Fitness is an important part of everyone’s lives, whether you give it the proper attention or not. There are hundreds of great apps out there to help you with that, but today Google is introducing a brand new version of its Google Fit service, and there’s a lot to like here.
The “new” Google Fit is focused around two main parts of your health – physical activity and your heart. Built in collaboration with the American Heart Association (AHA) and the World Health Organization (WHO), Google Fit now offers two activity goals with “Move Minutes” and “Heart Points.”
Move Minutes are how Google Fit tracks your physical activity. Through the day, it tracks the time you spend moving, whether that’s going out for a walk, taking the stairs, or just your exercise routine. The app has a daily goal for you to reach as well.
In addition to that, Heart Points are gathered based on activities that get your heart pumping. These points are gathered based not only on the time you spend doing an activity but also the intensity of that activity. Google explains:
You’ll score one point for each minute of moderate activity, like picking up the pace while walking your dog, and double points for more intense activities like running or kickboxing. It takes just 30 minutes of brisk walking 5 days a week to reach the AHA and WHO’s recommended amount of physical activity, which is shown to reduce the risk of heart disease, improve sleep, and increase overall mental well-being.
As with the version that came before it, Google Fit still offers integration with other popular fitness and health apps such as Strava, Runkeeper, Endomondo and MyFitnessPal, as well as many others. The app can also track a variety of forms of exercise using the sensors on your phone or your connected smartwatch.
Google Fit’s new redesign is rolling out this week to Android devices as well as Wear OS smartwatches. An iOS app is also apparently coming soon, but Google has yet to detail more information on that. Update: No iOS app is incoming. Rather, the stats collected by Wear OS watches will be available through the Wear OS iOS app (which has been available in previous versions of Google Fit) as Ron Amadeo points out.
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