Lifting with a smartwatch: what your watch is good for

Smartwatches were built for runners, and it shows: most of their workout screens care about pace and distance. For lifting, a watch is most useful for three small jobs: telling you when rest is over, showing what's next without unlocking your phone, and recording your heart rate. Done well, it means your phone can stay in your bag between sets.

1. Rest timing on your wrist

Rest is where most workouts quietly go wrong. Scroll for a minute and three minutes of rest becomes six. A buzz on your wrist when rest ends keeps the session moving without you watching a clock. See how long to rest between sets for how much rest each kind of set needs.

2. The next set at a glance

Knowing what's next (the exercise, the weight, the reps and the plates to load) before you walk back to the bar saves time and stops loading mistakes. A watch that mirrors your workout puts that on your wrist.

3. Heart rate without a chest strap

Wrist heart rate is less precise than a chest strap during heavy, grip-intensive sets, but it's good enough to show how hard a session was overall and how well you recover between sets. Read more in heart rate during weight training.

How it works in Liftsmith

• Wear OS and Apple Watch: the watch app opens itself when you start a workout on your phone and shows the set, weight, reps and plates, or a big rest countdown with the next set under it.
• Log set and +30 s on the watch do exactly what the buttons on your phone do, so a set is logged as planned in one tap.
• Heart rate from the watch's own sensor goes to your phone during the workout, and the finished workout is saved to Health Connect or Apple Health once, not twice.
• A buzz when rest ends, following the same setting as your phone.
• Garmin: a Connect IQ watch app with the same screens, driven by the watch's buttons, is on its way for recent Forerunner, fēnix, epix, Venu and vívoactive watches.

Tip: The phone stays the one place a workout is planned, so there's nothing to set up on the watch and nothing to merge afterwards.

Do you need a watch to lift?

No. Everything the watch shows is also on your phone's lock screen: the rest countdown, the next set and the Log set button. A watch just saves you reaching for your phone. If you already own one, though, it's the easiest upgrade to your training there is.