Doing sports was never a hate-affair for me! But when I started working after University, I discovered a problem. I used to play mostly team sports like soccer and floorball or then play matches in badminton, squash or tennis against friends.
Turns out that you won't have that much time for such sports when working with a first-tier strategy consulting company...!
So I started with fitness / gym subscriptions. But somehow, they never really worked out for me - too many people (waiting times!), quite some time to arrive at the gym - if you go, you have to stay at least 1 hour to make it a worthwhile visit and above all, you should go regularly (time consuming & difficult with my work schedule)...!
Fitness apps - which one?
So, I started to look for a better strategy and tried out a few fitness apps.
Quite fast, it became obvious to me that this approach works way better for me:
Ubiquity: Train where and when you want! Be it in a hotel room, in holidays, at the beach, at the house of my parents-in-law, you can do your training.
Efficiency: No time consuming trips to the gym, no waiting times for the equipment, your personal shower - just you!
So, which fitness apps did I use so far:
Bodyweight - you are your own gym - Mark Lauren
My first attempt was with this app after having read a positive article about it. The app features a collection of individual/single work-outs and a batch of 10-week personal training programs (Basic, First Class, Master, Chief). I did the Basic and First Class programs. It's a 10 week long program with about 4-5 trainings per week. The trainings cover all the muscle groups as well as cardio, coordination etc. In addition, each exercise comes with a well-made video explanation. The trainings vary in their time - in between 16 minutes (Tabatas) to 36 minutes (Intervalls). I liked it and completed two programs.
Freeletics
After a while, I did some more research regarding the fitness apps and discovered Freeletics. Levent - this was then their posterboy regarding body transformation. Impressive - so I thought, let's try it out! I bought the personal coach program and got started. The exercises are named after greek mythology - why not?! The Freeletics app is well made, in particular the videos are of great quality, as well as the slim user interface. I did one run only with Freeletics. The main reasons being that it took too much time (some trainings lasting 40-50 minutes) and that you sometimes needed some kind of equipment! I like to do my sport in the early morning and that was not always possible with Freeletics. Nevertheless, I would recommend it, it really pushes you!
Adidas Training
After Freeletics, I moved on to their kind of twin - Runtastic Results (it changed the name after the company was acquired by Adidas). It's also a 12-week program and equally well done as Freeletics in terms of videos, user interface etc. Freeletics may have some more social interaction features, but apart from that, they were quite similar for me. I did also just one run with Runtastic Results - for the same reason as with Freeletics.
7-minutes workout (7M Workout by Johnson & Johnson & Seven from Pedigree)
When in holidays in Greek a few years ago, my Miss wanted to do some sports, but also not too much as we were in holidays! Having informed myself about High-intensity-training / tabata, I proposed using the 7-minutes workout app from Johnson & Johnson!
A training features 12 exercises à 30 sec (5-10 sec break in between exercises). The trainings can be cardio or dedicated to specific muscles / body parts.
We got hooked! No equipment needed, it takes less then 10 minutes (there are some small breaks between the exercises :-), and it makes you breath!
We did it throughout our holidays before breakfast and then continued at home. After a while, the trainings and exercises got somewhat repetitive.
So, we moved on to the same kind of training, but a different app - it's called 7 (Seven) from the Swedish company Perigee. It's the same principle - 12 exercises à 30 sec with small breaks. I bought the 1-year subscription for 79 CHF. There are different levels, each level 7-10 different trainings (again cardio, specific body parts etc.) It also features animated videos (no real people) for every exercise.
Bottom line
I still to the training with the 7 app.
I currently do it 5x / week. After a while, I started to complement the workout with 15 minutes on the hometrainer. I do it in the early morning, right after bed (ok, with a small wake-up phase)!
Is it effective? Yes - for me it works, I attribute it to the regularity and high intensity. My Miss also does it for over a year now and I can't complain about the results neither!
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