Watch SE and VO2 max

Apple says;

Your Apple Watch gives you a cardio fitness ESTIMATE by measuring how hard your heart is working during an outdoor walk, run or hike.

VO2 max relates to maximal exertion. So you’ll need to log a pretty intensive workout to generate a reading. And you’ll need to sustain it for at least 20 minutes.

Tighten the watch band a touch and clean the sensors on the bottom of the watch..

Reset fitness calibration.

Input a VO2 max figure manually based off your last record from the health app then re-calibrate the watch.

Put the watch in airplane mode,do a walking/running or hiking workout of at least 20 minutes,when you've finished turn airplane mode off and let the watch sync the data to the phone.

Other foum members solutions;

Put my phone in airplane mode and made sure that bluetooth also was off. Normal airplane mode won't disable bluetooth if you have an Apple Watch. I checked on the watch that it was completely cut off from the phone.Did a 25 minute outdoor walk.

And that did it! When the walk was finished I had a VO2 Max reading with the watch as data source!

Today I did another walk, the exact same route, but with my watch fully connected to the phone. After the walk I got a new data point, so it seems to be working as it should.

Puzzl1ng

User level:Level 1

(21 points)

Apple WatchSpeciality level out of ten: 0

Oct 20, 2020 11:50 AM in response to Puzzl1ng

Update: 2020/10/20

Finally, a solution!

A couple of days ago, I went for a walk. I started the Workout-Outdoors Walk but for some reason I forgot to link the watch to the iphone as I always do and kept it on airplane mode. I walked for about 25 minutes then synced with the phone not expecting anything to happen. I was surprised to see a VO2 max recorded.

Emboldened, I kept the watch linked to the iphone and went for another 25 minute walk hoping to get another VO2 max reading. Surprisingly, *no* VO2 max was recorded during the second walk.

Since that day, I have done a few runs and multiple walks while keeping the watch in airplane mode in all of them: each one recorded a VO2 max without a problem.

So put your watch on airplane mode, go for a run/walk, and see if it helps.

Oct 1, 2020 4:39 AM in response to Scheldon

Hi,

I managed to get my Apple Watch to record a VO2 Max today. I've done a number of things recently so I'll list the key things for others to see if this works for them.

I manually added a VO2 Max entry at the start of the week.

I completed my first run duration of over 20 mins, hoping that would trigger something. It didn't.

I immediately completed a Walk of over 20 mins. My Apple Watch updated the VO2 Max immediately after the Walk.

See https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT211856

Also reset your fitness calibration data

From your iPhone>Watch>Privacy>Reset Fitness Calibration Data>Tap this

You will just get a confirmation box that tells you that your metrics will not be as good if you do this.

Tap confirm and do it. You will get nothing else, no confirmation but it is done.

Then go for a 20 minute outdoor run or walk using the workout app at your normal speed on a flat road/path etc

This will re-calibrate the watch

If the Vo2Max is working it will show the next time you do a run. Not the time you calibrate, but the next workout.

This information comes from:

https://www.cultofmac.com/610268/vo2-max-apple-watch-aerobic-fitness/

Apple Watch may log your VO2 max, but you can’t currently check it on the watch itself. To see your stats, you must use the Health app on your iPhone. Go to Health Data > Activity and scroll down to find it. If you have readings for the current month, they will be highlighted in a big orange box. If you have no VO2 max data, it will be languishing at the bottom of the list, under No Recorded Data.

If you can’t find any VO2 max readings in the Health app, that is probably because you have not yet logged the right kind of workouts with your watch. Only two workout types can produce an estimated VO2 max on Apple Watch: Outdoor Walk and Outdoor Run. (However, I believe Hiking also works.)

VO2 max relates to maximal exertion. So you’ll need to log a pretty intensive workout to generate a reading. And you’ll need to sustain it for at least 20 minutes.