Choosing a Health and Fitness Ecosystem - Part 7 - The Apple Ecosystem

The 1st Generation Apple Watch was not the game changer people had hoped for. It wasn't really good for anything other than standard pedometer and HR functions. It required to always have your iPhone with you and was just not very diverse. However, with Apple Watch 2 and the updated Apple Watch, this has changed everything; specifically because of the Apple Watch 2. I will be focusing on the Apple Watch 2, going into a little detail on the watch, and then going over the ecosystem.

Fitness Watch or Smart Watch?

It's both. I won't sugar coat this though; it's one of the best smart watches, but still lacks greatly in the fitness watch department. However, the Apple Watch 2, in my opinion, is superior to most non-hardcore sports watches. So, if you are a triathlete or long distance runner like me, then Garmin, TomTom, Polar and Suunto are your choices. Yes, you can use others, but they just don't have the accuracy, sports tracking metrics and functions, and battery life that the 4 mentioned do.

Anyway, Apple Watch 2 is my focus here because I got to use one for about 5 months. As a note, I am going to be selling it because, although I love the smart watch features more than I can really properly describe, it doesn't even partially meet my sports training needs. Maybe in the near future some third party software company will figure out how to tap Watch OS to get more data, and Apple will improve battery life. Until then, I'll be sticking with my generic smart alerts on my Garmin 920xt.

About the Watch - From a fitness standpoint

So, the Apple Watch 2 has GPS and is waterproof. This makes the watch a fully functioning multi-sport watch. It still has wrist HR, thankfully improved from the first generation. You will need to charge your watch daily with a standard workout regiment. However, I found myself having to charge 2-3 times a day when I was doing multiple workouts, where both were using GPS and longer than 1 hour each. However, this was me being cautious; you can get away with only 1-2 charges. As a point of reference for readers, standard use for me was utilization of many apps throughout the day, as well as at least 1 workout, non-GPS, of 60 to 90 minutes. I would still have close to 20% battery life before I went to bed.

From a GPS standpoint, I found that once it picked up the signal, it was almost spot on for distances in outdoor swimming, outdoor running, and outdoor cycling. However, the map detail is severely lacking and you CAN NOT export to another service to see more detail. Thankfully it was close enough to my Garmin 920xt that I felt somewhat comfortable with the accuracy. You can use third party apps to get more detail, but they can only get so much data because Apple restricts a lot of the data available to other apps.

From a non-GPS standpoint, I found the watch to still be pretty good. It did not handle rapid variations in HR very well, but for stead-state workouts, it was almost identical. For treadmill running, I was pleasantly surprised how accurate the watch was for distance. It was never more than .2 miles under what the treadmill mileage would read, and never more than .1 miles under what my Garmin watch would read. However, if I did intervals with constantly varying paces, it became like most other watches; inaccurate. I did not play around with 3rd party apps much, so I didn't see if I could sync up a foot pod...maybe you can do this, I don't know. You can sync up a BT HR monitor though, which exponentially increases the battery life of the watch. I had a 2 hour trainer ride where my battery hardly drained on my watch while using HRM, versus a 45 min trainer ride without HRM. So this might be a good workaround if you are going to have really long workouts or workout days.

Apple Activity and Apple Health

Apple has two application for you to review you data; Apple Activity and Apple Health. Apple Activity is the software on your watch that tracks everything. It then sends the details to your phone so you can see more stats, maps if you did GPS, etc. It's a great design and extremely easy to see your data. There is virtually no learning curve on this. On the flip-side, there is too little data for the more data-centric athlete.

Apple Health lives exclusively on iOS. It basically is a repository of any health data that you can sync with it. So, anything from your watch ends up here. You can see trends in regards to HR, sleep (need 3rd part app or 3rd party accessories for sleep tracking), or any other stat you get into this app. It's not the most intuitive app, but has amazing customization, which I find great because I can really tailor it to what I want to see and what I really care about.

As I said though, Apple Health lives exclusively on iOS. To make this more difficult, Apple Activity has the same issue. Therefore, you can look at Apple's ecosystem as a closed loop, with no online portal. However, there are increasingly more apps which can pull data from Apple Health to display on their sites, such as MyFitness Pal. It's still not ideal though, but a choice made for security reasons by Apple. Right or wrong, that's how it is.

3rd Party Apps

As I have eluded to, there are lots of 3rd party apps that utilize more functionality and data capturing of the Apple Watch. Again though, they can only get what Apple makes accessible. There are still lots of 3rd party apps not using the GPS function of the watch very well either. Although Runkeeper uses it, the GPS seems to have more issues than using the native app or the Nike+ app. I am sure companies will get better with supporting ALL of the functionality on the Apple Watch 2. The beauty of Apple's ecosystem is that it can grow exponentially thanks to 3rd party app and hardware vendors. In addition, there are rumors that the next iteration of the Apple Watch will have a much better battery; but we shall see.

Final Thoughts

If you are primarily into general fitness, do some races - short or long, or like multiple sports and don't need long duration tracking, then the Apple Watch 2 has you covered. In addition, it's one of the best Smart Watches I have ever used. Android watches still have a ways to go, even though the Polar one is pretty nice. If you need a long battery life though, more accuracy, and more data, you will want to have a dedicated fitness watch for that part. And since Apple's ecosystem is mostly closed off, you will have to manually sync, if possible, to get the whole picture of your workouts. If I was just starting out in triathlon, and never had been spoiled with my Garmin, I would probably find the Apple Watch to be a perfect training partner. The final ecosystem, TomTom, is up next!

Choosing a Health and Fitness Ecosystem - Part 2 - Activity Tracker vs Fitness Device

Activity Tracker vs Fitness Device

The health and fitness tech market is growing exponentially, with everyone either wanting to get healthy or being obsessed with numbers. However, before you jump on the bandwagon, you need to know the difference between an activity tracker and a fitness device. They are starting to become one-in-the-same for the most mainstream brands, but there is a clear difference and this will hopefully help you when you are deciding what to choose.

Activity Tracker

An activity tracker does just what the name implies; it tracks your daily activeness or lack-there-of. At the most basic, an activity tracker will tell you how many steps you have taken. Most however include sleep tracking as well. Once you start going up the line, you will get automatic workout tracking, integrated or external heart rate tracking and other metrics related to your steps, such as stairs climbed and inactivity periods.

It should be noted that if you are not a huge fitness person and you just want to track the basics because you either something to keep you on point with hitting your step goals or achieving some level of activity toward health or weight goals, then an activity tracker is key. And most companies are hitting up these devices with extremely stylish designs. For example, Withings has an activity tracker watch that is really slick, the Activite Steel and Saphire. Garmin just came out with one as well, the Vivomove; and it's probably the most attractive looking activity tracker I have seen yet.

Other devices can track activity as well, like smart phones and smart watches. So, your iPhone or Android phone will probably have a step tracker app or you can get an app that can utilize your phone to track that. But Apple Watch and Gear S2 can track your workouts like mainstream fitness devices, right? Yes and no. I leave the super technical details to DC Rainmaker, but basically these devices are not the best when it comes to true fitness tracking. The have severe accuracy flaws. Now, there are some 3rd party companies that have apps to correct some of this, but overall, if you are training for races or have a huge focus on working out, then an activity tracker is going become very limiting at some point.

Fitness Device

And now the fitness device. This is a device that is purely designed for tracking detailed metrics about your workouts. This can include heart rate min, max, average, and zones, calories burned, intensity levels, elevation changes, distance, speed, instant pace, and the list goes on and on. Now, thanks to FitBit being so competitive, they forced companies like Garmin, Polar and Tom Tom to incorporate activity tracking into their newer devices. So nowadays, a fitness device usually has all of the activity tracking components in addition to everything it already has and is designed for. This basically gives you an extremely detailed and advanced device that will give you a holistic look at your day-to-day lifestyle and the impacts of your workouts, activities, sleep, and more.

In addition, thanks to Apple, many fitness devices and activity trackers alike are incorporating smart features now as well; apps, music control, message alerts from your phone, and much more.

How Do I Choose?

This is fairly simple in most cases. If you are just trying to be active or you have goals set by your work, then a standard activity tracker will meet all of your needs and then some. However, if you consistently workout by doing running, cycling, strength training, swimming, other, or a combination of them, then you will want a fitness device so you can see metrics specific to the workout you did so you can keep improving for whatever goals you have. This is not to say that a fitness device wouldn't be good for someone who is just looking for standard activity tracking, but it will definitely give you way more than you want or need...although for some of the extra smart features or style, in some cases, it might be worth it.

Summary

This was a short article, but I wanted to make sure you understood the top level difference between devices before I start going into more details on which ones to buy, how to customize your ecosystem, and more. Up next I will be discussing calories burned across activity trackers and fitness devices.

Nike Apps (for iPhone)

I had done a post a while back on NTC (Nike Training Club) and I figured it was time to just talk about Nike's other app offerings for iOS.

• Nike+ Running (Free)
• Nike+ Fuel (Free)
• Nike Training Club (Free)

As you can see, the theme here is "Free". For now, I have a review on Nike Training Club you can check out.

The main reason for bringing up Nike+ is that it's still a very strong community and they have great tools to really help people succeed. There are tons of alternatives out there, and yes, Nike+ isn't as much of a focus anymore since Nike discontinued the FuelBand and there hasn't been as much focus on Nike+ from Nike.

So let's dive in! The main reason I like these apps is because they are really well built and useful. Aside from being required to create a Nike+ account, there really isn't any downside I can find, unless you are someone that needs extremely detailed statistics. Nike has designed their apps more around the idea of social fitness and the average user. This means that someone just starting out won't get overwhelmed by too many features and screens. In addition, the learning curve is fairly flat, so if you know how to use your iPhone, you can easily use these apps.

The other reason is that I love the way Nike has built the social and rewards aspect so fluidly into their apps and site. One of the hardest things for people to do is stick with a plan to improve fitness, have a healthy lifestyle, achieve a fitness goal, or the like. One of the easiest solutions is to take the journey with someone, which is easy to do with Nike+. You can setup goals, challenges, and share your progress.

In regards to additional tracking, you can link your Nike+ account to other 3rd party sites / apps; some popular ones include MyFitnessPal, Garmin, TomTom, Apple Health, Google Fit, and more.

So, now for a brief overview of each app, which I will have follow-up posts on more details for Running and Fuel.

Nike+ Running

This is basically your standard app that allows you to track you run; indoor or outdoors. You get standard information which is very important to beginner or seasoned runners / walkers. First off, you will be able to track your distance, total time, and average pace. In additional, you will see your total count of runs, total miles overall, Fuel Points, and how you rank compared to friends (assuming you use the social piece).

One thing I always loved was how you could integrate your music into your run. You can create a Pace Station which allows you have you music sync up to your pace to keep you motivated and consistent. This is partnered through Spotify. Or you can just select a playlist you already have.

During your run you will get alerts, such as each mile completed, as well as be able to see your current distance, average pace, heart rate if you have a bluetooth HR monitor, and elapsed time. You will also see what song is playing and have the ability to change tracks.

Once completed, you can add a picture if you want to make the session more memorable. For example, if you are running a race, you could add a finish line selfie. Finally, after your run, you will see a map of the course you ran/walked, total time, average pace, elevation gain, average heart rate if you used a HRM, how you felt after the run, the temperature, and the current mileage on your shoes. You can also share your session with all of the popular media sites.

I want to mention that if you are using a FuelBand or an iPod nano, you can utilize this for indoor running. Now, it is not the most accurate, but you can get a foot pod which is surprisingly accurate for tracking. However, it's best for steady paces, and does not do well with large fluctuations in pace. Interval training works well though.

I also have to mention Apple Watch. You basically have the same functionality, but on your watch. As with most apps, you will need your phone with you for GPS and HRM.

Nike+ Fuel

If you still have a Nike FuelBand, then you use this app to sync all of your information. As a note, I am pretty sad Nike got out of the tech arena, as the FuelBand and their GPS watch really set the tone for the current wearables market today. Anyway, the app is very standard for any activity tracker; shows you steps, activity levels throughout the day, and your Fuel Points. You can view extra detail on your activity level as well; viewing day, week, month or year. You can view your progress, how you are doing on your goals that you defined, and how you are doing versus others. In addition, you get social updates your friends. You can also see you summary of all of your training sessions. This app integrates with NTC for activities. In addition, you can use your iPhone 5 or later if you don't have a FuelBand. You pretty much track what Nike calls Nike+ Sessions.

Nike+ Training Club - NTC

As I noted above, you can read my full review on this app. Basically, it's a fitness trainer on your phone. The app includes workout plans for all types of goals and personal schedules  (I love the 30 minute workouts). The app syncs with your music, gives you alerts and counts reps for you. In addition, if you aren't sure how to do a move, there is a video for every move to show you proper form and technique. There are tons of paid apps out there, and yes, there are many apps you can customize your workouts to your heart's content, but there are still few apps that offer such a solid and well rounded set of workouts for FREE! I still use NTC a bunch, but being a triathlete, I typically use apps that allow for fully customized workouts, such as Fitness Builder.

As you can see, Nike really offers a 1-stop shop for anyone who wants to get fit and healthy, or for anyone who is seasoned and needs solid and reliable tools. Enjoy!