A Week With Apple Fitness Plus: Beat My Lockdown Weight Gain

I am in a week my new workout regimen based on Apple Fitness Plus, and I not only started to lose weight, but also learned a lot about how to use Apple’s new service – and how it could be improved.

I weighed on Monday January 4 at 105 kg (about 231 pounds). By Monday, January 11, that weight had dropped to 103 kg (227 pounds). It’s a small change, but I’m very satisfied in just a week. I exercised daily, mostly using Apple Fitness Plus classes, mixed with longer cardio sessions using the Zwift cycling app on a Wattbike Atom.

Here is how I have found Apple’s service so far.

Classes are fun and engaging. I was worried they would be too “gym bro” for me, but I love the trainers I’ve experienced so far. There’s a decent mix of gender and age, and they’re encouraging enough in the workouts to keep me moving and wanting to finish each exercise. The app works seamlessly with my Apple Watch Series 6, showing my heart rate and calories burned on the iPad screen to verify that I’m working out. During a dance class, I noticed my heart rate persisted at around 115 bpm – a more demanding high intensity interval training (HIIT) class saw this number jump to 182 bpm.

But what I lack about the service is proper advice on exactly which courses I should be focusing on to achieve my goals.

My main goal is to lose weight, but I would also like to be stronger and fitter. So which classes should I choose? Will a HIIT class be better than a cycle class? Will basic training help me more than strength training? Do I have to combine several courses in one session, and if so, are some better to do together than others? I know it’s not good to overload certain muscle groups at once, but I also don’t know what’s involved in each class to make those decisions.

It’s easy to do a 20-minute strength class, close my activity rings on my Apple Watch, and pat myself on the back while I consider my day’s workout over. And maybe I’ve done enough – or maybe I should have done more. I was hoping to see more guided solutions in the service, based on your own personal goals, whether it’s to lose a lot of pounds after the holidays, to improve your core strength to improve your posture or to train hard for a cycling competition. .

While there are sections like “More of What You Do”, “Try Something New” and “Popular”, they don’t give the kind of advice I need to confidently implement. a good weight loss routine. Without the guidance, Fitness Plus sometimes looks more like a simple collection of well-produced workout videos. It also wouldn’t be difficult to have professionals create what would be essentially course playlists, like “One Month Weight Loss,” which I can load up every day and do exactly what the pros do. fitness tell me.

Instead, I built my own workout regimen that mixed a variety of different exercises throughout the week, including more cardio workouts like dance and HIIT classes, as well as strength and strength classes. yoga. Based on my limited knowledge of exercise, this seems like a decent all-around program, but I’m afraid I would make it up as I go and could use my time better if I changed it.

The other problem I found in my early days was understanding how the courses work in terms of difficulty. Although there are “absolute beginners” courses to introduce you to the different types of courses, the main workout videos themselves are not separated in terms of “beginner” or “challenging”, but rather look different. from each other simply by the trainer. lead the class and the kind of music you will be working on.

I finally realized that there were several trainers in each video, and that you could do the “easier” workouts with just one (having your knees on the floor during a pushup, for example), doing the standard workout with head coach or add an extra challenge with the third coach. I guess the idea is that this means anyone can pull something out of every video available, but I didn’t quite get it at first and found it a bit difficult to navigate , resorting to a “Well, I guess this one will do” approach. Again, more tips in the app would have made a huge difference for a beginner.

Having said that, I really enjoyed my first week of training and am delighted to be losing weight already. Here’s what else I liked:

• Dance classes are fun, especially when I’m working with my partner. I can’t follow the movements properly, but as long as I shake my arms and legs like an electrocuted spider, my heart rate stays elevated and I look like I’m doing a good workout. We laugh a lot and it quickly becomes a fun thing that we do together during the lockdown.
• The music for a lot of the classes isn’t what I would choose, but it works well for workouts, and the classes are done to music, so often when the pace drops, the movement shifts into high gear. I feel like I’m really in an exercise class.
• I’m not really in an exercise class. This means I’m also not in a busy gym, forced to sweat and feel awkward in front of 20 other people and then have to change, inevitably next to this man who insists on standing there. with his gentleman’s sausage on display. (Is a towel really that complicated, buddy?)
• Biking on the Wattbike Atom is superb. It’s comfortable and I really like using the Zwift app for my longer cardio sessions. I tried my first social cycle, meeting a friend of mine who used Zwift with his own workout bike at home. We were able to ride “together” in Watopia’s virtual world of Zwift, covering over 16 miles uphill and downhill in the hour we spent. It was a lot of fun and the time seemed to go by.
• Although I work in a small room, there is just enough room for me to do most of the classes with my partner, with only one occasion during a dance session where she almost punched me in the face for a while. particularly energetic moment (she promises it was accidental). I am using my iPad Pro because there is not enough room to work in our living room where the TV is located – not the most elegant solution, but it works.

It didn’t take long for me to start to understand how Apple Fitness Plus works, and the weekly routine I put in seemed to be tough enough to leave me exhausted at the end of each, but not so painful that I didn’t. couldn’t handle either the next day. By mixing the longer cycles with Zwift, I am confident that I will continue to enjoy the process and most importantly continue to lose weight.

See also: Best Workout Subscription Apps for 2021: Apple Fitness Plus, Peloton, Daily Burn and more

The information in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended for health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have about a medical condition or health goals.