The Apple Watch is first and foremost one of the best smartwatches, but it's also a great sports watch, and every year it adds more and more features for athletes. The most interesting update in watchOS 11 for sports is the addition of Training Load, which I've been testing in the watchOS 11 beta for the past few weeks.
Before testing out the Workout Load feature on the Apple Watch Ultra 2, I spoke to Craig Bolton, Apple's director of fitness technology, about the new feature and Apple's approach to it.
Overall, I like the amount of user feedback that Apple's Training Load feature relies on compared to other brands, but you'll get more details and advice on the best sports watches made by Garmin and others.
What is training load?
Training Load is a common feature on many wearable fitness devices and the best Garmin watches and it helps you gauge your workout efforts and keep your overall load balanced.
“This concept of training load has been around for decades in the athletic and sports community,” Bolton says. “But its principles really apply to anyone who trains regularly.
“The general idea is to analyze your training data and information and determine whether your current training is increasing or decreasing at a rate that is going to help you maximize your performance and hopefully reduce your risk of injury and illness.”
How does Training Load work on Apple Watch?
You rate the effort of each workout you do on Apple Watch on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being a very easy workout and 10 being maximum effort.
The watch also automatically assigns an effort rating to the most common types of cardio workouts. This rating is based on factors like workout duration, heart rate, and age. You can always adjust it yourself if you think the rating is incorrect.
After 10 days of use, during which you set your own personal baseline, these individual effort scores for each workout are then combined to form your 7-day and 28-day training load. These are compared to see if your recent 7-day training load is higher, lower, or about the same as your 28-day training load.
“We chose the values 7 and 28 because they are consistent with the literature in this area and they are also very intuitive for users,” Bolton says. “Really, what we are looking at and trying to help the user is understand how this recent stress on their body compares to the longer-term view over 28 days.”
On Apple Watch, your 28-day baseline is represented by a white line, while your 7-day charge is represented by a color-coded line. Your recent voltage is shown below as a percentage above or below your baseline and rated as well below, below, stable, above, or well above your average.
Pushing your training load above your normal levels will help you get fitter, but it's also something you may not be able to safely maintain for long periods of time without risking injury, especially if your load is rated well above normal on the watch.
What I liked about the Apple Watch Training Load
The main feature of Training Load on the Apple Watch is that it relies heavily on user input, which is different from most sports watches which automatically calculate your Training Load using data from workouts, and you can't then change that.
I really like that you can adjust the stress rating on the Apple Watch for two reasons. The first is that a fitness watch knows less than you do about your workout that day and whether it was affected by other factors like a stressful morning meeting or an upset stomach after breakfast.
Second, watches that rely heavily on heart rate for their training load data can end up with bad information if the heart rate data is incorrect, which is not an uncommon problem with optical heart rate sensors on watches. I typically use a chest strap heart rate monitor like the Wahoo TRACKR to get more reliable results.
For example, if I did an easy run with another sports watch and the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and my heart rate data was inaccurate on both watches, or they failed to read my heart rate at all, my training load with the sports watch would be skewed by that data.
On the other hand, with the Apple Watch, I can adjust the training effort index myself to give an accurate idea of how difficult or easy the race is, and my training load for that race will be correct.
While the Apple Watch provides effort estimates for many types of workouts, giving users the final say was a key part of Apple's approach to training load, Bolton explains:
“We have powerful algorithms that use the sensors in the watch to generate the effort score, but we also know that ultimately the athlete may, for whatever reason, want to adjust or capture that score. That was a really important principle when we built this feature: that the user could ultimately have a say in how hard the workout was.”
I also found this feature visually appealing, and I like that you can add it to your watch face as a complication. You can also assign effort ratings to workouts that aren't tracked by the native Workout app, though you won't get an Apple-estimated effort score for those.
Being able to self-assess the intensity of your workouts also makes it easier to count non-cardio workouts against Apple Watch Training Load, such as strength training sessions.
What I didn't like about the Apple Watch's workout load
The best sports watches often go beyond simply assessing your overall training load, breaking down your training based on different benefits such as anaerobic and aerobic fitness, and also suggesting workouts you can do to keep your training load balanced.
The Apple Watch won't do that, and it's unlikely to become more prescriptive given Apple's general approach to this area, which is to inform rather than dictate.
“Training Load is designed to give you the data and information you need to make good decisions about your training, rather than trying to make the decision for you,” Bolton says.
“The reality is that there are things that happen in your life, in your training, that the devices can’t accurately detect. So the training load feature is never going to tell you to rest or push at that exact intensity. It’s really about empowering the user to make those good decisions for themselves and giving them the information and knowledge that they need.”
While I definitely agree that watches shouldn't dictate your training, the additional information you can get from Garmin devices can be helpful, and stats like training readiness from other wearables can make it easier to apply training load information to guide the intensity of your daily workout.
I also found that the Apple Watch struggled to accurately assess training load for interval workouts, as it seems to primarily use average heart rate for its estimates.
When I did 10 1km repeats, my heart rate increased during the repeats and then dropped during the recoveries, so the average may not have been that high, but my effort certainly was. Sports watches that use more information about time spent in different heart rate zones do a better job of capturing overall training load.
This can obviously be worked around by changing the effort score, but if you're just getting started with fitness and aren't entirely sure how hard you should rate your workouts, you might well rely heavily on Apple's estimates.
Is the Apple Watch's Workout Load feature actually useful?
The simplicity and reliance on user input with Training Load on the Apple Watch makes it very appealing, and I think it's a great addition to the watch that can help people understand and improve their training.
The very act of measuring the effort you put in for each workout is useful for learning more about your fitness and the strain you're putting on your body. I also think Apple's approach certainly has some advantages over traditional sports watches, which are more prescriptive and therefore can sometimes be useless to users.
That said, I think experienced athletes who love data and know how to use it to guide their training will get more out of higher-end sports watches, which offer more depth and a wider range of training load stats.