Health wearables are leaning into AI-powered health coaches and advisors, which can use all the health and fitness data they aggregate to deliver actionable insights or help the user achieve a fitness goal. 

Last week, Apple debuted a new AI-powered WatchOS 26 feature that will be available on Apple Watches in the coming months. Workout Buddy is the smartwatch’s health coach, guiding wearers through a workout and providing historical stats, encouragement, and more. 

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This week, Samsung is rolling out a health coach of its own through One UI 8, Samsung’s smartwatch software update. Running Coach is designed for recreational runners training for their next 5K, 10K, half marathon, or full marathon. According to Samsung, it optimizes training by assessing a runner’s ability level and customizing training to fit their goals and experience. 

The data-driven training feature motivates runners and provides real-time guidance, keeping them on pace and pushing them to the next level without overexerting themselves. Samsung notes in its press release that the goal of a feature like this is to avoid injury by fine-tuning the training on an individual, customized level. 

The feature works when a user wears a Galaxy Watch on a run for a minimum of 12 minutes. Running Coach analyzes the runner’s performance and rates it out of 10. Afterwards, it provides a personalized training plan based on the user’s pace and strength. As the runner completes training sessions, they graduate through levels to unlock further running challenges. 

Unlike Running Coach, Workout Buddy supports more activities than just running, including Outdoor and Indoor Run, Outdoor and Indoor Walk, Outdoor Cycle, HIIT, and Functional and Traditional Strength Training on the smartwatch’s Fitness app. Whereas Running Coach supports more long-term fitness plans, Workout Buddy provides mid-workout encouragement and stat delivery. 

By the looks of it, Running Coach seems to be the more useful training feature, as it uses all the data the runner has provided — through continuously wearing and exercising with the watch — to offer a personalized training plan. 

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I’ll need to test both features on both competing watches to really see which is more useful. 

Running Coach is one of four new One UI 8 feature upgrades coming to Samsung’s newest lineup of Galaxy Watches, which are slated to launch later this summer. To try out the new features, which include Running Coach, Bedtime Guidance, and more, people will have to go through Samsung’s beta program, which is available to those with the Galaxy Watch5 series or later. 

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