Keep in mind that your watch winder operates with X amount of turns per hour/day, so it’s slowly dispersing energy to the watch’s automatic movement, while it simultaneously runs and loses some of that power. We’ve done the best we possibly could to lock down a certain range to live by.
First, you have to start with your watch and its requirements. If it says it’s supposed to be wound 40-60 times per day, then that’s talking about manually winding the thing. You may notice that some watches don’t come with a manual wind facility, even though it’s an automatic watch. That’s because these have been designed to be used with either specific tools, or even watch winders instead of hand-wound movement.
You can cause stress to the hairspring or mainspring (more on this in the next section) by doing it yourself. When it says it needs 40-60 winds per day (or however long the power reserve cycle has been set to), that means taking it slow, and usually going for 180 degree turns when possible.