When COVID-19 hit, I got nauseous and had terrible brain fog that kept me in bed for days and I was miserable. I barely remember anything about it. But I do remember waking up feverish and groggy with a notification on my Apple Watch. My ring wasn’t making much progress. It asked me to go for a brisk walk for 27 minutes. “You can still do it,” it said. No, I couldn’t.
While getting sick wasn’t my fault, my 85-day streak was eventually snapped. Since then, I’ve experienced some nasty shin pain, migraines, and a number of long-haul flights that made it difficult to reach my fitness goals. These are all great reasons to prioritize rest or make room in my schedule. I knew this, but every time I listened to my body and prioritized rest over a random streak, I found myself disappointed.
When Apple announced the holidays finally I nearly cried tears of joy when this feature was released in watchOS 11, and I’m not the only one who felt that way. People have been asking for this for a really long time. Really length time.
With watchOS 11, Apple is introducing several features that finally create space for rest and recovery. The one I’m most excited for is the ability to pause your Activity rings. and Ability to adjust goals depending on the day of the week.
This has been a need for a long time: the rest of the industry has steadily moved away from gamification over the last few years and is now recovering, and for good reason.
Streaks can motivate us, but they can also unconsciously teach us to ignore our body’s cues. When I got sick, I told my Apple Watch to stop. Over the years, several friends have told me they crawled out of their hospital beds just to keep their streaks going. Others have said they lowered their goals but felt guilty about “cheating.” I understand the urge. Breaking a streak makes you feel like you’ve fallen off your horse. (This is obviously a lie, but streaks are weirdly addictive and sometimes trump logic.) But the ultimate purpose of a fitness tracker is to improve your health. Can not Taking careless breaks will have the opposite effect of improving your health.
Not only that, but rest is actually a requirement of any effective fitness plan. Runners who don’t build rest days into their training plans get injured, and if you’re trying to build muscle, neglecting rest is a pretty bad plan, since rest is when new muscle is built. It’s no coincidence that elite athletes are flocking to trackers like Oura Ring and Whoop, which prioritize recovery and sleep above all else.
For these reasons, pausing your rings is a great idea. With watchOS 11, you can pause your rings for as long as you want – a day, a week, a month – without affecting your Move streak. This removes the feeling of failure. On vacation, you acknowledge that it’s okay to lounge by the pool and spend time with your family, rather than worrying about when to squeeze in a workout. In fact, you acknowledge that taking a break is allowed, and that doing so may help keep you motivated in the long run.
Similarly, adjusting goals based on schedules can make it easier for beginners to actually stick to a plan. If lowering your exercise goals on days you go to the office and increasing them on weekends makes it easier to stick to your plan, why not? And while you could technically do this manually before watchOS 11, automating it makes it feel more intentional. It’s a simple shift in perception, but it can take any irrational guilt about cheating out of the equation.
Apple isn’t the first company to implement this feature, but that doesn’t matter. When you’re trying to do something difficult and improve your health, teeth It’s hard, but it helps a lot if you can give yourself the grace to be imperfect. And you will be imperfect. if Sometimes you get sick or life breaks your streak. It’s just a matter of when. The time I broke my longest Move streak was because something shocking happened in my life. After a day of ugly crying, I woke up the next morning to find my streak broken. I knew it was a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but it still felt like a kick in the ass when I was low. It took me two months to get focused again.
Looking back, I can’t help but think that if only I had had the ability to pause from the beginning, everything would have been much easier. Some fitness enthusiasts may scoff and say that these features are what support me and others like me, lacking the discipline and mental strength. Maybe. But I am all for incorporating fitness into your life, not building your entire life around it, and this is a much-needed step in that direction.