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80s Fan

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 31, 2008
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Wondering how my AW6 can show 65 minutes of exercise today yet also shows a bike ride today with 2:06 of total time? What gives? The exercise time of 2:06 is correct. Shouldn't the exercise time show at least 126 minutes?
 
Wondering how my AW6 can show 65 minutes of exercise today yet also shows a bike ride today with 2:06 of total time? What gives? The exercise time of 2:06 is correct. Shouldn't the exercise time show at least 126 minutes?
To count as "exercise" the watch needs to record a certain level of heart rate and movement, and has nothing to do with whether it is recording a workout or not. You could, for example, start recording an "outdoor cycle" for an hour while sitting on your sofa or in a car, but that would register as zero minutes exercise.
I frequently go for casual/social bike rides with my wife which are not strenuous, and although it may record over an hour bike ride, it records it only as a few minutes of real "exercise."
If your bike rides are strenuous for the full duration, then the exercise minutes should be similar duration. If not, it may be because it is not reading your heart rate properly. This happens to me when mountain biking or if the watch is not snug enough on my wrist: while mountain biking the watch is often bouncing around so much it cannot get a heart reading.
Hope this helps.
 
Yes it does! I have had a S3 watch for a year and a half and never knew this. I recently upgraded so I guess I’ve been watching this sort of thing more closely.

Thanks for the explanation, wilberforce

And by the way, it was not a strenuous ride today so I guess I can see why it would not call the whole thing exercise (even though I would!).
 
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The Apple Watch is FAR more accurate than the exercise equipment. You can find quite a number of studies showing such.

Exercise equipment doesn't consider numbers variables. They want to make it look like you burned far more than you actually did. Sucks but chances are you didn't burn as much as you hoped.

My average hour on the exercise bike shows 1300 calories burned, when in reality it's more like 600 that the Apple Watch shows. The bike considers only weight. Apple Watch takes into account heart rate, age, height, and other metrics for a much more accurate estimation and has been shown to be the best performing smart watch for such calculations, generally off by very little.
 
When it comes to exercises like biking, swimming, walking, running the Apple Watch is solid in terms of measurement.

Although I’d like to know how well it does compared to other equipments when it comes to strength training. I mean the days I go gym, each of my sessions record between 1200 to 1600 calorie burn. If this is real then I’ll be pleased with myself.
 
To count as "exercise" the watch needs to record a certain level of heart rate and movement, and has nothing to do with whether it is recording a workout or not. You could, for example, start recording an "outdoor cycle" for an hour while sitting on your sofa or in a car, but that would register as zero minutes exercise.
I frequently go for casual/social bike rides with my wife which are not strenuous, and although it may record over an hour bike ride, it records it only as a few minutes of real "exercise."
If your bike rides are strenuous for the full duration, then the exercise minutes should be similar duration. If not, it may be because it is not reading your heart rate properly. This happens to me when mountain biking or if the watch is not snug enough on my wrist: while mountain biking the watch is often bouncing around so much it cannot get a heart reading.
Hope this helps.
I appreciate your viewpoint on mtn biking ... when I select outdoor cycling the recorded exercise time is ALWAYS lower than my actual ride time. I have also on a few occasions accidentally selected "indoor cycle" and when doing so it does record the actual time properly, PLUS, my calorie count is WAY higher for the same excessive than "outdoor cycle".
I've looked at the data it it appears that indoor cycle measure your heart rte more frequently than outdoor cycle. But I also think the for outdoor cycle it takes speed into consideration, and with mountain biking, that is "low" on steep climbs ...
 
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