Outdoor cycling not credited as exercise with Apple Watch series 6

I have the same issue. At first I thought it was because I wasn’t getting my heart rate up enough on a fairly flat ride, but today’s was a nice hilly ride, my heart rate was up and was using the Apple workout app with my phone with me. Not really any help for you, but just to let you know you are not alone.

Yes, again, this is not a great help but I have had the same problem over and over again with the walking and cycling. Yesterday I rode my bike for over two hours with plenty of difficult uphills, my average heart rate was in the 150s, my mileage was above 6mi in either direction. My exercise ring clocked in 24 mins. SMH I was so disappointed. So, later I put my watch on Mixed Cardio and went about regular activity that included sitting on the toilet for a few minutes and my ring closed. This is not right. Apple needs to change this immediately. This device is way to expensive and high tech not to be able to function properly. Very frustrating. And I feel like my fist gen watch tracked way better. So, this could be corrected in an update.

There is clearly a glitch between the phone and the watch. I just finished a 12 mile ride in 1 hour, and my watch only shows 1 minute of exercise in the Exercise Ring. When I go to the iWatch fitness app on the phone, in the summary all the data from the Outdoor Ride is shown accurately, except on the Exercise Ring. Apple needs to fix this.

I’m having the same problem my outdoor bike ride never log correctly. And it’s beyond frustrating.

Apple fix this, it’s annoying. By the price we pay for the watch it should not bring this kind of frustration.

I now recorded two more rides, one at 8.2 mph and the second 7.0 mph. They we both counted in as exercise time as well.

Did you check in the Health app, under Activity > Exercise Minutes > Show All Data > <pick a date>

if you see a continuous set of minutes recorded in there? It does not mention the workout but are there gaps in terms of timestamps?

Going up, I guess the Data Sources & Access section is fine too?

Its pretty odd that this happens with outdoor cycling only in your case.

It says “Every full minute of movement that equals or exceeds the intensity of a brisk walk counts toward your daily Exercise and Move goals. “ so I would check what your average walking heart rate is in Apple Health. But I’ve noticed even when my heart rate is well above a brisk walk and into cardio, it doesn’t fully credit. The fitness expert I spoke to at Apple via telephone support said it also looks at pace. So even if your heart rate is up, if you have it matched what pace it thinks you should be going at it will not credit exercise minutes Nor could she explain an easy way to figure out what that magical pace is.

1. On the iPhone, please go to > Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services > Motion Calibration & Distance, and make sure that's enabled. More about that under the "Check your settings" part of this link: Calibrating your Apple Watch for improved Workout and Activity accuracy
2. Please also go to the Apple Watch app on the iPhone > Privacy > Fitness Tracking, and make sure that's turned on as well. More about tracking workouts here: Track workouts and stay healthy with Apple Watch

See below my respective results, same watch. This was a very easy short ride, but as you can see still fully credited.

Are all your other workouts working fine in this regard, or is this issue specific to outdoor cycling?

Have you thought of unpairing and re-pairing yet? That would bring your watch back to factory level settings, while keeping your apps and data intact. The first unpairing step is covered in here and then just follow by re-pairing afterwards.

Unpair and erase your Apple Watch - Apple Support

Here's also some detail how the backup works:

Back up your Apple Watch - Apple Support

For reference - before the ride:

After the ride:

More detail on workout:

I have the exact same issue. On Sunday we rode 12kms for 64 minutes. My average heart rate was 154 bpm. My exercise ring only credited me 9 minutes!!! So disappointing! I checked all the settings as well, everything is ok. It works fine with other types of workouts. Part of Apple's solution says to "let your arm swing naturally" but obviously if you're biking, your arm doesn't swing which I think is part of the problem. Apple needs to fix this. From now on, I will use the "other" workout. Very frustrating.

Have you calibrated your watch already:

Get the most accurate measurements using your Apple Watch - Apple Support

It is true that outdoor cycling will not collect as much exercise as "Other", if you stopped at traffic lights, lost GPS signal temporariry, or something like that. Did you wear your iPhone with you by the way? That can improve accuracy as well.

However some minutes should definitely be recorded in any case. If that is not the case, I would suggest unpairing and re-pairing to bring back the factory settings, while keeping your apps and data intact.

Nope. This is the most recent discussion I have found. It's weird that as a work out it records everything fine in Fitness, showing my avg. heart rate well into cardio, the time and distance, even the lovely map, the calories (which counts towards the Move goal), but not exercise. Clearly a software glitch. I'm reporting it here (and encourage others to): https://www.apple.com/feedback/watch.html

App,e doesn’t read these forums, just other users. I encourage you to send feedback via this form (I have, but the more they get, the more seriously they’ll take the problem): https://www.apple.com/feedback/watch.html

This happened to both me and my husband today while doing an uphill climb, logged as an outdoor cycling workout (see screenshot below). Only about 10 minutes of each our workouts counted towards exercise and it also seemed like it wasn’t counting as many active calories towards our move ring based on our heart rates. Super frustrating!

On today’s ride, I used both the outdoor cycle function on Apple Watch AND the Komoot app. Here are the results. Between the two, it records all the data. The move

is correct on this ride because I stopped often while training my dog to run with me.