Paris 2024 is set to showcase the world's best battling it out for Olympic glory. We share five tips Apple Watch users can incorporate its features to help you train like an Olympian
As the world prepares to marvel at the spectacle of elite athletes at the Paris 2024 Olympics, we share with you some useful tips on how you can use Apple Watch to inspire you in your own journey towards a healthier and better you.
For Apple users, the Apple watch is a great addition and daily fitness companion to support your own training regiment — whether you’re preparing for a marathon, hitting the streets for your first 5K, or just looking for some extra movement in your day.
From keeping you motivated to sit less, move more, and get some exercise; to tracking all of your runs, swims, rides, and more, Apple Watch offers a wide variety of tools available right on your wrist. Additionally, look to the Fitness app on iPhone for even more insights and encouragement to help you train like an Olympian.
Here are four tips for using Apple Watch to help you stay motivated, get on top of your training, and practice mindfulness.
Activity App: Daily motivation right from the wrist
The Activity app is such a simple and fun way to live a healthier lifestyle each day. Keep yourself on track and achieve your fitness goals one day at a time with your friends and family through Activity Sharing feature on the app.
Fancy a challenge? Go one-on-one against a friend on Activity Competition where you earn points based on the percentage of activity rings you close on the app.
You'll also be able to track your achievements as you earn awards for personal records, streaks and major milestones. The watch will go as far as to set a personalized challenge for you every month.
Longer term, Trends shows you daily trend data for active calories, exercise minutes, stand hours, walking distance, stand minutes, cardio fitness, walking pace, and running pace. It will compare your last 90 days of activity to the last 365.
2. Track a Wide Variety of Workouts and Go the Extra Mile
Apple Watch can help you track a wide variety of workouts including many Olympic sports like running, cycling, swimming, golf, rowing, tennis, and more.
Apple Watch measures running metrics including Vertical Oscillation, Stride Length, Ground Contact Time, Power, and more, and during your run you can easy scroll through Workout Views to see your Activity Rings, Elevation, Segments, and Splits at a glance.
3. Customise Your Workouts
Create a Custom Workout with distance and time goals so Apple Watch can guide you with haptics and voice feedback during your run, or use the Pacer training experience to receive pace alerts during your run to help you reach a target finish time for a certain distance.
With Race Route, routes that you repeat will be reflected in the Workout app for you to race against your last or best result.
If you’re hitting the track, automatic track detection automatically detects when you arrive at an outdoor track and uses both Apple Maps data and GPS to provide the most accurate distance, pace, and route map.
4. Bluetooth Enabled Cycling Accessories
If watching the cyclists in Paris has you reaching for your bike, the Apple Watch offers bluetooth connectivity for cycling censors. You can automatically connect to bluetooth-enabled cycling accessories including Cadence Sensors and Power Meters. Additional Cycling metrics to measure Power and Cadence will be available when a connected cycling accessory is detected.
The watch can also automatically calculate Functional Threshold Power (FTP) when a power meter is connected. FTP will used to identify Power Zones, the most effective and reliable way of improving cycling performance regardless of skill level.
Not sure what FTP is? Read our special feature here.
If you're a swimmer headed to the pool or open water, the Apple Watch uses algorithms developed with hundreds of hours of research to count laps, track average lap pace, and auto-detect stroke type to accurately measure active calorie burn.
Popular coaching platforms such as TrainingPeaks can create Custom Workouts that can be imported directly into the Apple Watch Workout app.
Coming this fall, Custom Workouts can be used for Pool Swims in watchOS 11, allowing you to customize an interval-based workout with support for sets of work and recovery, and haptics to signal it is time to move on to the next interval.
The Apple Watch Activity app experience is also optimized for wheelchair users. Wheelchair pushes contribute to all-day calorie goals, and there are dedicated wheelchair-specific workouts.
5. Train your mind with the Apple Watch
Features on Apple Watch and iPhone can help you disconnect, while staying connected, so you’re also practicing mindfulness.
Apple Watch’s Mindfulness app features three experiences to help take a moment in the day: Breathe, Reflect and State-of-Mind logging.
With the Journal app on iPhone, you can capture and write about everyday moments and special events in your lives, and include photos, videos, audio recordings, locations, and more to create rich memories. On-device machine learning provides private, personalized suggestions to inspire journal entries, and customizable notifications help you develop your writing habits.
Coming this fall, iOS 18 will allow users to log your state of mind right in the Journal app, and time spent journaling will count towards your mindfulness minutes.
Focus on iPhone and Apple Watch helps reduce distractions by filtering notifications from people and apps. You can temporarily silence all notifications, or allow only specific notifications and you can personalize one of the provided options — Work, Personal, Sleep and more — or create a custom Focus.
Train like an Olympian with these Apple Watches
Apple Watch Ultra 2
Apple Watch Ultra 2 brings amazing features to Apple’s most capable and rugged smartwatch, and it is carbon neutral when paired with a Trail Loop or Alpine Loop. Apple Watch Ultra 2 offers all of the features users love about Ultra, plus the powerful S9 SiP, a magical double tap gesture, Apple’s brightest display ever, expanded altitude range, on-device Siri, Precision Finding for iPhone, and advanced capabilities for outdoor and water adventures.
Starting at S$1210.10, Purchase Apple Watch Ultra 2 here.
Apple Watch Series 9
Apple Watch Series 9 is more powerful than ever with the S9 SiP, which increases performance and capabilities introducing a magical double tap gesture, a brighter display, and faster on-device Siri, now with the ability to access and log health data. For the first time, customers can also choose a carbon neutral option of any Apple Watch Series 9 or Apple Watch SE.
Apple Watch Series 9 starts at S$604.50 ; Available in 41mm and 45mm sizes in starlight, midnight, silver, (PRODUCT)RED, a new pink aluminium case, and stainless steel gold, silver, and graphite cases.
Purchase Apple Watch Series 9 here.
Apple Watch SE
Apple Watch SE (2nd generation) delivers the core Apple Watch experience, including Activity tracking, high and low heart rate notifications, and Emergency SOS, as well as Crash Detection, all at an affordable price.
Apple Watch SE starts at S$382.50; Available in midnight, starlight, and silver. Purchase Apple Watch SE here.