Starting with watchOS 11, Training Load is available on Apple Watch Ultra, SE 2nd generation, Series 6, and later. It’s an insightful way to gauge how the intensity and duration of your workouts impact your body over time.
This way you can check if the workouts are too intense and if you may have overtaxed your body. These insights are especially helpful when preparing for an event – whether it’s your first 5K, a bike race or a marathon.
Training Load for Apple Watch
Training Load is an insightful way to measure how the intensity and duration of your workouts impact your body over time. It shows you how workouts from the last 7 days strain your body compared to the last 28 days. These insights help you make well-informed training decisions every day, especially when you’re preparing to push your body a little further, like preparing for a Marathon.
Evaluate workout intensity
To measure the intensity of a workout, you indicate after each workout how much effort it took. This is done manually or automatically on a scale of 1 to 10. This ultimately determines the score for the training load function.
Automatically generate training load
Apple has optimized popular cardio workouts in watchOS, including running, walking, and cycling, for this feature. These workouts use a new, innovative algorithm that automatically generates an estimated effort rating based on information like your age, height, and weight, along with workout metrics like GPS, heart rate, and elevation gain. You can then manually add other factors to this estimate, such as stress or soreness.
Manually assess workout intensity
For workouts without automatic estimation, such as strength training, you can assign a score after the workout using the ‘Effort’ option. You can give a score from 1 to 10, with 10 indicating a heavy (difficult) intensive workout and strain on your body. You can also add a score to ‘Effort’ after the workout from the Fitness app for iPhone by opening the workout.
Training Load Results
Based on both the duration of your workouts and your difficulty score, Apple Watch calculates your training load for 28 days. This is a weighted average of all your efforts over this period and is used to provide advice and insight.
In the Activity app on Apple Watch, you can compare your training load from the past 7 days to that of the past 28 days. To do this, tap the graph icon at the top right. You can also find the training load in the Vitals app.
In the Fitness app on your iPhone, you can learn more about the potential impact of continuing to train at your current level on your fitness, such as possible changes in your fitness level or risk of injury.
What to do with this data?
Training load is only interesting if you can compare this for a certain period. As you have already read, the function will only function properly after 28 days. After all, you can compare the training load of the past 7 days with that of the past 28 days. Is it much lower, lower, stable, higher or much higher? This is a good indication of whether you are currently taxing your body more heavily, equally heavily or less heavily.
For the best results, you can then adjust your training. If you have hardly strained your body, you can perhaps step it up a notch for better results. Have you just been too enthusiastic? Then it is best to take a step back and give your body some rest to prevent belsseurs, for example.