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RUNNING · CYCLING3 MIN · UPDATED AUG 2026

Fix your heart rate zones in Apple Health

Apple's automatic zones can only use heart rates you have actually produced, so if you have never gone properly deep the top of your range is a guess and every zone under it is wrong by the same amount.

SHORT ANSWER

Watch app → My Watch → Workout → Heart Rate Zones → Manual, then set the edges yourself in bpm. Use a max you have actually seen on a chest strap, and check your resting HR in Health while you are there.

The steps

01Open the Watch app on your iPhone, not the Health app - this one lives with the watch settings.
02My Watch → Workout → Heart Rate Zones.
03Switch from Automatic to Manual. Automatic is derived from your own data, which sounds better than it is if you have never actually gone near your max.
04Set the zone boundaries yourself. Apple gives you five zones and lets you move the edges directly in bpm rather than in percentages.
05Health app → Browse → Heart → Resting Heart Rate is worth a look while you are here, since that is the other half of the calculation and Apple measures it well.

Why the default is wrong for a lot of people

Automatic zones are, as far as I can tell, only as good as the hardest thing you have done while wearing the watch. Mine sat far too low for months because I had been building base and had genuinely never been near 205 with it on - so the watch concluded my ceiling was somewhere in the 180s and quietly filed everything a zone too hard.

Set 20 bpm low and your easy runs come back labeled tempo while your weekly intensity looks heroic, which is how you end up doing the moderate-every-day thing without noticing. I don't think that cost is cosmetic.

43MY RESTING
205MY MAX, RUNNING
~185WHAT AUTOMATIC GUESSED

Getting a real max

Don't take it off a calculator and don't take it off your watch's wrist sensor, which undercounts badly at the top end - optical readings drift when your arm is tense and your cadence is high, which is exactly when you're near max. Use a chest strap, look at the highest number you've seen at the end of a hard hill rep or the last minute of a race, and use that.

Apple does at least let you keep separate zones per workout type, which Strava as far as I know does not, so if you run and ride you can set the bike zones five to ten beats lower and have both be right. That is genuinely the one thing Apple handles better here.

NEXTWork out what your zones should beOPEN TOOL →