Since golf courses had to become ‘Tiger-proof’ in the 2000’s by lengthening the holes, golf has transcended to become a hotbed of athletic ability. The modern golfer is tall, strong, fast, and powerful. To keep up with the technological advances in the sport, the strive for 1% improvement, and the continuous changes in golf courses; they have to be.
For these reasons, Health & Fitness is becoming essential in golf.
This article will give an overview on general health and workout metrics related to golf, and then explain how to connect TheGrint to your Apple Fitness app so that your workout data is tracked on the course!
Health and fitness now clearly play a huge part in the game of golf, but do you know the numbers?
Mark Twain said that golf is a good walk spoiled.
- The average round of golf requires a five-mile walk, meaning you will take between 8,000 and 12,000 steps. Even more if you have to traverse while helping your mates find their golf balls.
- A rough calculation suggests a 190lb person carrying their clubs can burn up to 1,500 calories during a four-hour round. When using a power cart, it will be closer to 1,000.
Using the Watch to Track Health Data
In the past, we’ve covered how to use TheGrint to track your game, across various formats, and with the chance to compete against the course, against yourself, and against your buddies. TheGrint is also great for keeping track of your friends. We all know that guy who never seems to work, and is starting rounds at new courses every other day.
But did you know that you can use TheGrint to facilitate health and fitness by tracking your round of golf as a workout?
By syncing up your phone and smartwatch, we can use the Apple Watch app and pair up with TheGrint to track our movement out on the course.
Some general housekeeping:
- App Version: Make sure you have the most recent version of TheGrint installed on your phone and Apple watch!
- Watch Model: We support all versions from series 3 onwards – newer series watches tend to do better with battery life
- Settings:
- When you first download the app you will receive prompts to track health/fitness data or share health data to iOS – select “Allow”, then you’re good to go.
- If you missed this step, do the following:
- Open your “Settings” app on your iPhone
- Click on “Health”
- Click on “Data and Devices”
- Select “TheGrint”
- Update your permissions to allow data to be shared
Then as long as you’ve got your watch powered up during the round, your activity will add right into the fitness app.
Smart watches are able to use a three-axis accelerometer (woah) including GPS sensors to acquire steps data in a round of golf. Your smartwatch will also measure calories burned and heart rate (you might see a spike on the 1st tee at a new course!). The screenshot below shows a round played at Pebble Beach – a daunting 5 hour and 20 minute round on the course that led to an estimated 2,554 calories burned.
Playing golf has so many benefits, keeping relatively fit is just the tip of the iceberg. A round of golf is recorded as a ‘workout’, the data seamlessly collected from the smartwatch and stored. This definitely helps to shape the narrative around golf, health and fitness. Golf is not often described this way.
TheGrint app provides so much more than just storing your scorecards, and the health and fitness is another avenue where all the tools are at your disposal. All the right apps are utilized, and the data is readily available.
Perhaps you’d like to see more of this in TheGrint? Integrating with Strava? Let us know!
