Four US gyms including Crunch Fitness, YMCA, Basecamp Fitness and Orange Theory have adopted and launched the Apple Watch Connected Gym program. "This is Apple’s latest fitness expansion, helping it to build an entire ecosystem around the Apple Watch that provides owners with more places to use it to improve their fitness tracking. It creates yet another reason for people to buy Apple Watches," reports CNBC.

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The Apple Watch Connected platform includes three tiers that must be supported by a gym that participates in the program.

An Apple Watch Connected gym has to have an iPhone and Apple Watch app that lets people track their fitness, see classes and log-in at the gym.

Gyms have to offer some sort of option for Apple Watch owners to "earn with Apple Watch." For example, Crunch Fitness will give customers a $3 to $4 weekly credit if they meet certain goals, like working out a certain amount of time per month. The credits apply to the following month’s bill.

Customers can hit those goals either by working out inside or outside of the gym. Orange Theory will offer gift cards to Apple and Nike for hitting certain goals.

Basecamp Fitness will give you an Apple Watch Series 5 GPS model that you can earn back by participating in three classes a week for an entire year.

At the YMCA, a customer's workouts will go toward providing free classes for children, like swimming lessons.

All of gyms participating must accept Apple Pay. That means they can leave your phone in the car and just use that Apple Watch to buy stuff like water, food or other goods only using your wrist.

A fourth tier which isn't mandatory, but is offered by some fitness facilities like Crunch Fitness. Their gyms offer special machines that will automatically sync a customer's workout to their Apple Watch, providing more information than the Apple Watch might be able to provide on its own.

For example, a stair climber will give customers a more accurate representation on floors they've climbed, since the sensors inside the Apple Watch can only track actual flights of stairs as the user changes altitude." For more on this at CNBC.