Workout Apps…do they work

 I believe the workout apps are great because they are inexpensive easy to use and share data with other and give a lot more realistic goal to strive for in our quest to become fit.  I recently downloaded the Runtastic App on my new Blackberry Storm. the app is easy to use. The standard membership is ideal for me so I didn’t opt for the “gold package”. I chose this app because it does GPS tracking and calculates calories and other useless crap that really iesn’t helpful information as far as I’m concerned. Okay okay so I really only downloaded it because it does the GPS tracking. I was lusting after the Garmin 405cx watch (over $300 new)  for a while but after finding an app that cost literally a 10th of the cost of the watch ( $3.99) I opted for downloading the app on my phone. I am glad I didnt’  waste the money on the garmin watch. I think the app is pretty much all I needed. I really was only needed something to calculate the actual distance of my hikes and runs. In the past I to drive around the area I ran to get a vauge idea of the distance.  Now I just put my phone in a fanny pak ( yes I love fanny paks and I wear them with pride) and do my business and let the app figure out all the numbers.

As I mentioned before, I think that having a device “track” your heart rate and try to calculate your caloric burn is a waste of time. I suppose it depends on your own goals but for me that information is useless.

App like Runstastic are great for novice fitness people and for professionals. The whole point of the app is to keep track of your personal record. It also allows you to share the data with any friends, family or heck even enemies that you want to make jealous or compete against. . It also allows you to easily keep track of your cardio workouts for your own record so that you can strive to break your own PR. Keeping track of records is a MUST if you are going to think about getting motivated to work out. You need to have something to work towards other than this idea of what you think your body is going to look like. Let’s face it, we don’t see results on our bodies right after we work out. To see any real change, we need to put in a lot of time and effort.  Plugging in data from these workout apps gives us instant gradification that helps keeps us motiviated to continue putting in this monotinous thing we call “working out”.

Sometimes just using a scale can have the opposite effect we want. When we start working out we tend to gain muscle weight…which means the numbers on the scale go up…which means that our brains get upset becuase we are looking at the number expecting it to go down.  If we have these OTHER numbers to referrence from the app which tell us times and distances, we have something else which are a lot more realistic to look forward to and strive to acheive.

I’m having a lot of fun working with the Runtastic App, maybe a little to much fun but it is fun none the less.