Apple Finally Brings the Whoop’s Best Fitness Feature to the Apple Watch

With its new operating system, the Apple Watch will soon become the fitness tracker it always promised to be.

Published June 10, 2024

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Updated June 10, 2024

The Apple Watch is already one of the best fitness wearables on the market. Now, with the forthcoming release of watchOS 11 — previewed at the June 2024 WWDC and scheduled come out this fall — it’s about to become even better at tracking workouts and delivering health insights to users.

“This fall, watchOS 11 makes Apple Watch an even more essential companion by offering users additional actionable insights into their health and fitness, more personalization to fit their unique needs, and new ways to stay connected while on the go,” says David Clark, Apple’s senior director of watchOS Engineering.

person swimming with an apple watch ultra — The Apple Watch’s new operating system, watchOS 11, will roll out this fall.

Though battery life will remain a perennial issue for some endurance athletes, the Apple Watch will soon boast cutting-edge health and workout features that have become standard among Apple’s competitors like Whoop, Oura, Garmin and others.

Training Load

It looks like Apple took a page out of Whoop’s playbook for something the Cupertino company is calling Training Load.

In a nutshell, Training Load will track the intensity of your workouts over time using metrics such as heart race, pace and elevation, then deliver a score from 1 to 10. Users will be able to manually adjust their score if they felt like their perceived effort was over or under what their score says.

The Apple Watch will also establish a 28-day training load, as well as a weighted average. This way, users can see how recent workouts compare to their baselines and whether they’re progressing, maintaining or deloading when it comes to volume and intensity.

Rest days

Recovery is key element of any training program, but in motivating its wearers to get up and move, the Apple Watch has done a poor job at encouraging it.

Apple watch and iphone — You can finally pause Activity rings when you need a day off.

With watchOS 11, users will have more customization when it comes to the Activity rings, namely with the ability to pause their rings when they’re nursing an injury or just need a day (or even a week) off.

Users will also have the ability to customize their rings by the day of the week, “so the rings provide the right amount of motivation at the right moments,” the company says.

Vitals, at a glance

Tracking health metrics is one thing. Delivering actual insights to users is a whole other ball game.

That’s exactly what Apple hopes to do with a new app called Vitals, which will give users a snapshot view of heart rate, respiratory rate, wrist temperature, sleep duration and blood oxygen levels.

When two or more of these vitals are out of the ideal range, users will receive a notification, as well as information about environmental factors (such as elevation) that may be causal.

Other Apple Watch updates

The new Apple Watch operating system will bring a bevy of additional features, such a revamped Photos watch face, a built-in Translate app that supports 20 languages and a smarter Smart Stack feature that surfaces timely widgest before you realize you want them.