I recently wrote about an excellent iOS app called
‘You Are Your Own Gym’ which can guide you through graded programs to improve your fitness by exercising a few times a week using your own bodyweight and a few simple accessories such as tables and chairs (no ‘gym equipment’ required). I’ve been using this app for ten weeks now and, in terms both of content and presentation, I rank it very highly. When not working with computers,
I teach the Japanese martial art of Aikido and the ‘You Are Your Own Gym’ app was recommended to be my a fellow martial artist.
But, of course, it is not the only fitness app for iOS. Far from it! There are hundreds of competing apps aimed at getting you fit. Some of them are free. Others have a free introductory or ‘lite’ edition to let you evaluate the software before investing in the full commercial version. Here I take a look at a few free apps that I’ve been trying out over the past few weeks.
Sworkit Lite
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sworkit-lite-personal-trainer/id527219710
This is one of the most popular fitness training apps for iPhone and iPad. It lets you pick from four different types of workout:
Strength, Cardio, Yoga and
Stretching. Once you’ve selected an exercise type you can pick from a list of pre-defined workouts such as (for example)
Light Warmup Cardio, Full Intensity Cardio or
Plyometrics Jump Cardio. You are then presented with a video of a figure (variously a man or a woman) doing sets of exercises for a predefined, user-selectable, period between 5 and 60 minutes. You can also download extra custom workouts and install one of these at a time. If you upgrade to the Pro version ($1.99), you can install or create an unlimited number of custom workouts. While this is a nice looking piece of software which may motivate users to follow along with the videos, I find it lacking in detail. There are no instructions on the correct ‘form’ of each exercise. It is really just a case of ‘watch and do’. So, in spite of its popularity, I am slightly underwhelmed by
Sworkit Lite and have no plans to upgrade to the Pro edition.
Daily Workouts Free
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/daily-workouts-free-personal/id469068059
This is another extremely popular fitness app – which is not surprising given the fact that it provides in a huge number of exercises which are selectable by category:
ab, arm, butt, cardio and
leg workouts. Some of these workouts are pure bodyweight exercises, requiring no equipment; others, such as the arm exercises, require small dumbbell weights. The exercises are accompanied by videos and there are also text descriptions of the correct form for each exercise though annoyingly these are only visible in portrait mode (I generally use my iPad in landscape orientation). This is not one of the best-looking apps I’ve ever seen. The user interface is a bit clunky-looking and the videos seem to have been recorded in the corner of someone’s living room rather than in front of the ever-fashionable white screen or in a proper ‘set’. Even so, it’s a pretty decent app with some fairly challenging exercises. The free version is definitely worth a try. The full version, which costs a reasonable $3.99, has more routines , operates in landscape mode and removes the advertising that pops up across the bottom of the screen in the free edition.
Abs Workout: Get Your Six Pack
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/abs-workout-get-your-six-pack/id426364250
But maybe your main goal is to transform your flabby tummy into a rippling ‘six-pack’. Well, there are plenty of apps that claim to do that and this is one of the top-rated ones. This shows computer-generated images of virtual men or women (the models are user selectable) performing sets of exercises with, optionally some music and a synthesised voice counting out “one…two” as you do each exercise. You can set yourself a workout schedule and you can pick various workout types – such as
‘Classic 8 Minute Abs’, ‘Super Fast 3 Minute workout’, ‘Chest and Abs Mixed workout’ and so on. Only the
Classic 8 Minute workout is completely free. However, you can in fact follow all the other workouts for free too as long as you allow a short full-screen advertisement to be shown before it loads. If you want to remove the advert you can buy the additional workouts generally for between $1.99 and $2.99. This is great value and the workouts are solid. I must say, though, that I would prefer videos of a real-person instructor plus more information on the correct ‘form’ of each exercise.
The Johnson & Johnson Official 7 Minute Workout App
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/johnson-johnson-official-7/id784797900
There are lots of “7 Minute Workout” apps available but this claims to be the ‘official one’ since the workouts are planned and presented by Chris Jordan, the man who created the original 7 Minute Workout plan. Produced by Johnson & Johnson (the people who make the baby shampoos and health products), the app is completely free and it is almost, but not
quite, perfect. On the plus side, it looks great and the teacher gives clear verbal instructions on correct form and he demonstrates each exercise in videos that include a second-by-second countdown on an onscreen clock. You can follow groups of exercises for 7 minutes - or longer if you want a greater challenge. There is also a ‘learn’ mode that lets you select an individual exercises to study. So what’s the downside? Well, unlike the apps reviewed previously, the content is not fully downloaded for offline use. It requires Wi-Fi access to download some elements as you go along. If you haven’t got Wi-Fi access or if (like me) your broadband connection is slow and of variable quality you might have problems. I find, for example, that the videos sometimes freeze as the downloads progress. A great shame. This is so very nearly a wonderful app. But it needs to have an option for complete ‘offline’ usage. If that is added, I will be happy to withdraw my criticism.
Workout Series
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/workout-series/id962512623
This is a brand new app (released on February 17th, 2015) but its content was already familiar to me from the web-based workouts at
http://workoutseries.com. In fact, the app is really a stand-alone interface to the materials on the web site so, just like the
Official 7 Minute Workout App, it requires a Wi-Fi connection in order to use it. Once again, that requirement earns it a few negative points from me. Even so, assuming you have a good internet connection, the actual workouts are first rate. There are workouts of many different types, some that include equipment such as dumbbells and kettlebells, others (and these are the ones I’m interested in) are pure bodyweight workouts. There are two instructors – a man and a woman – and they often show alternative forms of each exercise so that you can switch between an easy and a difficult form according to your ability. There are lots of workout variants – 7 minute workouts, abs workouts, warmups, cooldowns and much more. This is a really good resource, which I strongly recommend. But bear in mind that the app version is not really much different from the standard web-based version so you are not getting anything significantly different on your iPad or iPhone than you would get if you logged onto the web site using a desktop computer.
Conclusion
So do any of the free apps mentioned here rival the
You Are Your Own Gym app that I’ve been using for the past ten weeks? In some respects both the
Workout Series and
The Johnson & Johnson Official 7 Minute Workout App cover much of the same ground and do a pretty good job of it. If you have a fast and reliable internet connection, I’m sure you could make excellent progress by following either of these.
Daily Workouts Free is good too and doesn’t need a Wi-Fi connection. It doesn’t look as slick as some of the other apps though and its descriptions of the correct exercise form are somewhat limited.
Abs Workout: Get Your Six Pack is great value if you want to concentrate exclusively on your mid-section but I’m not really all that keen on the animated ‘virtual people’ and you will need to buy the commercial edition if you want to get rid of the advertising.
Sworkit Lite looks really nice and would work well as a ‘motivational’ tool if you have already studied the correct form of each exercise, but I would be reluctant to rely upon it as the sole source of good workout information. After trying all these, however, I am more than ever convinced that
You Are Your Own Gym is the most satisfactory app (that I have yet discovered) for anyone who needs a serious bodyweight fitness routine that teaches both good exercise form and also leads you through a sequence of progressively graded workouts.
