Now you might say that I’m a little late to the party, but I wanted to give the service a little bit of time before writing about it. As well it would give me an opportunity to read other people’s thoughts on the service.
What is Fitness+
Fitness+ was announced as part Apples special September event (read more here) and launched on the 14thof December 2021. Fitness+ is an ad-free subscription service which features on demand video workouts that sync with the Apple Watch and iPhone Health apps. The videos also feature real time exercise statistics in the left corner of the screen and your activity rings are displayed in the top right-hand side of the screen. Sadly it does require an Apple Watch to work and if you don’t have one you won’t be able to use the service the good news is if you have recently purchased an Apple Watch you will have a 3 month free trial to the service.
How to get started
Getting started is actually incredibly simple. You can use either your iPhone, iPad or Apple TV. Fire up the Fitness App and it will display all the types of workouts as well as what is new this week and what the app recommends for you.
I’m thinking of doing 20 minutes of HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) This was so easy that from launching the app to starting the workout it literally took 45 seconds. I went with 20 Minutes of HIIT with Bakari whilst listening to Throwback Hits.
Once you press let’s go on the device your using it will load the video and then your get a ping on your watch which will start the countdown as soon as you press the go button. It’s that simple and like I said before it’s the same across all of your devices.
What are my thoughts
To start the best experience, I found was definitely when using the service on the Apple TV. I would only use the service on my iPad when travelling and I wouldn’t even bother trying to use it on my iPhone as the screen would be too small.
Being able to see all your stats and activity rings whilst working out on the big screen defiantly makes the service a lot better and more unique. The trainers themselves are also great and are really friendly. They all often end the videos with the same saying, reminding you to stay active and to close your rings.
Normally I wouldn’t be doing HIIT or Core exercises at home, but I actually really enjoyed doing these and I could really feel it the next day. Once you’ve completed your exercises there’s an option to go straight into a mindful cooldown. These feature you and one trainer doing some stretches and doing some mindful thinking. They were a great way to relax not just the body but also the mind after a workout. You could even jump into the yoga and relax after a stressful day.
What do other people think?
With a lot of people having their free trial end soon as they would have bought an Apple Watch back in October. I headed to the MacRumors forums to see what other people were saying about the service.
Having spent 30 minutes reading I started to notice a similar pattern amongst the users and that was they were really enjoying Fitness+ and more then they expected. A lot of people said that they would stay subscribed when the free trial was over.
A lot of people we’re even doing just 10 minutes each morning however they were saying how much better they felt from using the service.
Review summary
So to summarise my review on Fitness+ if you have an Apple Watch and you haven’t already tried the free trial I 100% recommend going ahead and trying it out. In my opinion if you have an Apple TV and an Apple Watch and your looking to get in better shape or (And especially with COVID-19) looking at working out at home instead of paying for the gym. The Service is an amazing alternative with excellent value.
The service also works really well with the rest of Apple’s services. The music in a workout you can add straight to your Apple Music library and the services syncs workouts you’ve done and recommendations across all your devices.
Apple Fitness+ costs £9.99 per month but is also available as part of Apple One Premier subscription for £29.95 and that comes with Fitness+, Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple News+ and 2TB of iCloud.
MacRumors have also posted an interesting article comparing a similar service by Peloton which you can read here: https://www.macrumors.com/guide/apple-fitness-vs-peloton/
Thanks for reading
Kyle Wilkinson
Review written on 23rd March 2021, Fitness+ features may change in the future, Images from this review are from the Apple Newsroom UK site available here: https://www.apple.com/uk/newsroom/2020/12/apple-fitness-plus-the-next-era-of-fitness-is-here-and-everyones-invited/
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