Roger Fingas
A few weeks ago, Garmin upgraded the "Strength" activity on its Fenix 5 and Forerunner 935 watches with support for counting reps and weights — something Apple would do well to mimic, if just partly, in a future update to the Apple Watch.
Last month's watchOS 4 upgrade included a "Strength Training" icon and label, but didn't make any fundamental improvements to the barebones tracking we complained about in a recent opinion piece.
Under the new Garmin system, users start a "Strength" activity as normal, but are immediately greeted by a rep and set time counter. Hitting a particular button starts and stops sets instead of the entire activity, with a rest counter in between. Users can still flip through multiple screens to see information like heart rate zones.
Much like the Atlas Wristband, Garmin's technology attempts to detect the exercise you're doing and count the number of reps automatically. If you want, you can both edit reps and add weight to an exercise, whether on-device immediately after a set, or later on using the Garmin Connect iPhone app.
The technology is definitely flawed. It regularly miscounts reps and misidentifies exercises — not everything is a bench press or lateral raise, Garmin — which means you'll be doing a lot of editing post-workout if you want to maintain accuracy. There also seems to be no long-term trend analysis that isn't cardio-focused, and for obvious reasons there are some exercises it just won't track automatically, like a leg press.
Still, simply counting sets and rest times would be an improvement in watchOS, and not terribly difficult to implement. The linear start/stop flow of Garmin's on-device interface makes things simple to process, too.
Apple might want to hold off on automatic rep tracking, but it's not inconceivable that the Activity app for the iPhone could be upgraded with options for manually adding names, reps, and weights — or, in an ideal scenario, graphs for trends and individual workouts. Any of this would be useful for weightlifters, since it's easy to lose track of progress without writing stats down.
-m.jpg)
Charles Martin
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Wesley Hilliard
11 Comments
I saw that Strength Training option all Summer during the 4.0 betas, but it now seems to be gone under the 4.1 betas.
I’d rather see the global rollout of Garmin Pay.
It seems to me that a combination of voice commands and a strength app could work for those of us who use the Watch along with AirPods. The easiest input would be to tell the app after each set what you just did and let it record and learn from the movements that went into it. Over time the app may become intelligent enough to detect which exercise you are doing and at least prompt you for input after each set if not record reps, etc. The hassle of inputing data so often is the choke point that makes a strength training recorder less likely for me to use.
These auto detectors are not a better solution than a simple lift tracker. You select a lifting routine of your day’s lifts, you read what weights you should be lifting, and you easily record your reps per set. It’s not difficult in the slightest. StrongLifts, StartingStrength, Stacked, Wendler 531, etc....These task-specific trackers are much better than any autodect feature because they’re also keeping track of where you are in your program. And if you’re lifting, you should be following a program. It’s not like jogging or swimming.
Check out Gymatic. It's already doing automatic rep-counting on Apple Watch. It's not my favorite workout app, and the rep detection is hit or miss, but if you're looking for that functionality it's worth a look.