Introduction to Health & Fitness on the iPhone and Apple Watch
Introduction
In the last few years, the Apple Watch has become a powerful health and fitness device that can help you on your journey to become healthier and more fit.
While the Apple Watch is your fitness tracker, the iPhone is the control center where you can view all of your health and fitness information that has been collected on your Apple Watch.
In December of 2018, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple said, “I believe, if you zoom out into the future, and you look back, and you ask the question, ‘What was Apple’s greatest contribution to mankind?’ It will be about health.”
These are not just words that are meant to impress. Apple has clearly demonstrated its commitment by continuing to add more health and fitness features to the Apple Watch and iPhone each year.
With the Apple Watch and the iPhone, Apple has created a powerful health and fitness platform that is built around specialized hardware and powerful apps that all work together seamlessly.
The Apple Watch
Using low power sensors, the Apple Watch monitors your heart rate, your motion and your location. This information is captured and analyzed to transform it into a full featured health and fitness tracker.
In the background, all of this information is sent to your iPhone, where it is stored and can be analyzed and reviewed.
Since you are wearing your watch for most, if not all of you waking hours, the Apple Watch is continuously capturing the following information:
Since you are wearing your watch for most, if not all of you waking hours, the Apple Watch is continuously capturing the following information:
- Walking and Running Distance
- Steps
- Flights Climbed
- Heart Rate
- Active Energy
- Resting Energy
- Workouts
- Exercise Minutes
- Stand Hours
- Environmental Noise (Series 4 and Higher)
- ECG (Series 4 and higher) can be checked at any time
Health and Fitness Apps
The built-in apps that transform the Apple Watch and iPhone into a powerful health and fitness platform are: Health app (iPhone), Activity app (iPhone and Apple Watch) and Workout app (Apple Watch).
All of your health and fitness information is recorded on the Apple Watch in the Activity and Workout apps. However, due to its small size, you can only view today’s information on the watch itself.
The Apple Watch is continually sending all of this information to the iPhone. All of your health and fitness information is stored in the Health app on the iPhone. The Health app is also used to store health and fitness information that has been gathered on the iPhone and Apple Watch by accessories and 3rd party apps.
The Health and Activity apps allow you to view all of the information that is stored in the Health app. They both allow you to easily view the most important information at a glance, but also allow you to view all of your past information in great detail.
Health App
The Health App allows you to store and view all of your health and fitness information in one place on your iPhone.
There are many 3rd party iPhone and Apple Watch apps that have been designed to work directly with the Health app. This enables you to store all of your health and fitness data in one place.
You always have complete control over your personal Health and Fitness information that is stored on your iPhone. Before any app can read data from, or insert data into the Health app, you must explicitly give that app permission to access the information.
For additional details:
Getting Started With the Health app
Inside the Health App
Activity App
The Activity App is what allows you to use your Apple Watch as a Fitness Tracker. This is done by encouraging you to meet your daily Move, Exercise and Stand goals.
Three concentric rings show your progress for the current day. Closing each ring indicates that you have met each of your daily goals. Move is the outer ring, Exercise is the middle ring, and Stand is the inner ring.
On the iPhone, the Activity app allows you to see the current information, as well as any past activity information that has been collected on the Apple Watch.
For additional details about the Activity app on the Apple Watch and the iPhone:
Getting Started With the Activity app
Inside the Activity App
Workout App
The Workout app on the Apple Watch lets you record all workouts that you do while you are wearing the watch. When you record a workout, your heart rate will be checked every 5 seconds.
When you start a workout you can choose the type of workout that you are about to do. During the workout your progress will be updated continuously and can be viewed on your Apple Watch.
In the Health app or the Activity app on the iPhone, you can view a list of workouts that have been recorded and you can see the details of each workout.
For additional details about the Workout app on the Apple Watch, see our post:
Getting Started with the Workout app
Inside the Workout App
