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Review: Apple Fitness + , Apple’s workouts at home

Review: Apple Fitness + : offers convenience and works seamlessly with existing Apple products and services, such as the Apple Watch and Apple Music

Review: Apple Fitness – Is Fitness + Effective for Getting You Exercise? We tested Apple’s new workout service. After dozens of workouts, we have some tips for improvement.

Our experiences: Fitness + tested

Officially, Fitness + has not yet started in the Netherlands and Belgium, but you can already get it working with an American or British account. As one of the sportiest iCulture editors, I am the right person to write a review about it. I used to go to the gym several times a week before the lockdown, I wrote a book in the past about getting fit with apps and wearables and I fill up my Apple Watch rings every day. So I started working fanatically and since I started I have tried many workouts from Fitness +, sometimes even several a day. I did dozens of workouts for cycling, core, strength, dance, HIIT and yoga. The only thing that didn’t work out was the running workouts, because I don’t have a treadmill at home.

You get 1 month free to test from Apple. Because I recently bought an Apple Watch, I get 3 months free, so I can use Fitness + for free until April 2021. After that, it costs $ 9.99 per month. By then, I hope Fitness + has also been rolled out more widely in Europe. Now it is sometimes still difficult that the service does not work when you have switched to your Dutch account. But even if you are on your US account, you can still regularly receive a message that you do not have access to material. Rebooting everything is the only solution.

Introduction: Fitness + comes as called

Now that more and more people exercise at home, Apple is coming at the right time with its own fitness service: Fitness +. Nevertheless, the service had been in preparation for some time. Fitness + leader Jay Blahnik switched from Nike to Apple five years ago and rumors about ‘Project Seymour’ had also been circulating for a while. Still, Apple couldn’t have wished for a better time to kick off Fitness + during the second major corona wave. The gyms are closed, people want to start exercising again in January and with Fitness + you can work on your muscles, fitness, core or flexibility at home on a mat. If you have a few dumbbells at home, an exercise bike, a treadmill or a rowing machine, you have even more choice of workouts. With that, we also immediately have a disadvantage of Fitness +: you can only train indoors.

Get started with Fitness +

Getting started with Fitness + is not difficult. For most workouts you only need a mat and a suitable outfit, but since you are training at home, an old sports shirt is also sufficient. You can use a normal carpet as a mat. I bought a yoga mat from Manduka, which Apple recommends , but I don’t have to. Whether training at home is ideal for you also depends on the noise in your home and the presence of neighbors downstairs.

The most complicated thing is getting it working via an American iTunes account. Once that’s done, Fitness + is one of Apple’s most accessible services. You open the Fitness app (in Dutch: Condition), go to the Fitness + tab and choose one of the classes. At the top are new and recommended lessons, so you don’t have to search long. The video stillsare inviting and you can watch a preview to get an impression of what you are going to do. The trainers are all very enthusiastic, sympathetic and offer something for everyone. After doing an exercise, you have not only improved physically, but your mood has also improved by leaps and bounds. Fitness + takes you to the ‘happiest place on earth’, a kind of Disney gym where everyone is happy and where you always meet familiar faces: after just a few lessons you will recognize the group of about 20 trainers and get there a band with it.

These are the workouts you can choose from:

  • Strength
  • HIIT
  • Yoga
  • Core
  • Treadmill
  • Cycling
  • Rowing
  • Dance
  • Mindful cooldown

Conveniently, the Apple Watch automatically registers your training and heart rate as soon as you press the home button. You could possibly do the exercises without an Apple Watch, but then you will benefit less from your subscription. As soon as you start a class, the app connects to your Apple Watch to track your training time, calories burned and heart rate. With the Performance bar you can see how you are performing compared to others doing the same exercise.

This is how Fitness + works

The concept is simple: there are lessons from 10 to 45 minutes in different disciplines. One fitness trainer takes the lead, two others stand in the background and participate in the exercises. On the left is always the one who does simple modifications, for beginners or people who cannot or do not want to jump. There are so many workouts (over 300) that you never have to do the same thing twice and new workouts are added every week.

This gives you a bit of the experience of a real fitness studio: every week it is a surprise again which workout the trainer has in store for you. And with every lesson you see familiar faces, because in each video you see a few trainers from previous videos. You can always take classes from the same trainer, but Fitness + also gives you suggestions to try a different trainer or a different sport. That makes it very varied.

Over time you will get favorites. For example, I like Kym’s cycling lessons and the smiling Bakari is a pleasant trainer for HIIT and core. There is a lot of diversity: there are Americans and British, Latinos, different skin colors and ages. Also nice: the trainers look good, but they are not the pumped-up fitness models that you know from Instagram. It is also nice that there are no celebrities or famous athletes to see, but regular trainers, as you might also encounter in your local gym. Everything takes place in a friendly-looking space with wood and brick.

The lessons are not live, but pre-recorded. Not a problem for me, because there is no real interaction with the audience and because I don’t want to be stuck to certain times. If you need a personal trainer who is disappointed when you don’t show up for a class, Fitness + is not suitable. You will have to motivate yourself.

Not too difficult
It is a pity that you cannot see a level of difficulty in the lessons. That is not always apparent from the preview. Apple assumes that it should be suitable for all levels and that you try to participate in the exercises at your own pace. You can do that fanatically, if you are very fit, but if you are a beginner you can also take it easy. You don’t have to force anything. After each workout you can optionally do a cooling down session.

Although you can sweat a lot with some workouts, I found the level not always that high. OK, I had a good time and shook my arms and legs, but I can’t really say that I did a lot of exercise. Certainly with the dance exercises you are more concerned with imitating all the steps in a concentrated way than that it makes you fit. My heart rate rarely exceeded 100 and I hardly used any muscle. It was more relaxation than exercise. The HIIT exercises can sometimes be quite intensive, but I think they are often just a bit too easy for avid gym goers. Those who are fit can keep up well. The fact that there are many short workouts in between is actually nice. This way you can ‘stack’ three 10-minute workouts on top of each other and stop when you don’t feel like it anymore.

You have to pay attention to your posture when performing the exercises. The trainers demonstrate the exercises well, but when we showed rowing workouts to a trainer friend (who has been an Olympic rower in the past), he complained about the rowing position in the videos. And online we read the opinion of a yoga teacher, who thought that everything at Apple is very perfect and smooth. She found YouTube videos that are sometimes bumbling to make a more likeable impression. It may well have to do with the fact that personal trainers are critical of competition from the outset – just as almost every construction worker complains about the mess their predecessor did.

Points for improvement for Fitness +
You cannot create favorites or indicate that you do not like a particular trainer. What you can do is share a lesson you like with your friends, but they must be a subscriber to play it. Fortunately, we were able to do the exercises within a household with one subscription, each with its own Apple Watch and with progress being registered on its own iCloud account.

What struck me is that the music actually serves as a background wallpaper. For example, in the online workouts that I did at Basic-Fit, each exercise is one music track and you move to the BPM of the track. That is much less at Fitness +. A music track sometimes ends in the middle of an exercise, after which it continues to play on the next track. Only in the dance workouts does music play the leading role.

Do not exercise with friends
The Performance Bar should give you the impression that you are exercising against others. What is a shame is that this is an anonymous event with people you have no connection with. I share my activity data with some friends and it would be nice if I could exercise with them (or even against them) too. Now the only option is to press the Play button at the same time.

This also applies within one house. If you want to exercise with a housemate, you will each have to press the Play button on their own device at the same time. You are now mainly engaged in a competition with yourself. Fitness + will not nag you if you skip a day.

Another point for improvement is that Apple could provide some more guidance. You will now get suggestions for what to do, and there are also lists like Sam’s Perfect Week, which have 7 favorite exercises to keep you busy all week. But this is not tailored to you personally, so it does not take into account the exercises that you enjoy doing or that are tailored to you. Apple could create targeted programs for specific target groups aimed at building muscle, losing weight, getting stronger or, if necessary, something to get back in shape after a pregnancy or after a period of rehabilitation. Apple could also give you suggestions for workouts that are slightly outside your comfort zone, so that you can challenge yourself. But as said: there is no level of difficulty per workout, so you don’t know which one you need to go that extra mile.

Nor can you put together a training program or make a schedule. For example, I would like to do a core and a strength workout every day, but I have to choose that spontaneously when starting the app. That is not really difficult: with the filters you first choose a core workout of 10 minutes, then a strength session of 20 minutes and a cooldown of 5 minutes. In the morning you are ready for the day in less than 30 minutes.

Apple Fitness + as a smart advertising vehicle?

Is Fitness + a devious way to get Apple to sell more watches? I have not experienced it that way, but that is also because I already have a recent iPhone , iPad , Apple Watch and Apple TV and therefore have all playback and streaming options at my disposal. If you only have an iPhone and an Apple Watch (with iOS 14.3 and watchOS 7.2 respectively), then you can also get along well. You can also stream the workouts to an AirPlay television . An iPad and / or Apple TV are nice to be able to watch on a larger screen, but are not necessary. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work on the Mac , while it would be quite useful on an iMac, on an open MacBook, or on an external display connected to the Mac .

A large screen would be useful, because the iPhone screen is really too small to see what the trainers are doing. Although the camera angle changes regularly, it is also sometimes difficult to see how far a trainer is putting his / her feet forward or backward on a larger screen, especially if it was filmed straight ahead.

If you only have an iPhone or iPad, but no Apple Watch, you can watch the exercise videos and participate, but you will have to register the workouts manually in the Health app . Pairing with the Apple Watch allows you to see how long the training will last, how your rings are progressing and whether you are in the correct heart rate zone (the recommended zone occasionally appears on the screen). With interval training, you also see a timer to keep track of how long the intensive interval will last.

Afterwards you can view the stats and the completed workouts, but only on your iPhone. You can only play videos on the iPad and Apple TV , you cannot review your stats.

If you only have an iPhone or iPad, but no Apple Watch, you can watch the exercise videos and participate, but you will have to register the workouts manually in the Health app . Pairing with the Apple Watch allows you to see how long the training will last, how your rings are progressing and whether you are in the correct heart rate zone (the recommended zone occasionally appears on the screen). With interval training, you also see a timer to keep track of how long the intensive interval will last.

Afterwards you can view the stats and the completed workouts, but only on your iPhone. You can only play videos on the iPad and Apple TV , you cannot review your stats.

It is clear, however, that with Fitness +, Apple very emphatically wants to promote its own music service Apple Music. Each lesson consists of songs that you can listen to again afterwards, but that only works if you are an Apple Music subscriber. It is also clearly indicated which genre it is for each lesson: Country, Latest Hits and Latin Grooves, for example.

Still, I can’t really complain about Fitness +. The price of $ 10 a month is a lot more affordable than comparable services like Peloton, which require an expensive bike. At Apple you can choose your own material and you are already done with the purchase of an Apple Watch and an iPhone . That can also be an Apple Watch Series 3 and if you want you can buy yoga mats, barbells and other accessories from a cheap brand, making it as expensive as you want. Apple recommends a few brands, but doesn’t mandate anything. And if you really don’t have the money for weights, you can always grab a soda bottle.

Conclusion Apple Fitness +

Apple Fitness + offers convenience and works seamlessly with existing Apple products and services, such as the Apple Watch and Apple Music. Conveniently, the training sessions are recorded automatically. During exercise you see the most important stats on your Apple Watch and on the screen and the Performance bar motivates you to go that little bit faster. I only wish you could do a workout with friends. The choice of trainers is good: they are accessible, varied people who make you feel good. Even if you only train for 10 minutes, you will have a better mood and feel fitter afterwards. The question is how effective those extremely short workouts are, but I think it fits well into my lifestyle. If you’re working from home bent over at your laptop for a long time, a 10-minute session to loosen up your muscles is just what you need. And for the really long 45 minute workouts, Fitness + has something to offer too.