Molly tried four different apps:
There are many fitness app options, and a wide range of prices. Fitness Buddy offers a huge free library of exercises, so you can build your own workout, as well as some free and some paid workouts for $5 a month or $30 a year.
Kiqplan is a workout plan sold in stores as a $20 gift card that unlocks a 12-week workout (choose from Slim and Trim, Beer Belly Blaster and others). The app includes nutrition coaching, integration with activity trackers and rewards for hitting certain milestones.
And Hot5 has a collection of high-intensity five-minute workouts that you combine into longer sessions, with nice videos that feature a variety of trainers. It’s $3 a month, or $22 a year.
But the best option I found was FitStar, a free personal trainer app. For $40 a year, you get access to more workouts. From the apps I tried, FitStar was the closest to using an actual trainer because it can build workouts customized to your fitness level and goals.
The workouts range from 10 to 50 minutes, and while some apps just have you repeat the same exercises over and over, FitStar mixes up the exercises as you go through its programs. The workouts gradually get harder, and you can rate each exercise individually as too easy, just right, or “brutal.”
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What is not included with FitStar, however, is motivation. Several fitness experts I talked to said that despite the success stories trumpeted on the back of fitness DVDs and on the FitStar blog, many people lack the motivation to achieve significant results from working out alone with an app or video.
“It’s easy to break an appointment with your TV, easy to break an appointment with your iPad,” said Michael Boyle, who trains professional athletes and others at a Boston-area strength and conditioning center and runs the blog StrengthCoach.com.
I skipped my workouts when I went on vacation. And long-term habits are hard to change, with or without technology — we know that more than a third of people abandon their fitness trackers after just a few months.
But personal trainers are simply out of reach for many people, either because of the cost or the rigid scheduling. However, Mr. Boyle said that small group classes had proved to be a popular alternative to both one-on-one training and at-home workouts. The classes combine social encouragement with the motivation of an appointment, as well as at least some financial penalty for skipping a workout.
So while FitStar might seem like the right solution to keep the endorphins high and the waistline shrinking, the real test won’t be one month — it’ll be two, three or four. Maybe by then I will have dumped both the trainer and the training app for a class at SoulCycle, the popular spinning studio, instead. Anything but the couch.
Source: Molly Wood