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Did Santa bring you an Apple Watch? Apple gives you Fitness+ free for 3 months. I gave in again and bought an Apple Watch — I must be an addict, but anyway, that’s not what this article is about. I mainly use my watch for sport: a bit of HIIT and resistance band training. I’ve never been to a gym and I’ve never taken a group fitness class, so I didn’t think I was Fitness+’s target audience.
You have 3 months free to try it out.
The positives
The energy the coaches try to give you — this is a service that wants to be human first. The coaches are super motivated, almost too much sometimes; you’d occasionally like to hear a bit more of the music 🎧.
There are activities for all tastes: Yoga, Meditation, HIIT, Strength, Cycling, Rowing, Dance! Guest coaches present their own programme to follow — 6 or 7 sessions.
How can you not mention the Apple Watch integration — you can see your rings closing in real time on your watch and the secondary screen, the time remaining, your heart rate. If you’re a data person, you’ll be well served.
If you’re a Nike fan, you’ll be well served by the sponsor too 🤣.
Room for improvement
There’s no tracking, no programme. Beyond telling you which sessions you’ve already done, there are no recommendations based on a specific goal.
That’s actually the service’s first shortcoming: the lack of a concrete goal. Beyond getting you to exercise, the app doesn’t ask you to set a specific objective — at no point does it ask you, and that’s a shame.
There are sessions tailored for ski conditioning, but that’s as far as it goes.
The service’s real headroom for improvement is exactly here. A few onboarding questions about the user’s goal, followed by a personalised session schedule, would make a huge difference.
The lack of subtitles is a real issue for certain activity types like Yoga, where you constantly have to look up at the screen to understand exactly what to do.
For those kinds of activities it’s better to put your phone on the floor and do the exercises facing it. Let’s 🤞 cross our fingers and hope Apple opens a studio in France 🇫🇷.
There’s no Mac app — you have to AirPlay from your phone, which works but not always reliably, and you lose the duration and heart-rate information on screen.
When will it be possible to do a session together on the same screen, with the option to see the person ahead of you to keep each other motivated?
Who is it for?
Let’s be clear: the target audience is Apple Watch owners. On Apple TV it’s essential; on other devices you can manage without, but it doesn’t really make sense in my opinion.
At a time when gyms are becoming soulless spaces (no coaches), online services in front of your own TV have a bright future. Why pay to travel there when you can join an excellent coach at home? And you can do your sessions anywhere with your phone — at the beach? No problem. At the hotel? No problem.
I haven’t tested the SharePlay session — meaning doing your workout remotely with friends. I can’t really see the appeal, except occasionally for a laugh. If you love working out with others, this kind of service isn’t for you — you’re better off getting together with your friends at a gym.
Who said working out with young children was impossible? Mine have a great time watching the session and leave me in peace for a good half hour. It’s a way to exercise as a family on lockdown days or in bad weather.
In my case I found it interesting to be able to do sessions I would never have tried otherwise — Pilates, which I didn’t know at all, meditation. I haven’t tried rowing yet, but why not. I don’t enjoy rowing at all except as a warm-up, and having a coach could bring the fun element that I’ve always needed to motivate myself.
In a strength training programme, core work and leg training tend to get left out. With Fitness+ it’s much more motivating to jump into a HIIT session — which very often focuses on the legs — and tack on 10 minutes of core work.
As a complement to another activity, or to shake up your routine, the service is genuinely good — and knowing Apple, it can only get better over time.
