Stay in shape with the iphone and Apple Watch
THERE’S NO NEED TO GO TO THE GYM WHEN YOUR GADGETS CAN HELP YOU STAY FIT.
While we’re still in the middle of a pandemic, rules about going out have loosened up. But experts agree that the best way to protect yourself is to limit your interactions with other people. If you like to exercise in a gym, that could be difficult—and the main reason why you don’t want to go.
But there are lots of apps that can help you get a complete workout at home, and Heath & Fitness ( go.macworld.com/hlft) is one of the most popular categories on the App Store. If you take a look at the listings, you’ll see that nearly every app is free—or so it would seem. In reality, the vast majority of fitness apps are only free to download but require an in-app purchase subscription be useful. Many don’t even function at all without one.
That’s money you may not want to or be able to spend right now. So we put together this list of five fitness apps that can help you stay healthy at home. One is totally free, and the others offer in-app
purchases but have plenty to offer without spending a penny.
SEVEN
Price: Free (in-app purchases) from go.macworld.com/sevn
Back in 2013, a paper published by the American College of Sports Medicine ( go. macworld.com/acsm) investigated a special circuit-training routine for maximum full-body benefit in minimal time using only body-weight exercises. It was featured in The New York Times, and before you knew it, the seven-minute workout was born.
These days you’ll see a lot of sevenminute workout apps. Our favorite is probably Seven. It’s going to aggressively push a “7 Club” membership at you, but just hit the X button in the upper right to ignore the pitch and you can use the simple, clear, attractive app to perform basic seven-minute workouts all you want. The subscription gives you the ability to set custom workouts and unlocks a lot more exercises, but you can do things like schedule workout reminders and connect the Apple’s Health app for free.
NIKE TRAINING CLUB
Price: Free (in-app purchases) from go.macworld.com/nike
The Nike Run Club app is very popular among runners, but stay-at-home orders are not the best time to work on your mile pace. Nike’s got another nice workout app, Nike Training Club, that offers tons of exercise routines you can do at home. Some require modest equipment like dumbbells, but many do not.
There’s a nice Apple Watch companion app that helps
guide you through your workout, too. On March 29, Nike made the premium membership (usually $14.99 per month) free “until further notice,” but we would recommend this app even if it hadn’t. The membership gives you access to 4-to-6-week programs, some nutrition and wellness guide stuff, and on-demand classes. But even the free tier offers plenty of good at-home workouts with excellent videos.
One nice thing about Nike’s free access premium access: You don’t have to sign up for a “free” subscription that you’ll forget to cancel and be billed for later. Nike just unlocked the free content for everyone.
FITON
Price: Free (in-app purchases) from go.macworld. com/fton
The Fiton tagline is “Fitness is always free,” but there’s a pretty expensive $69.99 per year Fiton Pro subscription they want you to buy (currently on sale for $19.99). Ignore it. It gives you some meal plans,
recipes, and premium music, but you don’t need any of that.
Enter your birthday, height, weight, desired exercise frequency, and goal, and Fiton will set you up with a whole fitness class regimen. Each workout is a guided video class with a trainer, and you can link your Apple Watch to see your heart rate overlaid on it.
There are tons of on-demand workouts in a bunch of categories along with regularly-scheduled live classes you can tune in to. There really is a whole lot on offer in the free tier; this is a rare example of an app that seems to treat its free tier as the main product and not just a demo for the subscription service.
YOGA FOR BEGINNERS
Price: Free from go.macworld.com/ygbg Here we have a rare fitness app that is free! Really, truly free. No in-app purchases, no premium tier, no merch to buy—free.
You have a list of various Yoga routines to choose from, like Beginner Yoga, Butt Toner, Inner Peace, or Core Blast. Each one starts with a list of the poses you’ll
need to know: If you have no idea how to do one, tap on it for a written guide along with a clear Youtube video to show you the way.
When the workout begins, you’re treated to sedated music and a pleasant voice that walks you through the poses, with basic diagrams and a timer to let you know how long you’ll have to hold it.
There are a few ads—gotta pay the bills somehow—but they never interrupt a session with one. If traditional workouts aren’t your thing and you just need to make some time each day to stretch, flex, and breathe the stress away, Yoga for Beginners is just the thing.
MYFITNESSPAL
Price: Free (in-app purchases) from go.macworld.com/ftpl
Working out at home is one thing, but if you don’t eat right you’re not going to be healthy, and the best way to eat right is to keep a food diary. Under Armour bought Myfitnesspal back in 2015 and has done a great job maintaining it as the best food diary app in the business.
A huge user-submitted database of foods helps you add home cooked meals and fast food items, and the reliable bar code scanner will effortlessly add nearly any packaged food. You can set goals (like “lose 1 pound per week”) to set calorie
goals and see fat, carbs, and protein consumed each day.
A premium membership is required to see the breakdown by meal, set different goals for different days, or follow one of the many meal plans. It also removes ads. But as a simple and reliable way to make sure you’re not eating too much junk and have a healthy mix of carbs, fats, and proteins, the free version is all you need.
HOW TO CLOSE APPLE WATCH ACTIVITY RINGS EVEN WHEN STAYING AT HOME
Closing Activity rings on the Apple Watch takes a lot more effort than it did before the pandemic. And while shelter-in-place policies have relaxed in most of the U.S., you may be hesitant to go out and be about—and with good reason. That makes it a little more difficult to close those rings.
Fortunately—if you’re willing to change your standards—it’s still possible to close your rings in order to achieve a degree of certainty. Some of you might recognize the suggestions listed here as variations on the “cheats” for gaming your activity rings that circulated when the Apple Watch first came out, but think of them more positively.
Provided you don’t try to close your Move ring simply by swiping your arm back and forth while vegging out in an armchair—which is actually possible— these can serve as foundations for healthy practices.
A couple of things first. You’re likely allowed to go outside and take walks or bike rides on empty paths or in local parks. You can close your rings that way, but keep in mind that the risk of contagion goes down if everyone stays home. Second, you’re probably not going to have any trouble closing your rings if you have exercise equipment in your home—and more power to you if you do.
Some of you might recognize the suggestions below as variations on the “cheats” for gaming your activity rings that circulated when the Apple Watch first came out, but in 2020, I prefer to think of
them more positively. Provided you don’t try to close your Move ring simply by swiping your arm back and forth while vegging out in an armchair—which is actually possible—these can serve as foundations for healthy practices in these limiting times.
How to close your Exercise ring
The Exercise ring sounds like it would be the hardest ring to close. Unless you start a workout, the ring closes by determining how much your heart rate goes above a value determined by factors like your age or weight. Keep up that heart rate for 30 minutes, and your green ring will close. It’s a lot easier than it probably sounds. Before the pandemic, my Apple Watch would normally ask me if I wanted to log my daily walk to work from the train station as an Outdoor Walk workout, and doing that twice a day would almost always close the ring.
But it gets even simpler. You can quickly close your Exercise ring by opening the Workout app on your Apple Watch and then scrolling down to the bottom and tapping
Add Workout. Tap Other in the screen that pops up, and set it for an open goal. Just keep that running for 30 minutes, and your Exercise ring will close. To give you an idea of how well it works, I closed my activity right while writing this story. As a bonus, the Move ring also closes a little more quickly while a workout is running.
You can pair this Other workout with household chores if you wish, but closing the ring doesn’t have to be that simple. Even if you don’t feel comfortable about going outside to exercise, you can get a decent 30-minute workout just by performing some old exercise standbys like push-ups, sit-ups, and burpees in your home. (If you add a Workout for “High Intensity Interval Training,” your Apple Watch will usually correctly log such activities.) For a more guided workout, gyms and similar fitness organizations are currently offering a lot of their normally paid online training services for free, and
you can check out some of those in the last section.
How to close your Stand Ring
Traditional outdoor and gym-based exercises might not be safe options right now, but really, you should at least be getting up and moving around. As such, closing your Stand ring is especially important at a time when so many people are stuck indoors. This ring can be tricky: I’ve gone on 12-mile hikes where I’ve tripled my Move goal, and I still didn’t close my Stand ring at the end of the day. Also, if you have access to an adjustable standing desk, now would be a great time to use it.
Closing your Stand ring might not be much of a big deal if you haven’t turned off the Apple Watch’s annoying reminders to stand every hour. This is an especially good time to keep those on, but you can turn them off by going to the Watch app on your iphone and then pressing Notifications, then Activity, and then turning off Stand Reminders.
Yet here’s the thing:
All you need to do in order to close your Stand ring every hour is get up and walk around for a minute or two for at least 12 hours a day. It helps to move your arms around in the process.
Anyone want an easier way of closing your Stand ring? Raise your hands—and keep them up. If you raise your arms and wave them around a bit for two minutes every hour, you can sometimes close your Stand ring without even leaving the couch. But seriously, get up and walk around a bit.
How to close your Move ring
If you’re keeping your arms in motion during one of these standing breaks, you should
manage to close a bit of your Move ring as well. Also, the Move ring is the only activity ring you can adjust, and in normal times I keep it set to a manageable 800 calories. Considering how that amount is a little ambitious for many of us right now, your best bet for closing it would be to temporarily lower your daily move goal unless you have home access to equipment like a treadmill.
To do this, simply go to the Activity app on your Apple Watch, press firmly on the ring interface, and then press Change Move Goal when the option pops up on the display. Experiment with what’s manageable.
This is cheap, but if you change the goal to the calorie amount you’ve already achieved for the day, your Move ring will automatically close. As a reminder, the Move ring closes faster during a workout.
Some additional tips
Again, these tips may have their origins in cheats, but please, don’t spend this time vegging on the couch and closing your rings by just waving your arms in the air every hour. That’s just sad.
Instead, use these tips as a complement to all the free resources that are suddenly available now that gyms and other fitness organizations are adjusting to the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic. Daily Burn, for instance, is offering 60-day free trials ( go. macworld.com/dbrn) for all of its classes. If you go to Gold’s Gym’s website ( go. macworld.com/glgm), you can get its Amp digital personal trainer app for free until
May 31 if you use the code FIT60. You can also learn yoga exercises for free from Core Power Yoga ( go.macworld.com/ crpw), and there’s a wealth of stay-at-home fitness videos on Youtube.
And again, at the bare minimum, get down and partake in some timehonored equipment-free exercises like push-ups and sit-ups. If you’re in a place where it’s pretty safe to jog or take a walk according to guidelines set out by your city or county, do that.
Most of us aren’t able to close our rings as easily as we were earlier this year, but with these little adjustments, you can still use your Apple Watch to feel a little satisfaction at the end of the day. If you feel like you’re being a little too easy on yourself, go ahead and bump up that Move goal. And if you combine these tips with good exercise habits, there’s even a good chance that you’ll come out of this even better than you started. ■