Apple’s wearable update is one for cyclists to watch

It’s estimated that 646,000 people took up cycling in Australia this year, with 1.75 million bikes sold, and global numbers are equally huge. So it makes sense that improving the outdoor cycling workout experience was a major priority in the latest Apple Watch software update.

With WatchOS 8 installed, the wearables will automatic detect when you’re riding a bike outdoors, pause and resume if you stop and start, and make adjustments to calorie calculations for ebikes.

Julz Arney, director of fitness for health technologies at Apple, is an avid cyclist herself, and said that knowing when to start and stop a cycling workout wasn’t just a matter of copy-pasting the code from the similar running feature.

“Advanced algorithms analyse data from the GPS, heart rate, accelerometer and gyroscope to identify when you’re riding a bike,” she said.

“An elevated heart rate due to pedalling can help distinguish riding a bike from traveling in a slow moving car, so we know when to give you that workout reminder for cycling versus just pulling out of the driveway. We also use the magnetometer, which is basically the compass, to detect any change in orientation, and this picks up that subtle sway of riding a bike.”

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Riders will get a prompt about three minutes into their ride to start recording, and will get back credit for those first few minutes.

The same algorithm is used to detect when you stop and start riding, say at a traffic light, so your time gives a more accurate reflection of your workout.

The rise of ebikes has also meant that the previous way of measuring calorie burn (relying on a combination of distance, time and heartrate) gave some riders inaccurate caloric burn information.

“The algorithm now looks for times when there’s a discordance, a difference between your speed and what your heart rate should be, to understand when you may be getting help from the bike,” Ms Arney said.

“When this is detected it awards calories based on heart rate, which in that moment is more accurate.”

Another significant update to the workout app is the addition of Pilates and Tai Chi. Interestingly, while a lot of people talk about the similarities between yoga and Pilates, they’re apparently quite different exercises to track.

“Yoga has more large movements with long pauses, Pilates has more small, tiny movements that are fast, and maybe aren’t detectable from the wrist,” Ms Arney said.

“So it’s just a different problem to go after; to understand how heart rate and movement play into the workout to give you the most accurate calorie credit.”

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Part of solving that problem was using the gyroscope to better understand body position, and which movements are generally done in that position. Then that data needs to be matched up with the user’s heartrate data, for the algorithm to know how to allocate calorie credits.”

Coming soon as an additional update, WatchOS 8 will also add fall detection across all the major workout types. Current Apple Watch users can update their device now, and WatchOS 8 will also come installed on Apple Watch Series 7 when it’s released later this year.

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