Dial up your fitness with a phone app
TIRED OF LOUNGING IN LOCKDOWN AND RARING TO GET BACK TO REGULAR EXERCISE? CHECK THESE OUT...
YOU must have grown bored of the novelty of sitting around in your pyjamas all day by now. It’s time to start thinking about how to stay fit during the lockdown, and we’ve got five apps to help you do that from the comfort of your own home...
DOWN DOG
THEY SAY: With Down Dog you get a brand new yoga practice every time you come to your mat. Unlike following pre-recorded videos, Down Dog won’t make you do the same workout over and over again.
With more than 60,000 different configurations, Down Dog lets you build a yoga practice you love!
WE SAY: Down Dog has made access to all its apps free until
May 1 to help people stay active during the lockdown (the free period is much longer for teachers, students and health workers).
It’s essentially a simple but very effective yoga app, based on the ashtanga vinyasa yoga tradition, which features a more vigorous aerobic workout than yoga is usually known for.
There’s a useful three-day starter programme for beginners and then all you do is select the kind of yoga you want to do and for how long, and the app chooses a workout for you – and it’s never the same twice. Down Dog also offers a few other apps worth noting
– a yoga beginners app, a seven-minute workout app, a fully-featured HIIT app, and an app with workouts based on ballet barre work. They are all excellent. Cost:
STREAKS WORKOUT
THEY SAY: The personal trainer that you actually want to use. Exercise at home, in the park, at the gym, anywhere! You don’t need any equipment – just need a few minutes and a floor.
You can customise exercises, making it great for all ages and abilities. There are 30 equipment-free exercises to choose from, four different workout lengths (approx. 6, 12, 18 or 30 minutes), and it syncs your data across iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Apple TV.
CARROT FIT
THEY SAY: Make getting in shape suck so much less with CARROT’s hilariously snarky fitness app.
CARROT is a sadistic AI construct with one simple goal: to transform your flabby carcass into a Grade A specimen of the human race.
She will do whatever it takes
Cost:
WE SAY:
SEZZY TIMER
THEY SAY: The Sezzy Timer app not only shows you visually on the screen where you are up to in your workout, but it also provides you with auditory cues, through headphones or phone to tell you what’s coming up next.
In your longer intervals and workouts, it will also give you half way cues and countdown until you get a rest! WE SAY: Sezzy is an incredibly successful YouTuber, hosting the Sarah’s Day channel, which has almost 1.4million subscribers and brings them lifestyle, health and fitness advice.
This app is not a workout app as such, but a timer that allows you to make sure you’re working out for the right amount of time.
You can use it in conjunction with Sezzy’s ebook of workout sessions, which you can buy from her website, or you can use it with your own workout sessions.
It has the advantage of audio cues – which means you can set the timer, get on with your workout, and follow the cues without having to look at your phone.
Cost: they all have “personality”. Which means they can be irreverent, and sometimes downright rude.
If you like that sort of thing, their Fit app might just be the one to get you motivated – it will not hesitate to insult you, if it thinks you’re not working hard enough.
Cost: