[Music]
- [Don] Hi, this is Don McAllister
and welcome to another Screen Casts Online
weekly tip video.
Now, one of the big features of the Apple Watch
is the ability to track movement,
exercise, and standing as part of your activity.
Apple introduced the concept of the activity rings
on the very first Apple Watch,
and they've proved to be a great motivator
for people wanting to boost
their fitness and wellbeing,
especially if you work at a desk all day
or you just don't exercise very much.
So, here are some tips
to get the most of out of the Activity app.
Now, the first tip is to set up your watch properly
and by that I mean adding the right complications in
to sort of keep you motivated to use the Workout app.
Now, if I have a look at my,
this is my personal watch configuration,
I have two watch faces that I use all the time.
The first is modular
and as you can see with the modular face
I have two complications set up here.
In the bottom left-hand corner
have the extended activity complication,
and that allows me to get to my activity data,
and in the bottom right I have the workout complication.
We'll have a look at the Workout app in a second.
If I go back to my watch
I also have this option here as well.
When I really want to focus on how I'm doing
with my activity I have the activity rings
as a watch face
but more often than not
I have it on the modular watch face.
So, let's take a look at how you can easily start
a quick workout.
If we take a look at the watch now
we can go straight into a workout
by tapping on the complication,
and then if I want to select a particular type of activity
I can just scroll up and scroll down,
and then if I select one just by tapping
we get the countdown,
I can bypass the countdown just by tapping on the screen
and we're straight into it,
which is fine.
Let me just pause that one
or that will end that particular workout.
A quick way to do it is to actually use Siri.
So, I can start an indoor walk very, very quickly
just by saying hey, Siri,
start an indoor walk.
And that starts the walk for me
and again, I'll just tap the screen
to get rid of the countdown.
Now, one of the most difficult goals
for me to achieve each day is the stand goal,
and not so much because it's difficult to achieve
but more often than not it's inconvenient
when you get the reminder,
and you normally get a reminder
if you haven't stood within the first 50 minutes
of an hour and they're configured
within the watch application.
If you go down to the Activity application
you'll see here, here we go,
Stand Reminders, currently switched on
but you know, they can actually remind you
at inconvenient times when you can't actually take the time
to go ahead and stand and have a walk about.
So, what I've discovered is a quick little tip
to make sure that you get your stand goal every hour.
So, it's 12 minutes past three.
I've been doing very well actually
if I actually have a look at my activity rings,
I'll see that I'm doing pretty well.
I've been doing some gardening today,
so my activity and my exercise is well up.
My stand goal's not too bad
but I want to make sure that I hit my stand goals for today.
If I actually scroll down
you'll actually see that if I keep going down,
so there's my stand goal,
there's the chart,
you'll see here we have this pulsating blue bar
at the end of my stand goal,
and that just indicates
that I haven't met my goal for this hour
but what I've discovered that if you actually at this point
with the glowing bar pulsating
if you get up and stand about,
just move around for a minute to two,
and swing your arms as well
if you don't mind looking a bit silly,
but swing your arms vigorously,
just walk round for half a minute, 45 seconds
you'll find that that blue bar
will actually turn solid.
So, let me go ahead and try that.
So, I've had my quick walk around.
I just walked into the kitchen, walked back again.
It's been about two minutes,
so if I come back and have a look at my watch,
you'll see that that pulsating blue bar
has now gone solid
and that's my move goal achieved for this particular hour
and I don't have to worry about reminders.
Another little tip for you.
I did mention before that I was gardening.
There is no activity for gardening
but you know, it's activity.
You should really record your activity.
So, when I did my gardening
I actually switched on an indoor
or rather an outdoor walk
and captured that activity.
Now, if you forget to switch on your workout
and you've done some exercise
and you want to log it manually
you can do that,
there's no point in wasting that effort,
and to do that
all you need to do is to go into the Health application.
So, if I just go into Health
and if we go to Activity,
and these are all my current activities.
Down here we have Workouts,
so go into Workouts,
and if you hit the plus in the top right-hand corner
you can now specify the type of activity
that you did,
so you can select
out of all these different types of activities.
I don't think there's a gardening actually.
Let me just double check.
No, perhaps there should be
but if you just want to select one of these.
Let's say I did a quick cycle,
so cycling,
you can put in the calories manually if you want,
and you can also put your distance in as well,
when you started, when when you finished,
and then when you've completed that
just say Add, and that will actually add the workout
into the Health application.
But I'm just gonna say cancel to that.
I actually didn't do any additional workouts.
Everything's been captured by my Apple Watch.