Last month, when I talked about the races that I was hoping to do this year but likely can’t because of the pandemic, I talked about how goal-oriented I am. It’s true that I like achieving goals, but it’s equally valid that I like the day to day data that I can see that allows me to know that I’m on track to achieve those goals. It’s because of my interest in the day to day stuff that I like the Apple Fitness app. Of course, it being an Apple product and being a bit of a Mac-head helps, but I have tried other fitness tracking systems, and the one Apple puts forth is the one that I like the best.
1) Three rings – I’ve talked about how the three rings in the Apple Fitness app work before (Red=Move, Green=Exercise and Blue=Stand), and for me (as I’m slightly competitive), I like making damned sure that I close all my rings as many days as I can. It also keeps track for you, so after a while of closing all your rings, you can see a sea of closed rings, and THAT is fun to look at.
2) Interconnected to other apps – Because there are many different apps out there with many of the same purposes, you may or may not be willing to part with your favourite workout app. Apple fitness will interact with most of them. I certainly know that as a Peloton User, I have found a few of my workouts that I have done on the bike logged automatically for me on my Apple Fitness App. I have also found that if there is data being put in from other devices (I have recently acquired one that I’m using now)
3) Additional data for you – Something that Apple Fitness has is the trending information for you. This shows not only the average data for all of your rings, but it also has your average workout information for the different kinds of workouts that you can do (Cardio, running, walking, distance etc.) The trick with this data is that there has to be enough of it to find an average. They do this by comparing the last 90 days of data inputs to the previous 365 (according to the app). In order to get accurate data for each of the trend categories, you need to have at least that much data for the app to work with. This (sadly) means you need to get moving!
4) Getting Patted on the head – Aside from knowing how much progress has been made and how many days I’d closed my rings, Apple fitness gives you badges for different things. There are badges for closing all your rings for a week; there are monthly challenges, there are yearly challenges. There are also Limited Edition badges for specific challenges. These are likely only available for one day (like the Ring in the new year challenge in January, where I had to close all my rings for a specific set of 7 days in a row). There are usually enough challenges and badges to keep me interested in moving my butt around enough to close my rings.
We all know that I’m a bit of a Mac head, so anything that Apple will come up with is going to attract my attention (so there’s likely a bias there). Having Apple come up with what I think of as a holistic solution for keeping their followers moving is something that I like. I’m confident that some of the other apps have some interesting strategies to keep their users motivated (In fact, I know that Peloton does, I’ll be reviewing them in a later post), But on a day to day basis, Apple is what works for me. Over this past year, Apple has introduced Apple Fitness+, a subscription service that takes its users through various exercise classes. This is yet another feature of the Apple Fitness App, allowing users to fully (pardon the pun) exercise all of their fitness options.
What Fitness Apps do you use?
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