Apple Fitness Training Load Thoughts

The Apple Fitness App now has Training Load data. It looks at the workouts you have done over the last 7 days and compares it to the last 28 days. In theory this is interesting but in practice I find it frustrating.

To be specific about what I find frustrating, the Apple watch has more than 1900 workout days to gather data from. Training Today and Gentler Streak both measure HRV and assess whether I am overdoing it, within the zone or slacking off. Given that both of these apps can tell me my training status it makes little sense that apple cannot give me relevant information.

When a device has half a decade or more of data to pool from and it says “wear me for 28 more days to get recommendations it screams “This is about getting you addicted to our platform”.

When I wore a Garmin Epix Gen 2 for a few weeks it made perfect sense that I would need to wear the watch for it to get new data. It would also make perfect sense if I had switched from an Apple Watch SE to an Apple Watch Ultra. it doesn’t make sense when I switch from one OS to another on the same device, given that the data has already been gathered for several months.

If I was designing a new feature, such as Training Load I would look back at old data, and from that data I would give a hypothetical training load figure, that would improve with time.

With running you need to run at least once per week, for six months, to get running information. You need half a year of effort for Apple Fitness to give you information. That is way too long. As I write this I notice that I finally have running pace data in the Apple Fitness App.

And Finally

Two Mondays from now I will finally have the required 28 days of data and I will finally get that information. I don’t think it will guide my decision to run, walk or cycle. I am curious. I don’t expect it to be useful information.