How it works.

The Workout app records your run and lets you build your own intervals and alerts. On supported devices, its Workout Buddy feature adds spoken encouragement and stats. First Gear does a different job: it cues jogs and walking breaks from your heart rate, inside a six-stage beginner program with two coach voices. Recent qualifying sessions can bring an offer to try the next stage. You choose whether to move on or keep practicing where you are.

Compare First Gear and Apple's Workout Buddy

Start with walking. Your coach prompts jogs based on your heart rate during a twenty-minute session. You can keep walking or stop whenever you need to. There is no pace you have to hit.

First Gear cannot tell you what caused an old knee problem or whether running is right for you now. It gives run/walk cues based on heart rate, not an assessment of your joints. If knee pain is part of your history, discuss returning to running with a clinician.

First Gear is designed for adults beginning or returning to running, including older adults. It estimates a starting range using age and available resting heart-rate data. Age alone cannot tell you whether a running program is right for you. If you have a condition, take medication, or are unsure about starting, check with a healthcare professional.

Tell First Gear during setup. That answer selects talk-test coaching, which uses available walking heart-rate data and your answers about how a jog felt instead of an age-based coaching target. It does not tell you whether exercise is medically appropriate. Ask your healthcare professional about activity and intensity before you start.

It shows how much of your scored time you spent within the coaching range. With range coaching, scoring starts when you first enter the range, and the opening ramp does not lower it. The first fifteen seconds of each excursion outside it are excluded, up to sixty seconds in total. Time spent walking in range counts too. The score covers time after those exclusions, not the entire workout, and it is not a fitness score.

A new score needs fresh heart-rate readings for at least 80% of the session, plus at least ten minutes or half the session, whichever is longer, available to score after the opening ramp and grace exclusions. A twenty-minute session needs sixteen minutes of readings and ten scored minutes. A late entry into range, missing readings, or an unavailable coaching range can leave too little evidence. Your session still counts in your history. Missing evidence by itself does not help or hurt the stage count. A recorded safety stop is handled separately and interrupts stage offers. Previously saved scores without these data checks stay in your history, but cannot qualify a new stage offer.

Three qualifying completed sessions with Easy scores of at least 85% can bring an offer to try the next stage. Each needs enough heart-rate evidence, their starts must be at least thirty-six hours apart, and all three must be within the last twenty-one days. A lower scored session or a recorded safety stop interrupts that count. You can accept, stay where you are, ease back a stage, or decide later. Staying starts a fresh count toward another offer. These are program rules, not a test of fitness or readiness for more running.

Yes, whenever you like. On your iPhone, open Badges and tap Change stage, then pick any of the six stages. Your next session is coached at the stage you set, and progress toward the next one starts fresh. A stage offer also lets you ease back one stage. Your coach can ease you back too. With enough scoring data, a completed score from 70% to below 85% holds your stage. Three evaluated sessions below 70% can ease stages two through five back one stage. A session where you chose "Walk the rest" counts neither for nor against your stage. The same spacing and twenty-one-day window apply, and a higher scored session interrupts that count. An early ending or missing evidence by itself does not help or hurt progression. Recorded safety stops can interrupt stage offers even without a score. No score moves you back from stage six, and your earned badges stay yours.

Stage six is home. Your range stays ten beats wide, the same as stage five, and sessions stay twenty minutes. There is no next stage to earn, and no score moves your stage from here. A long break does not move you back either: your coach opens with a gentler session and you pick up where you left off. Your earned badge stays yours.