Logging treadmill incline and intervals on iPhone
An Apple Watch records an indoor run well: time, heart rate, calories. What it can't know is the incline you set on the treadmill. A 5% walk and a flat walk look almost the same to your wrist, even though one is much harder. Here's how to log incline and intervals on your iPhone, and keep them in Apple Health.
A single session: Log Activity
For a steady session at one incline, log it as an activity in BuiltDaily:
- Open Log Activity and choose Run or Walk.
- Turn on Treadmill. The elevation field becomes an Incline field, in percent.
- Enter the time, distance and incline, plus calories from the treadmill display if you like.
BuiltDaily works out how far you climbed from the incline and the distance, and saves the session to Apple Health with its distance, calories and elevation. That way the climb counts, even though you never left the room.
Intervals: start a workout
Most treadmill sessions aren't one setting from start to finish. You warm up flat, climb, recover, and climb again. For that, when you pick Treadmill in Log Activity, BuiltDaily offers to Start a Workout instead, with your treadmill already added.
In a workout, each interval is its own set, with its own time, distance and incline. You log them as you go, or afterwards, and the workout keeps every interval. Saved to Apple Health, it shows as one session with the total distance and time.
Stationary bikes and rowing machines
The same idea works for other indoor machines:
- Stationary bike: choose Bike and turn on Indoor / stationary bike to log incline. In a workout, each interval records its own level.
- Rowing machine: choose Rowing and turn on Rowing machine to log meters and the damper setting (1–10). In a workout, each piece records its meters and your pace per 500 m.
See whether you're improving
With the full unlock, Exercise Progress in the Stats tab charts every exercise and sport over time, so you can see your treadmill distance, time and pace build week by week. Logging and syncing to Apple Health are free; the long-term charts are part of the one-time $8.99 unlock.
Try BuiltDaily
BuiltDaily is a private workout, sports and water tracker for iPhone and iPad. It's free to use every day, every feature is unlocked for 14 days, and a single $8.99 purchase keeps it all forever. Download it on the App Store, or read Support if you're already using it.