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Gentler Streak for Apple Watch brings compassion to fitness goals

If you’re tired of constantly closing your Apple Watch rings but you don’t understand how workout sessions impact your body, Gentler Streak is an app that helps grow a fitness habit for life by telling users when they’re feeling their best selves.

With version 2.0 of the app, Gentler Streak is also now available as an independent watchOS Activity Tracking application.

A couple of weeks ago, Apple featured Gentler Streak as one of the apps the company recommended for Heart Month since it helps you take care of cardiovascular health by providing valuable insights into your heart rate and activity levels.

This application is a personal fitness habit tracker that offers a free, more compassionate perspective of your workouts. Instead of pushing you to keep completing your Apple Watch rings, the app works with different Heart Zones so you can understand when the exercise is good for you and when you went too far.

“As we could not find a satisfactory solution for our pain, the endless chase of the “higher, stronger, faster” while experiencing negative effects on a physical and mental level, we decided to build that solution,” explains Katarina Lotrič, Gentler Stories co-founder.

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Lotrič explains that Gentler Streak recognizes and transforms maladaptive fitness behaviors into viable lifelong habits. “There is no pressure to complete endless day-to-day activity goals, which often ignore the fact that we are human and everything that comes with it.”

The Gentler Streak app responds to your fitness level and proposes optimal activity levels through a personalized Activity Path. So rather than blindly following the tightrope (daily 10.000 steps, closing the same activity rings every day etc.), a person keeps their healthy streak alive by staying somewhere on their Path, responding to their bodies’ actual needs: be it a rest, a mild activity or an intense one.

Gentler Streak Apple Watch app gives you more control of your workout sessions

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Gentler Streak was already available, but now with a standalone Apple Watch app, users can get even more data when working out, as they can start an exercise right through their wrists.

With this application, it’s easier to understand your real-time heart zones and activity level so you can keep healthy progress with your current capabilities. It’s also a preventative tool against fatigue, injuries, and burnout. Here’s what else Gentler Streak brings to the Apple Watch app:

  • Real-time heart rate zones with real-time activity level
  • Shows activity stats specific to the workout type: durationg, calories, distance, pace, speed, etc
  • Trackes 85+ types of activities as well as the distance for sportst that the default Workout app doesn’t, such as soccer and basketball
  • Media controls always in reach
  • Display lock for water sports
  • Watch face complications showing your daily position on the Activity path

Here’s what you get with the iPhone app:

  • Actionable Insights: expert knowledge squeezed into under 1-min reads
  • Activity Hub: all your activities ever tracked available in one place
  • Progress Charts: your progress on a weekly, monthly, yearly, all-time basis 
  • Activity Summaries: duration, active energy, distance, elevation gain for chosen period
  • Single Workout Summaries: concise summary for each workout
  • Monthly and Yearly Recaps: your activity month/year presented engagingly with multiple share functions
  • Set Status: for when you are sick, injured or taking rest days

9to5Mac’s Take

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9to5Mac was able to try the Gentler Streak Apple Watch app before today’s release. The app gives insightful data in real-time and helps you slow down or go a little further during a workout. For a future update, the Apple Watch app will bring even more features, such as haptic feedback when completing one mile during a walk or a run.

Gentler Streak is also working to provide support for non-conventional sports, such as ice skating, roller skating, wake and windsurfing, stand up paddling, CrossFit, recumbent bicycling, and even fun additions such as shoveling and dog walking.

Even though the Fitness app on the iPhone gives some handful pieces of information about your Apple Watch exercises, I do believe Gentler Streak goes beyond, especially regarding your heart rate and activity levels.

Last but not least, Gentler Streak’s monthly and yearly recaps are amazing. It wouldn’t be terrible if Apple learned a thing or two with the developers to create an Apple Music replay in the same way.

The app is free to download here on the App Store but requires a subscription to take full advantage of it. The Premium Monthly is $6.99 and Premium Yearly is $19.99.

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