8 fitness features hiding in your smartwatch that you’ll actually use
Smartwatches in 2026 are essentially mini-smartphones, and in some ways they’re even more ubiquitous, given their location on your wrist.
The funny thing is, most people still use them as a fancy pedometer: steps, a few notifications, maybe a run every now and then, and then a vague feeling of guilt when the rings don’t behave. However, the truly useful fitness features aren’t the most obvious. They’re the quieter tools hiding in health dashboards, post-workout screens, and settings menus that you’ve probably only opened once, when you first strapped on the watch, and never again.
Feature 1: training load
Training load (sometimes called workload) is a simple concept: your watch looks at your recent workouts and visualizes the intensity of your efforts, so you can see trends you might otherwise miss.
On Apple Watch, you can view it in the Workload view of the Activity app and scroll through the last seven days to quickly see if you’ve been making steady progress, staying on track, or overdoing it.
The practical benefit is that it discourages accidental hero weeks.
You also don’t need to look at charts or micromanage your sessions. Just take a quick daily glance and check in after a particularly demanding event.
Feature 2: Evaluate your workouts
Here’s the problem with relying on pace and heart rate alone: two workouts can look the same on paper and still feel completely different.
Heat, hills, lack of sleep, stress and even what you eat can change the intensity of a session, even if the numbers don’t scream it.
This is why the evaluation of effort, sometimes presented as perceived effort, is such a useful little addition. Apple explicitly links this to Training Load, allowing you to record the difficulty of a workout so that the load picture better reflects reality over time, while Garmin also has a smiley face rating system. You don’t need to be super-precise either; the trick is consistency.
If you keep the meaning of your grades stable, even in broad strokes like easy, moderate, and hard, your training history becomes much more honest.
Feature 3: Set heart rate or pace goals
Most people use their smartwatch as a receipt: you do the workout, then you look at the stats afterwards. Targets reverse the situation.
There are two important styles of targets for daily training. Heart rate goals are great for easy runs that accidentally get harder, and pace goals are great for regular sessions where you want to stay within a comfortable range.
In the Fitbit ecosystem, which spans both Fitbit devices and Fitbit-powered Wear OS watches, zone guidance and training goals are designed to keep you in the right intensity range during the session.
The trick is finding the target in the first place, as it’s often hidden in the training settings, custom races or coaching options, not the default ‘start race’ screen. Fortunately, finding and setting up only takes a few minutes.
Feature 4: Use your Readiness Score
A readiness score is essentially a daily tiebreaker. Instead of guessing whether you’re ready for a tough session, your watch uses recovery cues to prompt you to choose the right type of workout.
In the Fitbit ecosystem, the Daily Readiness Score is designed to reflect how ready your body is for activity, using factors like sleep, recent activity, and heart metrics like resting heart rate and heart rate variability.
The best way to use it is to make it a decision-making tool and not a strict rule. A low score doesn’t necessarily mean “do nothing,” but it’s often a good incentive to swap intervals for an easy run, walk, or mobility work.
Feature 5: Check your vital signs
Some mornings you wake up and feel bad – not sick, just sluggish or strangely flat. This is where Vitals dashboards really come in handy, because they turn a vague feeling into something you can act on.
On Apple Watch, the Vitals app creates a typical range for nightly health measurements that it collects while you sleep, then flags readings as outliers when they’re significantly above or below your norm. Garmin watches offer a health summary with five key metrics, such as pulse and heart rate variability, as well as a morning report on how you slept.
If multiple readings fall outside of your usual range, you may also receive a notification the next morning, along with context about factors that might influence the results, such as medications, altitude changes, or alcohol.
It’s important to note that you don’t need to obsess over numbers. The simplest and most useful habit is to treat this like a traffic light check on mornings when you’re feeling doubtful; If everything seems typical, you can practice as planned.
Feature 6: Wrist Temperature Trends
Wrist temperature is easy to misunderstand, so it helps set expectations up front: it’s not a “take your temperature on demand” feature, nor is it about obsessing over a single reading.
The value lies in overnight trends, which can add a useful layer of context when trying to determine whether you’re under-recovered, traveling poorly, or simply heading into a rough week.
On Apple Watch, wrist temperature is measured overnight and displayed as a baseline with changes from baseline, rather than a single absolute number, and it may take several nights of wear to establish this personal reference point.
Feature 7: Irregular rhythm notifications
This one falls slightly away from pure fitness, but it’s exactly the kind of feature people forget they have.
Irregular rhythm notifications can run in the background and check for signs of an irregular heart rhythm, while EKG is typically an on-demand test where you open an app and follow prompts.
On Apple Watch, Apple describes irregular rhythm notifications as a feature that can occasionally check your heart rhythm and send a notification if it detects an irregular rhythm that appears consistent with atrial fibrillation. Fitbit, Google Pixel, Samsung and Garmin behave similarly.
We must emphasize that it is not medical equipment and you should contact your doctor if you have a serious problem.
If your watch supports these features, it’s worth turning on notifications and making sure you know where the ECG app is.
Feature 8: Use an Adaptive Running Trainer
Many people would run more consistently if they didn’t have to decide what to do every time, which is why built-in coaching features can be such a win.
On Samsung’s recent Galaxy Watch line, the company’s personalized Running Coach is designed to assess your running level and develop a tailored plan, with the coaching experience through Samsung Health.
Fitbit’s ecosystem also leans heavily on guided training and preparation prompts, which is why it tends to be a natural fit for Wear OS watches that prioritize health coaching as well as workout tracking.
