right, so this last one's actually on your iPhone. If you go into your Activities app and pick a workout that you want to learn more about—let's say this outdoor run I did—you scroll down; this obviously gives you a lot of metrics, a lot more in-depth metrics than what you see on your Apple watch when you finish a run, and you can certainly click into them and like drive into details of power, cadence, all sorts of things for each split, which is really great in-depth information, especially for those who are really into running or trying to go for a peak goal. But what I really like, or my favorite feature, is this map functionality. So if you open this, it'll actually show you the route you ran; you can pinch to zoom and examine specific parts of a run; you can see um, each different little segment whether you worked hard or maybe you were running at a slower cadence that was a little bit easier for you. So green on this map means you're running really hard; yellow is like you're at an average pace or a medium pace for you; and then red means you're running really slow, or your your your your progress was slow. But I really like this because it can show me where I'm performing better or worse. On this one, for example, when I started my race, I was actually coming on an average pace, and when I ended it, I was on a green, which means I was working harder and going faster, so that was really cool to see. And then if I want to learn more about it, certainly I can come in here and check that my splits, and it turns out that my splits got faster as I went on; started at a 10:55 warm-up pace, ended at an 8:34 pace, 10m in—that's awesome to see. So using your Apple watch to collect the data and then using your iPhone to view the specifics is a great way to get more detailed information about your run and understand how you performed that day.
All right, so there you have it; those are the five reasons why I love the Apple watch as a running companion, and I think you will too. Try them out; let me know in the comments if you have any other cool features or functionalities that you like to use, or let me know if you think there's a better running watch out there. I'd love to hear it, and I'm definitely open to trying them. All right, I'll see you guys in the next one.