The Apple Watch is highly recommended for logging your workouts! They are very beneficial in so many ways. However, most do not know the real benefit of the watch and what to look for when analyzing your workout. But before I get to what to analyze let me tell you what not to analyze.
DO NOT LOOK AT YOUR CALORIES, THEY DO NOT MEAN S**T! Your calorie burn on your watch is a big pile of poop. Have you ever done a workout and forgot to turn your watch on? You were most likely surprised when you got to the end of your workout to notice, that not only did you not burn many calories, but it did not even log your exercise time. I know your watch will alert you to start your workout if you forgot. But have you ever done work around the house and worked your butt off only to notice your calorie burn is far from correct?
That is because it is NOT correct. Think about it, the average person during the day, while at rest burns about 1 calorie per minute (for a fit person it is more like 3 calories per minute). That would be 1,440 total calories per 24 hour period. And if you wore your watch for 10 hours that would be about 600 calories a day. And on average that is what you burn --- at rest!
Quit relying on the calorie burn. Just know it is far from accurate. However, it is still a good thing to notice and be aware of now that you know this.
Your heart rate is a much better item to analyze. This number will tell you if you are working hard enough. You want it to go up high and then come down. Your recovery time is important too. You want your heart rate to look something like this:
This is from one of my workouts. I always enter Strength Training for my workout, even though I do cardio on top of my strength training.
The first 20 minutes of this workout is cardio. Treadmill at an incline of 15 and intervals every minute and half where I speed up to a 4.0 and slow down to a 2.5. Notice the rise and drop of the heart rate! Very beneficial.
I then hit the weights for the rest of my workout. This was leg day so my heart rate got super high. Glutes and legs are the biggest muscle groups on the body so it takes more to work them. I do about 3 super sets with one of them being isolation - or single leg movements. This really elevates the heart. As you can see by looking above, notice at the end of my workout my heart rate spiked a lot.
What this does is balance your hormones in a very good efficient way. You slow the release of cortisol which loves to have a party with fat cells. You want to take your heart rate up and down instead of a slow and steady pace.
This also releases growth hormone which helps keep you looking and feeling young.
If weight loss is your goal monitor your heart rate. You burn a lot more calories when it fluctuates like this rather than keeping it at one small range.
My watch told me I burned a total of 537 calories that day. However, I burned more like 10 calories a minute on average. So it was more like 650. And 537 is close but I have heard people brag on their move calories when in fact that is not even close to accurate. Some people even set their watch to workout just to get more calorie burn in their day.
Watch your heart rate instead! It is a much more accurate way to judge if you are putting in enough effort.
Need an apple watch? Click the link to find a new one at Amazon for under $230. I highly recommend the watch for my clients. Screenshot your activity from your workout and send it to me. I'll be happy to analyze it for you!
Have a healthy day!! Kathie
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