Those who use an Apple Watch often do this while exercising, but that is not always possible. Additionally, you may occasionally forget to start the workout app at the beginning of your workout.
That’s not a problem, but it does mean that you won’t be able to complete your activity rings, for example, even though you are entitled to do so. Fortunately, it’s easy to add your workout to the Activity app afterwards via the Fitness app on your iPhone or using the Health app on your iPhone and iPad.
Manually add workout afterwards
Since iOS 26.1, you can manually add workouts in the Fitness app on iPhone to count towards your goals and performance. This is useful if you forget to start a workout. Previously, this had to be done via the Health app, where you manually entered a workout with start and end time, calories and distance.
- Open Condition
- Navigate to ‘Workouts’
- Tap the square with pencil symbol
- Select workout
- Fill in the requested information
Manually added workouts count towards your activity rings, but do not include heart rate data. This way you can keep track of your training better without an Apple Watch or if you have forgotten to start something.
Condition and workouts in brief
With iOS 26, Apple has made an important expansion to the Conditioning app (Fitness app) by adding a Workout tab. This feature makes it possible for the first time to start and track workouts directly from your iPhone, without requiring an Apple Watch.
The workout function works completely independently and requires no additional hardware, but can work together with, among others, the Apple Watch, AirPods Pro 3 and the PowerBeats Pro 2. In the featured article below we explain how you can use the Workout in Condition for iPhone.
Add a workout manually
In addition to the Fitness app, it is also possible to manually add a workout using the Health app. The advantage of this is that you can also do this on an iPad, the data is synchronized using iCloud.
- Open the Health application
- Navigate to or tap the ‘Data’ tab search field
- If necessary, swipe down to activate the search field
- Search for ‘Workouts’ and open it
- Tap the plus button to add a new one
Then determine the activity and, if necessary, enter additional information such as distance and calories. Enter the start and end time and save the workout via the ‘Add’ button. Health is now syncing the data with the Fitness and Activity app, which may take a while. After synchronization, you will see that the rings in the app on your iPhone and Apple Watch are replenished.