Experienced a 15-mile run accompanied by Apple Watch's latest Workout Companion - my assessment follows
In the realm of fitness trackers, Apple's Workout Buddy on the Apple Watch Series 10 stands out as a unique contender, offering a highly personalized coaching experience that goes beyond simple data tracking.
The Workout Buddy feature, available on the Apple Watch Series 10, delivers real-time coaching adapted to individual habits, preferences, and even the time of day. It provides motivational voice feedback from actual Apple Fitness Plus trainers, dynamic updates on performance during workouts, and insightful summaries afterward. This intimate, contextual coaching experience is facilitated by a mix of on-device processing and private cloud computation, ensuring privacy of personal data.
Compared to other fitness trackers, Workout Buddy's deep integration with the Apple ecosystem and AI-driven personalization set it apart. While some fitness trackers, like Whoop, focus more on recovery and physiological metrics for serious athletes, the Apple Watch offers a balance of health monitoring, fitness coaching, and entertainment features suitable for broad daily use. Its advanced personalization is also reflected in UI improvements and media integration, such as automatically generated music playlists fitting workout intensity.
However, Workout Buddy has its quirks and is not foolproof. It does not interrupt the user's workouts and currently only supports English. To use Workout Buddy, the user's iPhone must be compatible, requiring an iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, or iPhone 16. During a custom workout, Workout Buddy did not seem to function as expected, with normal reminders to change pace instead.
The author hopes that Workout Buddy could consider current week's training load, sleep quality, and suggest workouts accordingly. They also express a desire for more specific feedback during workouts, such as notifying slower reps or miles. Furthermore, the author suggests that Workout Buddy could remember past runs and provide information about upcoming hills or comparisons to previous performances.
On one run, Workout Buddy told the author the number of minutes they had run that year, which is not a tracked milestone. The "pep talk" from Workout Buddy includes comments such as "Great job starting your run!" and "You're crushing it!". The author hopes that Workout Buddy's personality will be more punchy when it rolls out this fall.
During a 15-mile run with Workout Buddy during the watchOS 26 Beta, it provided updates on miles run, average pace, heart rate, and what the user was listening to during runs. It is important to note that Workout Buddy's AI-powered features require newer hardware (Apple Watch Series 6 or later and iPhone 15 Pro or newer) to function due to the processing demands of AI features.
In summary, the Apple Watch Series 10's Workout Buddy delivers a uniquely personalized, coaching-focused experience with strong privacy protections and seamless media integration. While it may not replace the expertise of real-life coaches, it can be a valuable tool for runners, offering motivational feedback and performance insights. Apple's integration of Fitness+ Coaches into the Workout app with Workout Buddy seems to be a step towards enhancing coaching, recovery, and training features, making it an exciting development in the fitness tracker market.
[1] Apple Inc. (2022). Apple Watch Series 10. Retrieved from https://www.apple.com/watch/series-10/
[2] Whoop. (2022). Whoop Strap 4.0. Retrieved from https://www.whoop.com/products/strap-4-0
[3] Apple Inc. (2022). watchOS 26 Beta. Retrieved from https://developer.apple.com/documentation/watchos/watchos_26_beta/
[4] Apple Inc. (2021). Apple Fitness+. Retrieved from https://www.apple.com/fitness/plus/
[5] Apple Inc. (2021). Apple Music. Retrieved from https://www.apple.com/music/
- Given the strong integration of smartphones and the Apple ecosystem with Workout Buddy, one could envision its development expanding beyond fitness trackers to incorporate smartphone technology, combining the benefits of gadgets like Apple Music for personalized workout playlists.
- In the future, with advancements in technology, it's possible that Workout Buddy could evolve to understand various languages, allowing a wider range of users to benefit from its personalized coaching experience, extending its reach to a global market, including speakers of languages other than English.
