Exercise Ring in the activity app on Apple Watch

Question

Level 1

9 points

Exercise Ring in the activity app on Apple Watch

After many 3 mile walks every morning, I have noticed an inconsistency with my the Workout App and the Exercise Ring on the activity app. This morning's 54 minute walk (combination of hills and flat stretches) I only accumulated 32 minutes of exercise. I did check after the first 10 minutes of the walk, which is uphill, and the exercise ring only listed 2 minutes of exercise. 18 minutes into the walk at the first mile mark, the exercise ring was at 5 minutes.

I called Apple Care this morning and they said that the exercise ring only considers the arm movement tracked by the accelerometer, and I therefor muse have not been swinging my arm. I had assumed that the Exercise ring used heart rate in combination with movement. He said no.

In reading the article he sent me about the Activity app and a link within it to the Workout App, i spotted this paragraph:

If you need both hands while walking, for example to push a stroller, you can still earn Exercise credit by using the Workout app. The Activity app relies on arm motion and an accelerometer to track movement, whereas the Workout app uses a heart rate sensor and GPS.

This seems to imply that he Exercise App does feed into the Activity App for Exercise Credit. So my question if there is a developer from Apple on this board, what is the heart rate threshold for the Workout App to consider something Exercise Credit?

Apple Watch Sport 38mm, watchOS 1.0.1

Posted on Jul 31, 2015 9:07 AM

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Answer 1

ChrisJ4203

Level 10

236,345 points

Jul 31, 2015 9:10 AM in response to iJustKJ

iJustKJ wrote:

So my question if there is a developer from Apple on this board, what is the heart rate threshold for the Workout App to consider something Exercise Credit?

To answer your question, no, there is not a developer from Apple on the board. This is a user to user support forum. To leave feedback for Apple, go to http://www.apple.com/feedback and click on the appropriate subject area. To speak to Apple, you would have to do as you did earlier.

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Answer 2

John Galt

Level 10

156,260 points

Jul 31, 2015 9:12 AM in response to iJustKJ

If you want to track fitness activity, start a Workout using that app. It will yield much more accurate results. In your case select Outdoor Walk.

... if there is a developer from Apple on this board,

There is not.

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Answer 3

Aug 1, 2015 8:02 AM in response to iJustKJ

After screwing around with options in the fitness app for my walking, I finally just choose "other" and that works for me. Maybe give that a try.

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Answer 4

iJustKJ Author

Level 1

9 points

Aug 1, 2015 11:57 AM in response to John Galt

I am using outdoor walk, but the problem is that the exercise ring on the activity monitor will show 10-38 minutes of exercise after a 50 minute walk. Once is showed none.

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Answer 5

cary.net

Level 1

0 points

Aug 4, 2015 6:36 AM in response to iJustKJ

I am experiencing the same thing. Either very little or no time will display in the exercise ring after a one hour walk. I made certain to swing my arms last night and the ring showed zero minutes. Frustrating.

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Answer 6

iJustKJ Author

Level 1

9 points

Aug 4, 2015 12:24 PM in response to iJustKJ

All,

An update. I did a bit of a test this morning. While no-one at Apple seems to know how the Workout App interacts with the exercise ring of the Activity App, I think I have figured it out. In my opinion, and testing with the Outdoor Walk app, it only counts as exercise minutes if my heart rate is above 120. For the first 6 minutes of my walk this morning, my heart rate build up to 125 and it was at that point that minutes began ticking over in the Exercise ring of the activity app. About 13 minutes into the walk after the hill leveled out and there was a downhill, my heart rate dropped to 115-119, and no additional minutes registered until 7 minutes later when my heart rate went back over 120.

The mystery seems to be solving itself, at least on my question.

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Answer 7

Aug 4, 2015 5:06 PM in response to iJustKJ

This has driven me crazy too, and while Apple customer care people are helpful and send links to notes, it seems no one knows what is going on. Here's what I've figured out.

The Exercise (green) ring in the Activity app only counts minutes if you are walking faster than a brisk walk. That's all Apple says and it is true but what Apple never says is that "brisk walk" means fast enough that the police may stop you on suspicion of fleeing a crime scene. Brisk means just short of a run.

However I just added 2,600 steps and 4 minutes to my green ring by washing out some hiking clothes in the bathroom sink. The kneading action, like baker kneading dough is recorded by the Apple Watch as steps. I'm glad the watch is giving me some credit for exercise but it isn't quite right.

The Activity app will record all periods of dashing around without any action on our part. But...

The Workout app Outdoor Walk uses heart rate and GPS to measure activity. It is probably best if you are really outdoors and covering a lot of distance BUT...

If you Stop or Pause the Outdoor Walk and forget to Save the data, the Apple Watch never records any data for Exercise. This is Microsoft thinking not Apple thinking it should be fixed in a newer release. I recently walked two miles, Paused at the destination and forgot to Restart on my way back and got only 5 minutes on the ring. Part of the problem was walking too slow and the other part was poor interaction between Activity and Workout.

Also, Apple recommends using Indoor Walk for treadmill work. I haven't tried this but I did set my Workout app for Indoor Walk as I strolled inside a large shopping mall. I figured "I'm inside a building, probably not visible to GPS," but I was wrong. In two hours of walking (and I did Save the data) the Watch recorded no activity on the Green Ring at all but it did accurately count steps.

The Apple Watch is really great but incomplete documentation, fuzzy user expectation setting, and unwillingness to clearly say what is going on are most of the problems.

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Answer 8

Nov 30, 2015 9:04 AM in response to iJustKJ

I often start the day with 30+ minutes of treadmill activity. This is recorded correctly by the exercise app and saved at whatever number of minutes I go. Unless the exercise ring app immediately responds that I've reached my exercise goal of 30 minutes it shows anything from 28 to 22 minutes of exercise. The treadmill is at the same angle and pace every day. How can the indoor walking app record one thing and the exercise ring inconsistently record something else?

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