There’s one thing that always bugged me about the Apple Watch. Rain or shine, in sickness or in health, it forced me to close my rings. It didn’t matter if I had COVID-19, shin splints, or was in a mental dark place. It nudged me to be a “better” version of myself, as long as that didn’t mean taking a day off. But with watchOS 11 — the public beta of which arrives today — it feels like my Apple Watch is finally giving me some space.
This is largely due to a trio of new features: the new Vitals app, the Training Load feature, and the ability to pause your Activity Rings. I was raving about the latter right out of WWDC, but after spending some time with the developer beta, I’m convinced these are the smartest fitness updates Apple’s rolled out in years.
The Vitals app and the Training Load feature are technically two separate things, but in practice they go hand in hand. The Vitals app contextualizes a set of metrics: heart rate, respiration rate, pulse temperature, blood oxygen, and sleep duration. These are all recovery metrics, which in other apps are typically packaged as a readiness score, except Apple’s version doesn’t give you a score at all. Instead, it tells you whether your stats are “typical” or an “outlier.” If two or more metrics fall out of range, you’ll get a notification and some options to Why some statistics are wrong.
The Training Load feature is also simple. It compares and visualizes your training load from 7 days versus 28 days. Based on that, you can see whether you’re way below, below, stable, above, or way above your usual activity level. It breaks this down not only by overall activity, but also by individual activity types (e.g. running, pilates, cycling, etc.). After a workout, you can also rate your perceived exertion level. For popular workouts like running, your exertion level is set automatically. (You can edit it manually if you don’t like it, which I did on occasion, though it’s generally accurate.)
It’s been nice to have both of these features over the past month, but like most of the updates in watchOS 11, they’re a bit passive. For example, I haven’t had a single Vitals notification, as all of my vital stats have remained within their normal range. Yay for me for being consistent! That’s not a bad thing — you don’t have to want to to get frequent notifications. It’s more that having a quick visual of “is everything okay?” is helpful when you’re in doubt whether to push it or take a rest day.
That’s also the advantage of Training Load, especially for people who are new to training. I’m experienced enough to know that my current Training Load is a bit skewed because I didn’t train for a whole week during my vacation. (Right around the time I downloaded the beta.) Still, it’s is a handy visual reminder for me when I’m well above my 28 day baseline that I can take a day off. A rest day won’t stop me.
Apple isn’t doing anything here that we haven’t seen from Garmin, Polar, Oura, Fitbit, Whoop, or some other health and fitness tracker in the past five years. Instead, Apple’s version makes these concepts easier to digest for beginners. It’s also less data overload for exhausted athletes. Combined with the ability to pause rings or adjust your goals based on the day of the week, you have a much more flexible fitness tracking experience on the world’s most popular smartwatch. That’s a huge deal.
Ultimately, these features make the Apple Watch’s fitness tracking platform more personal, which seems to be the overarching theme of watchOS 11. Rather than a blanket approach of always doing more, you can make alternative choices based on your actual day-to-day circumstances. I’m still testing a bunch of other watchOS 11 features, but as far as the major fitness tracking updates go, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how much it’s encouraged me to be kinder to myself.
My biggest gripe is that Apple still doesn’t tell you to take a rest day. You have to infer from phrases like “recover as needed if you start to feel exhausted” or “you’ve been in the above or above range for 14 days.” I also lost a few nights’ worth of Vitals data because I had to charge my watch overnight — a reminder that battery life and charging schedules remain the Achilles heel of smartwatches. But overall, for most people, that’s still far more sustainable in the long run than the previous blanket approach of “always doing more.” Maybe in watchOS 12, my Apple Watch will finally intimidate me into putting my feet up on the couch. But for now, baby steps are still steps in the right direction.