Gym/fitness apps

[mrdanbartlett]

Hi all,

Backstory is I'm a 41 year old male who did athletics as a kid to a good standard, then got into work/women etc and switched to weight training at the gym for around 15 years, 3-4 times a week and in pretty good shape over that period. Since having kids I've found it very hard to get a consistent pattern going, but looking to kick start now we are out of the baby phase with the kids.

I'm naturally slim and have always weight trained to add size, whilst eating like a beast to keep it on.

I'd like to find a good gym app which will give me a solid gym (weights) program, ideally be dynamic enough to suggest changes/tweaks and where you can enter what you've done and it tracks your data. I see Chris Hemsworth has an app, Peloton have one, but maybe others have experiences they can share with what they have found good?

Many thanks

[Faz-n8om6]

Hi MrDB, I’m going to do a shout out for the myZone system. I’ve got the Switch. It’s not fancy - basically just a heart rate monitor that I can wear on my wrist. It also comes with a strap so I can wear it on my chest but I like the wrist option.

You switch it on at the start of your workout and it shows the level of effort via a light on the watch that changes colour. A white light means you are working at a low percentage of your max heart rate. Blue, Green, Yellow, Red shows progressively higher effort.

You Bluetooth it to an app on your phone and it tells you how many calories you’ve burnt and the average percentage effort of the workout. It also record the MEPS you have earned. These are workout points. You earn them quicker when you are working at higher effort.

It doesn’t track location or anything else fancy. You can set goals and join in classes where everyone’s stats are displayed and where the trainer tells you to work at a certain effort level.

I like it because it will keep a record of what you’ve done via the app for years. If you hit your monthly target you progress onto higher levels. I also like the classes that you can join online. Sometimes you get invited to do a challenge where you are given an individual target, or asked to help a group achieve a certain MEP target.

I’ve used it for cardio and weights workouts. The weights workouts generally mean lower number of MEPS earned for the same amount of time because they don’t raise the heart rate that much. A charge on the watch lasts easily a month. But I have to stress the ‘watch’ only measures heart rate. It does not give any normal watch functions - time, date, alarms etc

Hope you can follow my description. I may not have described it as well as it could have been! There’s plenty of reviews of it on YouTube.

Edited by Faz-n8om6 on Tuesday 27th December 17:48

[Glade]

I like Freeletics.

You can tell it what equipment you have, and any exercised to avoid and they type of activities you would like to do.

Then it gives you a dynamic program that adjusts based on your feedback.

The exercises are easy to follow along in the gym, and as someone who doesn't know enough or seemingly have the ability to remember all the different exercises to create my own programs I find it very useful.

I think I subscribed in a sale and paid £35 for a while year which I think is good value.

[mrdanbartlett]

Thanks both

I ended up going with an app by The Hypertrophy coach, I remembered I really liked his stuff and that he had an app with programs/videos etc. Its $25 a month.