Gradually increasing discrepancy between workout session time and time registered on activity ring.

[neoelectronaut]

For the past few weeks I've been getting in a workout in the morning before going into work. I fit in the minimum 30 minutes to fill in the "workout ring", but I generally try to go for a nice round 2 miles when time permits, which is generally close to 45 minutes.

However, almost every day this week I've noticed that the "Workout" activity ring lags behind the actual workout time by minutes. For instance, today I clocked a 41 minute workout via the watch's Workout app, but only 33 "Exercise Minutes" were registered. I thought it was really strange this morning when I was past 40 minutes in the workout app but the notification for my exercise ring being closed never pinged.

Similar discrepancies have taken place on Tuesday and Wednesday as well, with Tuesday being the first occurrence of this issue. Here's workouts compared to exercise minutes for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of this week.

I initially thought that my pace had somehow gotten slower, but I seem to be hitting the usual 20 to 22 minute mile every day, so that didn't seem to be the problem. I looked at last week's data to compare and the workout minutes and exercise minutes are practically identical, with maybe a one or two minute discrepancy which can be explained due to waiting at an intersection for a car to pass or maybe ending the workout a minute or two late.

Here's last week's data for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday for comparison.

As you can see, these are much closer in time. Any idea what's going on here? Do I have a bad sensor in the watch somewhere perhaps?

Finally, I have noticed that my watch's typically "tap" notification sounds a lot more like a warbly vibration these days. I'm bringing my watch in for service Saturday; any chance these issues are related?

 

[NT1440]

It's my understanding that your HR needs to reach a certain rate before it is considered "active" time in a workout.

 

[neoelectronaut]

It's my understanding that your HR needs to reach a certain rate before it is considered "active" time in a workout.

Yeah, I understand that, but my pace is generally the same every day, and it's just seems bizarre that the times matched up nearly perfectly one week and the week after they start drifting apart.

 

[NT1440]

Yeah, I understand that, but my pace is generally the same every day, and it's just seems bizarre that the times matched up nearly perfectly one week and the week after they start drifting apart.

Perhaps you’re getting more endurance and therefore it takes more time/effort to hit the HR threshold of “active”?


I went for a 20 mile bike ride 3 days ago, almost entirely in 4th gear. Yesterday I was about 10 Miles in before I realized I was in 6th the whole time. My legs are gaining endurance because I’m putting regular exercise in, I’m not a cardiologist but I believe the same principle holds.

 

[bodonnell202]

I think as others have mentioned it may be that your cardiovascular health is improving so your heart rate doesn't tend to get up as much when walking.

In my case I joined Orangetheory last fall and have been going roughly 3 times per week for last few months. On the plus side my cardiovascular health has improved significantly and I have more energy. On the other hand walking no longer gets my heart rate up enough for my Apple Watch to count it as exercise so on my off days I have to come up with other ways to get my 30 minutes of exercise in...

 

[rugmankc]

Maybe not, I have an S0 and did an open walk on my treadmill for 30 minutes and it only registered 20 minutes on ring. Not the first time this has happened.

 

[neoelectronaut]

I guess I'll just have to walk longer, but the whole thing still seems suspicious. Monday's workout session was 42 minutes and the workout ring read exactly 42 minutes, everything after that has had the huge gap, and the timing with the other watch issues I'm having is very coincidental.

Should be interesting to see what happens when I get the fixed watch back.

 

[burgman]

My Series 2 Nike has started to have this problem since last update. First was doubling of heart rate, today I went for a three mile one hour walk and 0 minutes on activity ring. But if I stand still and swing my arms like i'm walking i roll up minutes pretty quickly.

 

[pasadena]

I know it sounds stupid but did you reboot your watch? I find that mine sometimes needs one, especially when it comes to heart rate sync with the phone / other apps (cardiogram), or workouts.

 

[ftaok]

Almost always, my Exercise minutes are more than my Workout minutes. To me, this makes sense since I'm not always running a workout.

In the instances when my Workout minutes exceed my Exercise minutes, it's always due to walking at a slow pace at some, extended period during an active workout. It happened this weekend. My wife and I went a little stroll and stopped to look at a hole in the ground (a new house is being built in the neighborhood) and we also stopped to talk to a neighbor.

If you feel that this isn't your situation, you could always check your data to see how many individual Exercise minutes were logged in during a particular workout. For instance, you start a run at 9:30AM and end at 10:00AM. You'll end up with 30 minutes of Workout minutes. Then, go into your Exercise data and see whether every minute between 9:30 and 10:00 were logged with an Exercise minute. If you were running non-stop during the entire workout, yet you were not credited with Exercise minutes somewhere during the workout, you'll at least be able to think back at what was going on during the time where you were shorted credit.