I use several iPhone apps when I exercise and I thought I would share them with you. I got back into running last year during the winter - I used the Couch to 5K app by Felt Tip, Inc. to ease into running. The program is just terrific. You listen to your own music, there is a voice that comes on over your music that tells you to start your 5 minute warmup, after you've finished the warmup, the voice tells you to run for a bit, then walk for a bit and on and on. The first week, you jog for 60 seconds then walk for 90 seconds for a duration of 20 minutes. The program suggests you do the workout 3 times a week. Every week, the workout gets just a bit more difficult. It is a lot of fun to run a bit further every week. This winter I moved up to Couch to 10k. Every time you finish a workout, you check it off. For some reason, it is so satisfying to check off a workout!
Two or three times a week a do a Tabata workout. You haven't heard of Tabata? It is a blast! A Japanese exercise physiologist named Tabata found that you can increase your VO2 max (a measure of how good you are at processing oxygen) very handily by exercising full out for 20 seconds, recovering for 10 seconds and repeating that all 8 times. It is a great 4 minute workout. It is difficult, but the real difficulty is trying to sprint and looking at your watch - impossible. There is a Tabata app called Tabata HIIT by Tom Chisholm - a perfect app for $.99. This way you can focus on running your heart out while listening to some good music instead of watching your watch. The HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training. This is a very powerful mode of exericse.
I like to run in the winter, but once the weather gets warm, I like to ride my bike, swim, golf and kayak. I don't usually think of my exercise as something I have to do, but rather as something I want to do and I think part of it is that I never get bored because I do so many different things.
I like to help my clients at Pilates Plus in Englewood, New Jersey put together a workout that suits their needs so that exercise is fun instead of a chore.
