Walking on a treadmill with an Apple Watch

By Exodia, 2 January, 2023

Forum
Apple Hardware and Compatible Accessories

Hello everybody, I am curious. Are there any good apps for walking on a treadmill with your Apple Watch? I ask because when I walk on a treadmill, my watch does not detect that I’ve done any activity, except for the increase in my pulse. I fallen out of the habit, and I need to get back into it. That’s one of my plans for this year. And that is also why I’m asking this question.

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By DobieChuck on Saturday, January 21, 2023 - 19:41

Depending on workout attire, I put mine in front shorts pocket, or use a safety pin to attach it somewhere near hip

By Exodia on Saturday, January 21, 2023 - 19:41

Mostly, I wear sweatpants or leggings. The sweatpants have the deep pockets, but the leggings don’t have any pockets, but that’s a cool idea.

By Tristo on Saturday, January 21, 2023 - 19:41

Putting apple watch in pants poket is a great idea, one which I didn't even think of. I do however have an other way you could track your treadmill workouts. According to apple, you can pair your apple watch with gym equipment, and retrieve workout data from the treadmill itself. Below is the link to read more: https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/watch/apdf855bb3c0/watchos#:~:text=Pair%20your%20Apple%20Watch%20with%20gym%20equipment&text=Make%20sure%20your%20watch%20is,the%20display%20facing%20the%20reader.

By Roxann Pollard on Saturday, January 21, 2023 - 19:41

There are many options out there, for an arm/ankle band to utilize your Apple Watch, when tracking activity. The problem with blind people is that, due to spatial awareness, we must hold on at least one of the bars, in order to stay on the belt of the treadmill. So we don't swing our arm as we actually should be. But, it is what it is for that issue, but you can still fix your problem, by purchasing an arm/ankle band designed for the Apple Watch. Just go to amazon.com, and type in something such as Apple Watch ankle band. Many choices available. This will help you to track any workout, even if it's not on a treadmill.

If you already own a personal treadmill, which doesn't have Apple Watch connectivity built into it, you can certainly still track your workouts like this.

By Brian Giles on Saturday, January 21, 2023 - 19:41

I have found that it helps to start a workout on the watch first, rather than relying on it to detect that I am doing brisk activity. I have the workout complication on my watch face to make it easier.

Interesting idea about the ankle bands though.

By Dizno on Saturday, January 21, 2023 - 19:41

Before I start any exercise, I go to the workout app on the watch and select the type of exercise I am doing.
When I am walking on a treadmill, I select indoor walk.
And the app tracks my heart rate, the distance, the weather all that information that is relevant
If I’m walking outside, I set up for outdoor walk and attracts the elevation as well as the distance and the heart rate and the weather.
But I always start the workout app and everything is tracked.

By kjw810 on Saturday, January 21, 2023 - 19:41

When I walk on my treadmill, the watch detects it. I tell it I'm doing an in-door walk and then it is tracking it. I noticed that it actually tracked the whole workout even thouse I was about 10 minutes into it.

By Tristo on Saturday, January 21, 2023 - 19:41

The only problem I can see with not having the watch on your wrist is that you won't be able to track your heart rate. From what I understand, the watch relies on the palse from your wrist to measure the heart rate. However if you only wanted to track things like time and distance ancle bands are a great idea.

By Roxann Pollard on Saturday, January 21, 2023 - 19:41

You bring up a great point. As I have an actually purchased an ankle band for myself, I hadn't even considered the fact that it may not track my pulse rate. For me, I want distance, steps, and heart rate. I don't know that an ankle band would serve all of those with it? Frustrating. In order to resolve these issues, and get all of the metrics that I prefer, I would say that I just need to always use my left arm in the swinging motion, while walking.
And here's another issue that I would face, if walking outside, and trying to track these metrics. I use a guide dog, left-handed, and since, to a large degree, that hand is rather stationary, while grasping the harness, I would not achieve accuracy on any of those metrics, in this scenario, either. no matter if my watch is worn on my wrist, or my ankle, while walking with the dog, none of the metrics will be accurate.

By Rixon Smith on Saturday, January 21, 2023 - 19:41

The fact that the Apple Watch is considered also to be a companion to the iPhone itself, you might consider carrying your iPhone and your sweatpants pocket. That way you might be able to get more accuracy as far as your distance traveled. Hope this helps.

By Karina Velazquez on Saturday, January 21, 2023 - 19:41

Hi guys, I didn’t get why to many people were having trouble with fixing the treadmill workout.
I have bought a treadmill two years ago and since the first day I never had an issue using my Apple Watch to track my workout.
As kjw810 already explained, it is pretty simple to fix your workout with the native app for the Watch, and now since iOS 9, the indoor Interval training is very useful.
I have to tell that I don’t get why to use an ancle band or so, if this watch is made to be on your wrist, why to have it somewhere else? even when we have to be attached to the bar of our treadmill for better space orientation. And regarding this last topic, I could give you a suggestion to be more confident when running on the treadmill; I can tell you I have been able to released the front bar of my treadmill and to swing my arms while running, by touching the front bar with the tip of my fingers, or with my feasts and taking a central point of reference on the bar in order to be centered (for example I take the heart beats sensors as reference) and not so far away from it, and at the same time, when ever I lose my orientation, I’m close enough from the bar in order to catch it to be back in balance again. It took me some weeks to be mor confident running this way, but now I rarely grap the front bar, except for the moments I change from fast speed to a slow one.

Hope this helps.