I realize it is a little cliché for my first post of a new year to be about a fitness program. Nevertheless, I've been using Apple's new Fitness+ service ever since it debuted on December 14, 2020, and after doing 17 of the workouts over the last three weeks, I have used this new service enough to write this review. My bottom line: this service is excellent. Fitness+ does a great job of using your Apple Watch to help you to improve your fitness.
What you need
The minimum requirements for using Fitness+ are an Apple Watch and an iPhone, but I think you will enjoy many of the workouts more if you use a larger screen such as an iPad or an Apple TV. The Fitness+ service is built-in to the Fitness app on the iPhone and Apple TV. If you use an iPad, you currently need to download the Fitness app from the App Store.
Some of the workout programs either require or allow you to use extra equipment. For example, you need a treadmill, an indoor bike, or a rowing machine to use the Treadmill, Cycling, and Rowing programs. For the Strength and High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) programs, many workouts encourage you to use dumbbells, but they are not required, and for some of those programs they are not used at all. For other workouts like Yoga and Dance, you don't need any extra equipment, although you might want a yoga mat if you have a hard floor.
For the next few months, you can try the Fitness+ service for free. Everyone with an Apple Watch can use it free for one month. If you buy a new Apple Watch, you currently get three free months. And if you purchase a new Apple Watch from Best Buy, you can currently get six months for free.
If you decide to keep using the service after the free trial, the Fitness+ service costs $9.99/month, or you can save by paying $79.99 for a year. You can share the service with up to six family members. I get the Fitness+ service as a part of paying $29.95/month for the Apple One Premier plan, which includes Fitness+, Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple News+, and 2TB of iCloud storage. If you use lots of Apple services, the Apple One Premier is a good deal. I was already subscribed to the Apple Music family plan, 2 TB of iCloud storage, Apple TV+, and Apple Arcade, and paying for those services individually would cost $35/month, so I saved $5/month by selecting this bundle while also getting access to Fitness+ and News+ for no additional charge.
Selecting a program
Fitness+ currently offers eight types of workouts: HIIT, Strength, Yoga, Dance, Core, Cycling, Treadmill, Rowing. There is also a ninth option, called Mindful Cooldown; I'm not sure that I would call it a "workout," but it is definitely helpful for fitness. Each Mindful Cooldown session features guided stretching and meditation exercises. That one is especially useful as a way to stretch and relax after another workout. The classes last from 5 to 45 minutes.
Once you select a type of workout on your iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV, you can select a specific workout program. You can filter all of the available programs by length, trainer, or type of music. New workouts are released every Monday.
At first, I picked out my workouts based on the type of music that I liked, but I soon discovered that the music genre does not matter much to me. Even when I used a workout with a genre that is not normally my cup of tea, I found that the instructors did a great job of selecting music that fit with the particular workout.
I've now done workouts with nine of the 21 different trainers, and they have all been excellent ... not that I'm surprised that Apple hired some of the very best trainers. They do a great job of talking to you throughout the workout to guide you through what you are doing, what you may be feeling (such as the part of your body that you are stretching), and what is coming next. They also do an excellent job offering encouragement at just the right time, causing me to push myself harder than I would have on my own.
All of the workouts offer descriptions and short video previews so that you can decide whether you are interested in a specific program. You can also see a playlist of the music used in the workout if that makes a difference to you (and if you really like the playlist, you can open it in Apple Music if you subscribe to that service).
Many of the workouts that I did were treadmill workouts. For those, you can select whether you want to run or walk.
The Fitnesss+ app also includes a section called Workouts to Get Started, which are specially designed for folks who are new to, or just want an introduction to, a particular type of exercise. For example, if you are new to yoga, you can do a 10-minute beginner session with the trainer Dustin, and after that, you can move on to a 20-minute beginner session with trainer Molly, and then move on to the regular yoga workouts.
Once you have selected the workout that you want to do, your iPhone or iPad or Apple TV will establish a connection with your Apple Watch. Once that happens, you tap a big button on your Apple Watch or on the screen you are using to begin the workout.
Doing a workout
In most of the workouts that I tried, the trainer began by leading you through a few stretching exercises and explaining what you would be doing in the workout, and then the session begins. There are typically three trainers on the screen at one time. The trainer in the center is the one who does virtually all of the talking, the one who guides you through the program. The trainer on the left does a modified, more simple, version of the same workout. For example, in the Treadmill workout, the primary trainer will run but the trainer on the left will walk. In one Strength workout that I did, the primary trainer used dumbbells but the trainer on the left did not. The trainer on the right does a modified, more complex, version of the same workout.
Note that in the Mindful Cooldown sessions, there is just a single trainer. Also, there is just a single trainer in the beginner workouts.
In all of the workouts that I did, the primary trainer did an excellent job of coaching to all levels. For example, in a treadmill workout, the trainer will tell you which incline percentage to use based on whether you are walking or running. Also, in treadmill workouts, the trainer will help you at the beginning to find your "easy" pace and your "base" pace and then will guide you through increasing speeds by using subjective words describing how much you should be pushing yourself, and then will tell you to return to the base or easy pace. As a result, I very much felt like each treadmill workout was tailored to me, even though the trainer was speaking to a wide range of skill levels.
But my favorite part of these workouts – and a key thing that makes Fitness+ different from the workout videos that you can find for free on YouTube or that you can pay for from other services — is the integration of the Apple Watch. In the past, when I have used a treadmill, I've always found it a little awkward to have to raise my wrist to look at my statistics, and if I wanted to look at how I was doing with closing my circles it is even more awkward to have to switch screens on the watch while I am walking or running. But with Fitness+, everything that you need to see is right there on the screen.
At the top left, you can see either the elapsed time or the time remaining in the workout. (You can adjust the Metrics to set this option before you start a workout.) Either way, you will also see a yellow circle that gives you a graphical representation of how much longer you have to go in the workout. For treadmill workouts, you will next see your elapsed distance (estimated from your Apple Watch, not from your treadmill). Next, you see your heart rate. I really loved seeing this live information because it helped me to determine how much more I wanted to push myself. Finally, you see the number of calories that you have burned so far during the workout. At the top right, you see how you are doing on your activity rings, and you are rewarded with a short animation if you close your rings during the workout.
For HIIT, treadmill, cycling, and rowing workouts, you can also optionally choose to display a Burn Bar below the other numbers on the top left. This gives you a sense of how you are doing versus other people who have done the same workout, based on the past two minutes. It adds a bit of competition (albeit anonymous competition) that might help to encourage you to push yourself harder.
The trainer doesn't change what he or she is saying during the workout based on your specific numbers. I suppose Apple could add something like this in the future, although I'm not sure how useful it would be. However, the trainer will sometimes direct you to focus on one of the metrics, and when that happens, the specific metric with your data will often become more prominent. For example, if the trainer encourages you to focus on your heart beat, the other metrics on the top left will disappear for a few seconds and the display will instead focus on your current heart rate (while also showing your low and high during that workout).
Also, in many classes, the trainer will encourage you to push yourself for a limited period of time, such as keeping up a high pace for 60 seconds. Whenever this happens, a countdown timer will show up on the top left above the other numbers. This is a great way to encourage you to push yourself with the knowledge that the end of that intense segment is getting closer.
Subtitles are available if you want to turn them on.
When the next song starts playing during a workout, the title and artist are briefly displayed at the top right of the screen.
When you are done with your workout, you can see a summary of the workout either on your screen or on your Apple Watch with all sorts of statistics such as the total time, calories, and average heart rate. And if you used the Burn Bar, you will see how you did compared to all of the other people who did the same workout.
If you want to go straight to a Mindful Cooldown session after a workout, there is a button to make it easy to jump right there.
The Fitness app also keeps track of all of your workouts, so it is easy to see all of the workouts that you have done in the past.
Additionally, when you are looking at all of the available workouts in the Fitness+ section of the Fitness app, a checkmark is placed in the corner of every workout that you have already completed. Thus, it is easy to select a workout that you haven't done yet.
What I love
I love getting all of the metrics that I want right there on the same screen that I am watching during a workout. It makes the service much more engaging. And it is infinitely better than having to look at your wrist while you are working out. It is also nice that you don't have to stop the workout on your Apple Watch at the end of the workout — that happens automatically. They may sound silly, but when I'm sweaty and tired after a workout, it is sometimes a pain to have to tap and swipe to end, and it is always a pain when I forget to end the workout only to have my watch tap me a few minutes later to ask if I'm done. There are none of those concerns with Fitness+.
I also love that the quality of each video is amazing. And the streaming quality is also excellent: crisp images with no compression artifacts. If you watched any of the Apple keynotes that were done during the pandemic in 2020, you know how good Apple is with streaming video.
I've been especially happy with the trainers in the videos. They do an excellent job of explaining the workout as it is occurring, and the tips that they offer are very helpful. And it is smart to show three trainers at once geared at different skill levels. I like that I can look at either the middle or left trainer to see what I should be doing. (No, I am not nearly good enough to ever keep up with the trainer on the right.) And seeing three trainers also feels like you are part of a team, especially after you have done multiple workouts and you start to recognize the trainers on the left or right from other workouts that you did when they were the lead trainer.
I also love that Fitness+ gives you a high-quality workout at home. Of course, that is especially nice during this pandemic when going to a gym is unsafe and probably prohibited your area. But even if I could go to a gym right now, the time, cost, and inconvenience would be a deterrent for me. Plus, there is the intimidation of being in a public setting. But with Fitness+, I was happy to try out some Dance workout videos, secure in the knowledge that nobody — not even the trainer — could see what a poor job I did following most of the moves. I realize that this is nothing new; people have been Sweatin' to the Oldies with Richard Simmons on VHS tapes and doing similar programs since at least the 1980s. But this formula has been around for a while because it works, and Apple has definitely put a very polished and high-tech spin on at-home workouts.
If you like a particular workout session, you can save it to your favorites to make it easier to do it again. For some workouts, like the Dance workouts, I can definitely understand the value in repeating them. But I like the fact that there are lots of different workouts, with new ones added each week so that there is always something fresh to experience.
What I don't love
I've only experienced one problem with the Fitness+ service, something that I think is some sort of bug. Although Fitness+ always worked great with my iPad, I found that if I used Fitness+ on my Apple TV (I have the "Apple TV HD" model, which was introduced in 2015) while I was also using my AirPods Pro, the Apple TV would sometimes lose the connection to the Apple Watch shortly after I started a workout. A few minutes later, the workout would end because of that lost connection. To be precise, this happened to me during two of six workouts that I did while wearing my AirPods Pro. I think that this problem may have something to do with using my AirPods because, so far, I have never experienced the problem when I was just using my normal TV speakers with the Apple TV, only if I was using my AirPods Pro. Is the Apple TV having trouble communicating via Bluetooth with two devices at once — my Apple Watch and my AirPods Pro? Hopefully, this is a bug that Apple will soon fix.
Conclusion
I mentioned above that because I already pay for the Apple One Premier service, it felt sort of like I was getting Fitness+ for free. But after using this service for the past few weeks, I now see that this is a service that I would pay for separately even if it was not already part of my Apple One bundle. Fitness+ is that good.
And the service is still in its first month. Over time, there will certainly be more workouts to choose from. And because Apple is a technology company, perhaps we will see other improvements to how the service works with your Apple devices.
If you own an Apple Watch and you are interested in personal fitness, I encourage you to take advantage of the free trial and give Fitness+ a chance so that you can discover whether you like it as much as I do.
