Today’s scheduled Pete Plan activity was to do no rowing. So I took Pete’s recommendation seriously and didn’t do any serious rowing. But I did try something which involved the rowing machine.
To test an Apple watch’s accuracy in measuring calories burned while rowing, I told it I was going to row and rowed slowly until the watch indicated that I’d burned 125 calories.
The results from the watch were vaguely similar to the precisely calibrated results from the Concept 2’s ergometer readout. Very vaguely. But, that’s to be expected, since the watch could only base its calculations on 1. elapsed time, 2. The fact that I was using a workout designation corresponding to one of its labeled algorithms (Rowing ) and 3. My heart rate, which was slightly elevated.
The watch’s results showed Duration=20m 5.76s, Total Active energy of 132.37 kcal (1 kcal is the physics term for one food Calorie. So it was what most people would call 132.37 Calories) and Total Resting Energy of 35.3 kcal (35.3 Calories).
I don’t know if the “resting energy” is a portion of the “Active energy” or if they are separate, but I think they are separate because from the time I pressed “go” on the watch and it started measuring time, heart rate and calories, until the time I actually started rowing, was the elapsed time it took for me to put on my socks and shoes. It was the first time I’d used that app and so I didn’t realize I was making it start until… it started its countdown.
I gave the workout app a target goal of 125 Calories. When “active calories” on its display reached 125, it vibrated to let me know the goal had been met. The “total calories” on the display were higher and were probably the sum of “active” and “resting,” but I didn’t jot that number down.
If I ever do that again and write about it in this blog, I’ll include a screenshot of the results. But I didn’t know how to take a screenshot on the watch, when the rowing was done.
Below is a screenshot of the pertinent results as they were recorded in the watch app, after the rowing “workout” results were saved and below that is a view of the session results summary from the RowPro report.
Happy trails to you.