Why Are People Wearing Apple Watches on Their Ankles?

In the old days, back when Ana Espinal was wearing an Apple Watch on her wrist at the gym, she often found that her fitness app would shut down during her workout.Ms.

Espinal has tiny wrists, she said, and she wondered if the problem was her loose watch not being able to register her heart rate.“It was just this weird thing for me,” she said.So she sought solutions online, where she found a small community of people who had experienced similar issues and had rectified them in a novel way — by enlisting their ankles.Ms.Espinal wound up purchasing an adjustable Velcro strap at Marshalls that would fit the watch to her ankle, and presto: problem solved.“It’s perfect,” said Ms.

Espinal, whose Apple Watch makes regular cameos on TikTok, where she has more than 80,000 followers as a self-described fitness influencer.As she captioned a recent post, “Me putting my Apple Watch on my ankle while I work out cause if you know you know.” (Her followers know.)A small but growing movement of ankle-watch acolytes has been afoot for a couple of years, as various users of Apple Watches strap them to their ankles as workarounds to everyday problems.

Some medical professionals, for example, cannot wear anything on their wrists.Others have skin conditions or wrist tattoos that they believe interfere with the watch’s sensors.And then there are step counters and fitness enthusiasts who say they get more accurate health statistics when they slap the watch on their ankles.

Consider Ms.Espinal, 23, who never envisioned that she would become one of the crusade’s leading evangelists on social media.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

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