How To Manually Add A Workout To Your Apple Watch

There are many reasons why someone would own an Apple Watch, plenty of which revolve around personal fitness. Though, while the watch tracks metrics like movement, heart rate, sleep, and even your wrist temperature, there will be times when you have to tell it to do so. At least at first.

Beyond monitoring various health factors, this also applies to physical workouts. With the right prep you can have your Apple Watch ready to keep track of your runs, walks, aerobics, or pretty much any other form of fitness you want to take part in.

Fortunately, it isn't difficult to set up — so long as you know what to do. And once you have the process down you should have no trouble keeping track of your workouts with one or two taps on your wrist. Even workouts that you missed out on tracking can still be added to your ongoing health metrics, so long as you don't mind putting the numbers in yourself.

If you want to add a new workout directly to your Apple Watch (bypassing your iPhone), you can do so fairly quickly through Apple's official Workout app.

1. Open the Workout app on your Apple Watch.
2. Scroll down through the main Workout app screen until you find the Add Workout option.
3. Tap Add Workout, then choose the type of workout you want to set up.
4. If you can't find the exact workout on the list, choose Other.
5. Once you're ready to start your new workout, simply find it in your Workout list and tap on the entry to start.
6. Tracking will begin after a three second countdown (which you can manually skip by tapping the countdown screen), at which point you can begin working out. Tap End to finish.
7. You can also set a specific goal before you begin by finding the workout entry on the list and tapping the three dots (...) icon next to it.

Workouts that end up not being tracked (due to an error or not being set up ahead of time) can still be added after the fact, but you'll need to take care of it manually.

Workouts that have been completed but aren't automatically tracked by your Apple Watch can still be manually added from your iPhone through the Health app.

1. Open the Health app on your iPhone and select Browse.
2. Tap Activity and choose Workouts, then tap the Add Data option in the top-right corner of the screen.
3. Fill in the applicable details for your workout as well as you can, including workout type, start and end times, total distance, and calories burned.
4. Tap the Add option in the top-right corner of the screen when you're finished entering details.

Adding workouts in this manner allows you to track what may have otherwise gone untracked, and will update your Health app Activity rings accordingly. However, it's typically more convenient to set up your workouts ahead of time and have your Apple Watch track them for you when possible, rather than having to manually input them all once you've finished exercising.