WatchOS 9 Brings Run-Tracking Upgrades to Apple Watch

Speaker 1: Oh, Hey, this was totally unexpected. I was just about to go on a run with watch OS nine. That is expected to come in September with a lot of great new features. We've got upgraded, sleeping stages, new watch faces, workout tracking, and some advanced tracking for runners. In fact, this is the biggest upgrade to running features on the apple watch. Since it's launch there's new running workout screens, including heart rate zone tracking and elevation [00:00:30] new custom workouts multi-sport features. And way more today, I'm gonna run you through all the new running features coming to the new OS. So let's start a workout. All right, let's get running. Speaker 1: Hey, let's pause this workout. So watch OS nine is bringing a bunch of new workout views to the apple watch. When you're running. Let's take a look at these, this first screen [00:01:00] you're probably already using because it is the default screen pre watch O S nine. And this has got your heart rate, your mile, your pace and your distance. Now, in order to get to the other workout views, I can continue swiping up and down, or I can also use the dial. This next workout view has all your heart rate information. It's basically like having orange theory fitness on your wrist because it shows you all of your heart rate zones. And it depends what your goals are, where you want your heart rate to be. Right. If you wanna burn fat, that's [00:01:30] gonna be a different heart rate goal than if you're just trying to reach your max distance or speed. Speaker 1: So it's got all your zones. It's got your beats per minute for your heart. The current one it's got time and zone and your average heart rate. Now the heart rate zones, these are automatically created using your max heart rate and your resting heart rate, which is stored on the iPhone and updated every month at the beginning of each month. But you can also set this manually next. We've got a split workout view, and this is gonna help you with [00:02:00] pacing. And then I can swipe down again. And that is a segment workout view, and to create a new segment in your workout, you just double tap and it will create a new segment. Then I've got a whole watch face for elevation. So use the apple watch uses the altimeter in order to get your current elevation. Now this last watch face is gonna look very familiar to you. Speaker 1: It's your activity ring. So you've got move in red exercise and green and stand in blue. Now, personally, I don't think that this is a workout view that [00:02:30] I'm gonna use very often because it's not really giving me the information that I wanna see during my workout. But for those of you who are obsessed with closing your rings, it is nice to have that ability to swipe all the way down and just see where you're at to be like, okay, I need to run for 10 more minutes in order to close my move ring. Um, now one thing for you, apple, that I would really love to see here. There currently is no ability to see my blood sugar readings on here. I have type one diabetes and [00:03:00] my continuous glucose monitor tells me what my blood sugar readings are. And I'm able to access that on my watch. Speaker 1: I would love if there were a workout view where I could have that information on the screen, because it's literally like the number one statistic that I wanna see when I'm running. Now, let's take a look at the customization features with these workout views, because it's pretty cool how much control you have over them. So I can go to any workout and select workout views from there. Then I can edit the views [00:03:30] and here you have a whole list of different workout views. Now I can go into the metrics ones and I can switch out each metric individually for new ones. And I, there are a few new ones which I'm gonna get into exactly what they are and how they work in just a bit. And I can go in and click on or off that include tab. And that will include them in the workout. Also, I can reorder all of these into the order that I want. Just click reorder at the bottom, and then I can hold down on any [00:04:00] of them and then move them up and down in order to change the order they're gonna be in during my workout. Speaker 1: Let's talk about these metrics because they can come in handy, especially if you're training and these are totally customizable into your workout views. So when you go to workout views, you'll see that there's metrics and metrics too. So you have two screens available to you, but you don't have to have both of them on. So in order to edit this, I just click that little edit [00:04:30] button and I can tap on each metric and go in and switch it out for a new one. Now, apple is introduced four new metrics. The first one is vertical oscillation. Vertical oscillation is the amount of height that you're coming off the ground with each stride. If that's too high, it could mean that you're putting too much energy going up with your running next. You've got stride length, which is pretty self-explanatory. This is the length that you're going with each stride. Speaker 1: Getting your stride down as [00:05:00] a runner is really important for making sure that you're using your energy efficiently. Next you've got power. Power is the measure of responsive energy demand. The power metric can be helpful to make sure that you're not over exerting yourself throughout your run. And another new metric is ground contact time. That's the amount of time that your feet are spending on the ground between strides and it's measured in milliseconds. Now, whether or not you add these metrics to your watch base, they'll still all be [00:05:30] viewable on the iPhone after your workout. And I really love the way that it's displayed here. Let's take a look. So if I go to an outdoor run, you'll see that it has all these new metrics listed out. If I click show more, it has graphs for each one. So you have your elevation, your heart rate, your pace, but now you can see power. Speaker 1: Then you've got cadence, vertical oscillation. So this is gonna show you the height off the ground. And then you've also got that ground contact time. Aside from workout views, there's a ton of customization [00:06:00] coming to workouts. So already on watch OS eight, you're able to set different guidelines and goals for your runs, such as distance, calories for time. But with watch OS nine, you're getting way more abilities, like way more. So by clicking that.dot.you now have a whole list of workouts, right? So I can then go in and edit them by clicking that edit button. And as you can see, it's got alerts on top. So by clicking alerts, I can go [00:06:30] in and set different alerts to go off throughout my run, such as pace, heart rate, cadence, et cetera. And these will come through haptic or voice alerts. Next. You've got those workout views. Speaker 1: Like I showed you before. These can all be edited. And then every time you go back to this specific workout, that will be the organization of your workout views. You can also create your own custom workouts. Let me show you how to do that. So you go down to the bottom, go to create workout. It's got all these options, but I wanna show you custom. So [00:07:00] I'm gonna go down to custom. Now, custom, I can do a warmup with a cool down. So I'm gonna do a warmup distance of say a mile. There we go. And then I can also add in work or recovery intervals. So let's say I do what work I'll do a distance, and I'm gonna do one mile. I do one mile there done, and I got the work there. Add recovery distance to one here, and then I'm gonna do one mile right there, up done. Speaker 1: Then I've got [00:07:30] that. Then I could also go in and do repeats repeats, allow me to do whatever. So I'm gonna do work recovery and then gonna click next. And I'm gonna do, let's say five repeats. Woo done. There we go. I've got five repeats on top with that. So I'm gonna wind up doing 10 miles and then I can go in and let's say, I'm gonna call it 10. There we go. I've got my create workout. There we go. Got the 10 workout right there. What I can also do is I can click here and this will allow me to choose based off [00:08:00] of what organization way I want to have them organize. I think there's a lot of potential for these custom workouts to be used by trainers or coaches to send them to their trainees, to use in order to train for a marathon or something. Speaker 1: And what would it be even cooler is if one day you could create a workout and send it to someone over email. There's also a custom workout called the pacer for this. You choose a distance and a target finish time. And the workout has a unique workout view that tells you what pace you need to run in, in order to hit your [00:08:30] goal. It will also send you alerts. Another new feature is the ability to race a route that you've already completed. When you complete an outdoor run, the distance time and route data is securely saved on your iPhone. If you go on the same route again, the iPhone can detect its the same route and display a workout view. Comparing your current run with the last one and alert you. If you go off course, Speaker 1: [00:09:00] For those of you who like to add in biking or swimming to your run workouts, you are in luck with multi-sport. So previously on the old OS, what you had to do was end your current workout and then start a new one or you could swipe right and add a new workout type manually. Now it is so much more simple using Multisport. So I'm gonna open that up on the watch. You see the little logo with the three different fitness workouts, tap that in there, and then you can see, I have bike run. I have run [00:09:30] bike. I have triathlon, I've got swim bike. I've got a whole bunch of options here and I can go in and edit those better yet. The apple watch can detect when you're moving from one workout to another and automatically switch it. All right. It's time for my own multi-sport activity. But before you go, make sure you check out some of our other apple watch content. I'll throw that watch OS nine features video. You should check that out for all the features coming to watch OS nine and for more videos like this, be sure to subscribe to the channel, give this video, like [00:10:00] if you enjoyed it, I'm Justin and I'll take you later.