How the upcoming Apple Watch updates will revolutionize your health and fitness

Since its inception, the Apple Watch has been synonymous with health. From workouts to wellness, the stylish wearable can track your steps, monitor your heart rate, and detect a fall.

With the forthcoming watchOS 9, set to publicly release this fall, the Apple Watch will revolutionize your fitness, your sleep, and even your medication.

watchOS 9 introduces “Sleep Stages” to the sleep app, allowing users to know how much time they spent in REM, Core, and Deep sleep, as well as time spent awake and in bed.

Inspired by high-performance athletes, the updated Workout app provides cutting-edge metrics to measure your performance like never before, and new training experiences to help you reach your fitness goals, faster.

One such example is Heart Rate Zones, which monitors the intensity of your workout at any time. Zones are automatically calculated using health data, or they can be created manually.

New running metrics, including vertical oscillation, stride length, and ground contact time, will assist your form, while power tracks your effort and helps you move at a sustainable pace. If you’re running a familiar route, you can choose to race against your best or most recent time. Easily keep track of all your progress with the Enhanced Workout Summary.

Custom Workouts will help you breeze through HIIT training or anything else requiring customized work-rest intervals, while multisport tacking was made for triathletes and automatically switches between swimming, cycling, and running.

The new Medications app will help you manage, track, and log your medications, vitamins, and supplements. For caretakers, you can request a loved one’s health data and monitor their medications, too.

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In addition to the new health and fitness related features, watchOS 9 comes with a slew of new watch faces. Celestial-inspired Astronomy shows you real-time cloud coverage around the world, while the Lunar face supports the Lunar Calendar used by myriad cultures.

Playtime features animated, joyful numbers that “take a nap” when you lower your wrist, or gleefully bounce around with the tap of a finger. The sleek Metropolitan face comes in several colours and allows you to customize the font of numbers on the dial.

As well, notifications will now appear as an unobtrusive banner when you’re actively using your Apple Watch, and you can easily create calendar events directly from your wrist.

The new watchOS 9 will officially launch this fall. But if you can’t wait, current Apple Watch owners can test drive the software by joining the Apple Beta Software Program here.