Exercise Apps

I like Apple’s Fitness+ app/service. I tried a few different things but particularly liked the functional strength workouts. I found the very guided workouts to be quite useful as a beginner. Going through an entire workout with someone and watching them do the exercises from different angles gives you more of an opportunity to error-correct your form than watching a short demonstration of an exercise would, and the trainers also actively discuss potential mistakes in form as they’re doing the workout. Another thing they emphasize heavily is making modifications to the movements to adjust them to your fitness and skill level. I think that’s important. Lots of people are discouraged by the difficulty they encounter in trying to mimic the range of movement/pace that they see on the screen. The Fitness+ strength workouts that I’ve seen tend to have 3 trainers on the screen, and 1 of them is typically demonstrating modifications to make the movements easier. I am not a big fan of the musical aspect/emphasis. I don’t mind music as background for exercising, but I find that most of the trainers don’t select stuff that is to my taste.

I also like Fitbod. It generates workout routines for you according to the equipment you have available and your workout history. It only has brief demonstration videos for each exercise. It’s an exercise/set logging app, as opposed to a guided exercise video. I’ve been using a mix of Fitness+ and Fitbod lately and like that combination.