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- Your Apple Watch workout data may not be accurate.
- Calibrating your watch improves accuracy.
- Here’s how and why you should measure.
People wear smart watches, such as the Apple Watch, to get iPhone-like functions on their wrists and stay up-to-date on their activity and sleep data. By recording workouts or tracking daily activity with a smart watch, you can get a clear picture of your movement patterns and a more detailed view of how many calories you burn each day.
The device can accurately measure a wide range of exercise metrics, including pace, heart rate, calories burned, distance covered, and more. I use the watch regularly as I train, run, walk, cycle, practice yoga, and dance to monitor my heart rate zones and exertion levels, and to recover properly before my next high-intensity workout.
Also: I walked 3,000 steps with my Apple Watch, Google Pixel, and Oura Ring – this tracker was very accurate.
Although Apple has invested millions of dollars in research and development to make its health trackers as accurate as possible, there is one way to capture even more accurate data when you exercise with the Apple Watch. It’s a simple feature change hidden in your Apple Watch settings.
I’ll tell you how you can improve your Apple Watch’s workout accuracy by enabling this feature and explain why it’s important.
Why you should measure your Apple Watch
By calibrating your Apple Watch, metrics like distance, pace, and calories burned are personalized to you, effectively improving data accuracy. Measuring your Apple Watch is the technical equivalent of matching your clothes: once measured, the two will fit you better.
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This feature is especially useful for your Apple Watch when you exercise in an area with limited GPS. Let’s say you’re recording for a long time in a park with poor signal quality. With a limited Apple Watch, the device can more accurately track your foot, even with a bad signal.
This skill also improves distance, speed, and calorie counts, according to Appleso it is very useful if you also track your intake.
How to measure your Apple Watch
Calibrating your Apple Watch is as easy as opening the app and recording a 20-minute walk or workout, with a few tweaks.
First, you will need to enable the appropriate location and privacy settings on your iPhone. This step ensures a smooth connection between your Apple Watch and iPhone.
Go to your iPhone’s Settings app. Click on Privacy and Security, and select Location Services. Make sure Location Services is turned on. Then, scroll down to that page and select System Services. Then enable the measurement of movement and distance.
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Now it’s time to find the balance. Go to a flat outdoor area with a good GPS signal. If you’re using an iPhone (which you probably are if you’re wearing an Apple Watch), you can see GPS signal strength by opening Google Maps, selecting “My Location” in the bottom right, and checking to see if a blue dot appears. This blue dot indicates a strong GPS signal.
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Now, open the Apple Watch Workout app and select Outdoor Walk or Outdoor Jogging (whichever exercise you’d like to do for 20 minutes). Walk or run at your moderate pace for 20 minutes. If you regularly walk and run, you will need to measure your Apple Watch twice: walk for 20 minutes and run for 20 minutes.
“Whenever you walk or run outside using the steps above, your Apple Watch continues to measure the accelerometer by reading the length of your step at different speeds,” Apple explained in a blog post. The device continues to learn about your exercise data as you measure the smartwatch on your performance.
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How to reset your Apple Watch fitness data
Resetting your Apple Watch fitness data can help reset and clear errors in your tracking. To reset this data, open your watch app on your iPhone. Select Privacy, then select Reset Eligibility Rating Data.
