Thoughts on Apple Fitness+ after a year

Its been a little over the year with Apple Fitness+ and so far I have really enjoyed the service. Over the last year I have purchased a spin bike, yoga mat, and some free weights so that I can work out from home. I have come to rely on this service to workout throughout the week and when I’m traveling. I’ve also tried the dance & treadmill workouts, but because of my foot damage I find those difficult to do regularly and dancing is just not my style of workout as I feel self-conscious doing it…I did it really for the Apple Watch medal and whispers “never again” after getting it. I imagine a lot of people like those style of workouts, but they’re just not my thing haha. Of all the workouts, I enjoy the spin bike workouts the most and I’ve discovered an appreciation for yoga workouts for the first time in my life. I find that by doing yoga, it has allowed me to recover from aerobatic workouts and get better at those despite my foot damage that I sustained a couple of years ago that makes running on concrete nearly impossible and limits my ability to bike for more than 60 minutes a day to just a couple of times a week. I need to get better at doing the core and strength workouts, I really hate doing those, but my family in healthcare do assure me that it really is something that I need to be doing as I age into a geriatric millennial with a 401K and all of that good stuff. I find the variety of hosts to be encouraging & I like how Apple has the 3x hosts, which basically is the instructor and an easy + hard modifications. This time a year ago I am proud to stay that I struggled to even do the easy yoga workouts, but over time I’ve graduated to doing the more intense parts and the longer 45 minute workouts now and that feels good. I think overall Apple Fitness+ has been a really good thing because its introduced a lot more variety into my weekly workouts and makes filling out my Apple Watch rings into something more manageable. I’ve actually ended up increasing my move ring from around 500 to 700 over the last year, which I think is a good accomplishment and its helped me not gain any weight during COVID lockdown and actually lose a little bit as well…nothing to write home about, but still enough that my doctor did note it in my yearly check-up. Overall, I really enjoy the service and have found is very useful over the last year. I’m looking forward to them adding new things to it and for more instructors and workouts to get added.

Some suggestions

Apple did introduce SharePlay workouts so that you can workout with friends over FaceTime. I love this idea, but I do hope that Apple expands the Apple Fitness+ community even more so that I can match up with new people that I don’t know. Most of my friends and family are not as deep into the Apple ecosystem as me or have the same schedules that I do so I would like there to be a Peloton-like community that I could connect with to find people that I could workout with that fit my schedule. I would also like to see swimming workouts introduced for people like my uncle and cousin that use that as their primary workout. Also, expanding to more countries is neat, but I feel like they need to expand their non-english workouts for other countries. I have no idea how you’re supposed to do a yoga workout via closed captions. I’ve just gotten to the point that I know enough so that I can do most of the poses without having to look up at the screen a million times during a workout. I would also like one day for their to be food tracking in the Apple Health app as well as an overall health score that takes into account your food intake, vitals, workouts, and sleep information to give you an overall picture of how you are doing. Its great for the the watch to be collecting so much great information, but as a layperson its hard for me to to see the forest for the trees. Also, better offline caching for workouts would be appreciated. I’ve had times that my internet has dropped out in the middle of a workout or the power has flickered and its so frustrating to lose all of that work since you cannot fast forward in a workout or go backwards, I feel like having classes you want auto-download to the iPhone, iPad, or Apple’s internal storage could help mitigate against this problem. Also, on the Watch I think its time they make guided running and biking workouts. Nike does it with their running app and I like the Time to Walk workouts. Finally, some official Apple Fitness workout gear would be neat as well. They have a guide to get the equipment that they use in the videos, but I do find it hard to find a lot of the time. Even if it’s just t-shirts or gym clothing, I’m a dork and I would consider sporting that.

Final Thoughts

With all of that being said, I have come to really enjoy using the service every week and it’s gotten to the point that I do not dread working out every day anymore. I don’t think I’ll ever be as fit as most of the trainers on the service in their really fancy Nike clothing, but I do think it’s helping me to live a healthier lifestyle and it pushes me to do better snd more, which is the goal. For me, it really makes me feel like the Apple One bundle in particular is a good deal, especially since I use Apple Music, iCloud storage, and Apple News+ daily as well. I’m looking forward to seeing this service continue to evolve as time goes on.