While my right foot has been hampering my running, not letting me run nearly as often or as far as I would like, I’ve finally fallen into a nice habit of going to the gym for a strength workout, as a form of cross-training. My biggest problem is never knowing what to do at the gym, and in the past when I’ve seen a personal trainer, I’m usually only able to remember some of it, and the workouts are often more complicated than what I can do on my own.
I recently discovered a gym workout app for my iPhone from Gain Fitness, and I’m really enjoying it. The app will generate a workout for you based on many different factors and focuses you tell it in the setup wizard. You can further customize by telling it what equipment you have available to you at the gym or at home, etc, and also indicate how long you want the workout to be. Using the app I created a nice 45 minute workout with warm-up and cool-down it calls “Every Angle Assault”, which sounds cool to me.
What I really love about the app is that if you don’t like any of the exercises it creates for you, then you can easily choose an alternative to that particular exercise. You can also easily pick an alternate exercise on the fly right in the workout. For example the gym I go to in NYC has a nice ‘assisted pullup’ machine, which is part of my workout. However the gym I go to in NJ doesn’t have that, and so I can choose lat pulldown, one of the alternatives.
The other thing that is nice is that you can easily record how many reps/pounds you do with each set, and during your workout your prior stats are shown, as a reminder of what to do.
Anyway, there is lots more that I like about the app, like how it speaks to you while you listen to your music and the mini animated demonstrations of each exercise, but that’s enough detail for here or else this post will get too long and you are likely to get bored…
I’ve been using the app for about a month now, and since Nov 23, the day I built and worked out Every Angle Assault, I’ve been to the gym 6 times to do that workout!
One note of caution, while you can get some really good workouts from the free version of the app, expansion packs cost money, but do seem to give you many many many more workout options.
I’m not quite ready yet, (or perhaps too afraid!) but one of these days I’m going to use the app to create an abs workout I can do at home…
