Apple Watch not recording Exercise

[WarrenB]

Had a brisk 30 minute walk home from the pub last night, got home and noticed that my watch thought I may have been doing a workout and suggested I started a workout activity. Ignored it as I was already home.

Today despite me being out and about all day and filling up the Move and Stand activity rings the Exercise ring is only saying I've done 3 minutes worth. Is this because it thinks my walk home last night wasn't actually a walk, so now won't be counting anything less than a brisk walk as exercise? If so I'm guessing starting a workout next time I go for a walk will recalibrate it?

[blackscooby]

Have you checked if there is an update for it ?
Mrs BS has an Apple Watch thingy and it was rubbish at picking up walking with the dog, until the watch was updated and hey presto it is completely different now and picks up a walk properly.

Before it was proper rubbish TBH and just annoying.

[WarrenB]

It's all up to date, running the latest version of WatchOS.

Yesterday I went for a quick hike and a bike ride but recorded those with Strava, which seemed to log as normal on the Activity Rings. Today I went for a gentle 30 minute walk but logged that with the watches own 'Workout' app, which should hopefully remind it what my walking pace is and calibrate itself again...

[aparna]

My watch used to track everything, but something happened, maybe I installed an app, or changed a setting, and now it seems to prefer me to proactively trigger workouts etc, which I obviously always forget to do.

No idea how to get it back.

[WarrenB]

aparna said:

My watch used to track everything, but something happened, maybe I installed an app, or changed a setting, and now it seems to prefer me to proactively trigger workouts etc, which I obviously always forget to do.

No idea how to get it back.

That's what mine was like, I could talk 15 minutes down the road to the shop and it'd actually log it as 15 minutes worth of exercise. But since Friday night when I ignored it when it suggested I logged my walk home as a workout it seems to have given up logging it automatically. It actually said I'd walked 5 miles on Saturday, but only 3 minutes of exercise. I'm assuming not logging the brisk walk as a workout means it now thinks anything other than a brisk walk isn't actually exercise. Hopefully manually starting a few walk workouts will sort it.

[robsa]

WarrenB said:

Had a brisk 30 minute walk home from the pub last night, got home and noticed that my watch thought I may have been doing a workout and suggested I started a workout activity. Ignored it as I was already home.

Today despite me being out and about all day and filling up the Move and Stand activity rings the Exercise ring is only saying I've done 3 minutes worth. Is this because it thinks my walk home last night wasn't actually a walk, so now won't be counting anything less than a brisk walk as exercise? If so I'm guessing starting a workout next time I go for a walk will recalibrate it?

Don't know if this may be relevant, but the exercise ring only counts if it detects your heart above a certain rate (based on your own personal stats). So you could go for a six mile walk along a towpath, for example, and if you did it slowly then it may not count towards your exercise minutes.

[phil4]

You'd be much better off going into the Exercise app and telling it you're starting. It won't miss it then.

But to record those green (yellow) minutes you have to be working reasonably hard, a gentle stroll isn't enough, your HR needs to be up.

Sure it'll sometimes spot you're doing something and suggest (and on mine that means it'll remember the previous 10 mins too), but unless you really are working out, and don't care about the lost minutes (as it will miss some), you're much better off telling it you're doing something.

[aparna]

Maybe it’s cheating but I’d prefer to count gentle walking as steps. Or have the option to. It’s still worth tracking especially if you are super sedentary

[WarrenB]

aparna said:

Maybe it’s cheating but I’d prefer to count gentle walking as steps. Or have the option to. It’s still worth tracking especially if you are super sedentary

It still counts steps regardless, just won't fill the Exercise ring up. But as Phil above says...

phil4 said:

But to record those green (yellow) minutes you have to be working reasonably hard, a gentle stroll isn't enough, your HR needs to be up

That makes sense. I'm normally quite a fast walker so that'll explain why it was counting up the Exercise minutes previously. Most of my working day is spent driving between different sites, then parking up and walking to and from the site or back and forth to the van for tools, etc, so that'll keep the BPMs up. For some reason I just assumed it used the accelerometer and went off movement, using heart rate makes more sense.