Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Working out

This post is kind of a review of my favorite app.

I like being in shape. I feel good, I feel good about myself, I feel good about how I look. But staying in shape takes a lot of time. I used to drive to a gym, work out for an hour, drive home, and take a shower. It took darn near two hours a day, usually after work. Whenever I got busy, the workouts got cut.

I think I've now discovered a better way. First I found this book. It explains how to work out all your major muscle groups at home. It also explains why cardio is a waste of time: if you want to burn fat, the best thing to do is to build muscle and raise your baseline metabolism. Later, a companion iOS app was released. I immediately bought it too, and it's been slowly improving over time, and release 2.0 made it a ton better than the original. That's what I've been using for my workouts for the last few weeks. The iPhone app now has all the workouts and exercises listed in it, so if you just want the workouts, that's all you really need.

It's nice because I can hammer out a 30-35 min. workout in the morning, take my shower, and go to work. It doesn't take a lot of time, so I keep doing it even when I'm busy. I like doing everything from an app because you don't need to remember what you're supposed to do, it just tells you. It also keeps track of all your workouts so you can look back at your workout history anytime. I love it.

Sorry this sounds like a product promo, but I guess that's what it is. It's about a $2 app that makes it unnecessary to have a gym membership, saves a ton of time, and makes you feel good about yourself. If you have an iPhone or an iPod Touch, get it. It'll be easily worth it if you do it.

It's not perfect yet, I'm hoping the developer will continue to improve it.