(soft music)
- Apple Fitness Plus.
It's the 10 bucks a month subscription service
with a bunch of exercise videos
that integrate with and actually require your Apple Watch
and you probably know it's been out for a few months now
but a bunch of us at the verge have been using it
for a couple of months to review it.
- Okay. So I'm about to do
my first Apple Fitness Plus workout.
- This is gonna be my first ever experience
with Apple Fitness Plus.
- We've been totally, absolutely being really, really good
at daily exercise and closing those rings
with a subscription service that we totally pay for
every month making it worth our money.
Yup.
- Speak for yourself.
I took it pretty seriously.
- Yes. Yes we did actually try.
- I took it kind of seriously.
- Look, I've never exercised regularly in my entire life.
I've never held on to a gym membership for more than a year.
I mean, I'm not a total slug, but I'm slug adjacent.
So I wanted to know if Fitness Plus could turn that around
for me and we'll get to that,
but first I think it's more important to hear from people
who actually do exercise on a regular basis
and who can compare Apple Fitness Plus
to other similar services.
Apple Fitness Plus has a bunch of different,
prerecorded exercise videos with three trainers
in each of them.
Two of them are offering accommodations
on the main exercise.
These videos can vary in length from 10 minutes
to up to 45 minutes.
It also has integration with Apple Music,
so you can listen to real actual music
that you'd actually wanna listen to
while you're working out.
Now, there are a few different categories of exercise.
There's Hitt and Yoga and Core and Dance
and this thing called Mindful Cooldown
which is basically just stretching with meditation.
But there are also exercise videos that require you
to have specific equipment,
so you might need dumbbells for strength,
there's cycling, there's treadmill and there's also rowing.
There's one more piece of equipment
that is absolutely required for all of the videos,
an Apple Watch and then also something
to watch the videos on,
so that would be an iPhone, an iPad, an Apple TV
or you can stream it to your TV via Airplay.
Sometimes with reviews, the only important question is,
is it good?
And for what it is, yeah.
Apple Fitness Plus is pretty good.
So for this review
I think a better question is who is it good for?
(upbeat music)
- So right off the bat, I loved using Apple Fitness Plus.
For someone who's already plugged into the Apple ecosystem
and is just getting started out with fitness,
I think it's a great program.
So I started using a Peloton bike last year.
I haven't loved Peloton, but it's the closest I can get
to my pre COVID fitness classes.
On paper, the cardio offerings from Peloton
and Fitness Plus look pretty similar.
In both programs, you can choose classes
with different lengths, playlists and levels of intensity.
There's a variety of instructors,
although not as many as Peloton
and Apple's workouts have an added emphasis on mental health
and general wellness in addition to physical health.
There's a lot more of a like throw away your cares,
throw away your worries,
how can we be better people today attitude
that you don't see across all the Peloton rides.
- [Instructor] Me, you and your Fitness Plus trainer team.
Let's start to add some resistance.
- [Monica] This instructor is excited
about being on a bike ride, it make me excited too.
But it's newer than Peloton's program
and that shows in a couple of ways.
First, there just aren't as many teachers to choose from.
There are only six Apple cycling instructors as of now
and Peloton has 23 to choose from.
Current playlist offerings are more generic as well.
So with Peloton, I've done everything from Hamilton rides
to Bon Jovi rides whereas Apple's rides
are still mostly like hip hop or rock.
But the one thing that bothered me the most
is that the workout lengths are more limited.
With Peloton, you can ride for up to 90 minutes.
Apple's cycling rides max out at 45 minutes
so I often found myself stringing multiple Apple workouts
together to get the workout lengths that I wanted.
These things are all functions of Apple Fitness Plus
being fairly new and there'll be easy to fix,
but some other things won't be.
For example, on Peloton the instructors
can give you an exact range to put your resistance at,
whereas on Apple Fitness Plus
because you know, everyone's using different bikes,
they can only be pretty general,
so easy or moderate or hard and that makes it more difficult
to know whether you're at the intensity
that you're supposed to be at.
Okay. In the cool-down now.
I've actually loved that.
I thought that was so much fun.
The instructor was great.
The music was great.
I burnt 195 calories.
So you know, for 20 minutes of biking that's not bad at all.
This was a lot of fun.
- So I'm already a committed Peloton user
and I wasn't willing to give up my bike time.
I decided to keep using the bike for my cardio workouts
and then use Fitness Plus for my Cooldown
and Strength classes.
Immediately, I noticed Apple's choice in instructors.
They're diverse and interesting
and I wanted to try their classes, which is a good sign.
I also appreciated that the Strength classes
offered three different levels.
One person demoed the regular exercise.
Another modified it to make it accessible for anyone
with injuries or needing to go easier on their bodies
and the third person made the movement more advanced.
Peloton doesn't do this and it's Strength classes
and I find it super frustrating,
especially as someone with chronic lower back pain
and like others have mentioned,
I really appreciated the deep integration
with the Apple Watch, even if it's super Apple like behavior
to make it mandatory.
I did however, like having my rings as a constant reminder
in the corner of the screen.
It motivated me, especially considering
that when I use my Peloton, my heart rate
only shows up on the screen and nothing else.
Otherwise though, Apple Fitness Plus didn't hook me.
I like to strength train specific parts of my body.
Usually my arms, because the bike works my lower body.
The app doesn't allow you to filter by workout type.
So to find an upper body Strength class,
I had to read through all the Strength class descriptions.
Filters feel like they should be table stakes
for a fitness app
and here's another potential barrier to entry.
I don't own an iPad or an Apple TV.
So I had to stream my workouts from my phone,
which was terrible.
The screen is small and especially terrible
when switching from Peloton's behemoth bike display
to my iPhone 11 Pro.
I don't understand why Apple wouldn't make Fitness Plus
available through a Mac Book.
How many Apple products do I need
to make this program work well?
As for the classes themselves, they were fine.
I didn't love or hate them.
The Strength classes were about what you'd expect from
any Strength class
and the Cooldowns were a little bit different,
in that they incorporated mindfulness into them
which I liked, but might be annoying
if you wanna just do your stretches and get in and out.
(upbeat music)
- Working out in one space has always been a struggle
for me.
I just get bored and uninterested
when I'm not actively going somewhere
or physically achieving something,
that's why I usually get my workouts on my bike.
Taking loops off in the park
or slack lining behind some trees or going for a jog.
So the at-home workouts within Apple Fitness Plus,
well they weren't really of interest to me.
That is until a few weeks ago though,
when Apple rolled out the Time to Walk feature
within Apple Fitness Plus.
That's something in theory, I can get behind.
Time to Walk pairs inspirational monologues,
music and photos from famous musicians, athletes,
notable people with Apple Watch's Exercise Tracking
to create a more engaging way to take a walk.
Now, there are only a couple of differences
between Time to Walk and a more traditional podcast.
Most notably about twice an episode, your watch will buzz
and a photo will appear on your watch
that relates to what the host is talking about.
It's cool.
It's not game changing.
And then secondly, the hosts are either also on a walk
or they're talking about what walking means to them
and this, I actually appreciated a bit more.
Ruby Bridges has a slow, calm pace you can hear
as she strolls through a park in New Orleans.
- [Ruby] Right now we are in Audubon park,
here in New Orleans.
- Well Dream on Greens, Heavier Foot on a Gravel Path
and Malibu is accompanied by the sounds of distant waves.
- [Instructor 2] I try to go on a walk
maybe once every couple of weeks.
Its your time to lose yourself in nature.
- Huge shout out to the audio engineers that worked on these
because it really makes it sound like
you're walking next to somebody
or in a different place entirely.
Now my big issues with Apple Fitness Plus at large
is just needing to be in the Apple ecosystem
and this definitely affects Time to Walk,
because if you're not using Apple's headphones,
it's just kind of a pain to have to manually connect
your Bluetooth headphones to your watch,
and then say you get a phone call on your iPhone
while you're walking, you have to manually your headphones
to your iPhone and then back to your watch
when you're done with your call to continue your walk.
I just found it a big pain
and navigating the 40 millimeter Apple watch screen
to do all of this is not easy either,
but if you can put all of that aside
and maybe you're already all within this ecosystem anyway,
Time to Walk is really a great feature and every Monday,
the new mystery slab shows up on your watch face.
And that's something I actually started to look forward to.
(upbeat music)
- So I went all out for this review because one thing
I've learned in my life is that buying stuff
like exercise equipment
means that you're totally gonna use it, right?
So I got this trainer for my bike.
I also bought this here, yoga mat
and I also even bought these pants from Lululemon that,
I am never wearing these in public, these are hideous.
Now, I have to admit for an absolute beginner like me,
Apple's Fitness Plus classes
are kind of right at the perfect level.
I can start with the really easy stuff
and then I can see the slightly more difficult classes
just waiting there as a kind of a goal to step up to
and if what I'm doing is too difficult,
there's always three different trainers on the screen.
One of them has got an accommodation to make something
a little bit easier if the exercise
that the main trainer showing is too tough.
So that's all great,
but can I just say that as a Gen X-er,
the whole vibe of all of these videos, is a lot.
- [Instructor 3] Be expressive. Let everything go.
Be who you wanna be.
(hiphop music)
- I'm used to jaded MTV VJ's from the nineties
and I really don't like this hazy,
really enthusiastic, but not quite religious,
vague spiritualism kind of mindfulness vibe
you get in the Cooldowns.
It's just, I don't love it.
The trainers are great and I really love the diversity
that you get with all the trainers,
but I just kinda wish there was a way
to turn the voices down and the music up.
I also have to admit that I'm with Becca.
I got back into riding my bike
right before the pandemic had started.
So during the pandemic, I am a super enjoying riding my bike
around outside.
Now I know that not everybody can do that.
You might not be able to
and of course there's probably snow on the ground
and it's too cold, so I am lucky to be in California.
But the point to me
is that everybody does eventually end up
finding an exercise style that works for them, hopefully.
- I don't feel like there's anywhere
for me to really go with Fitness Plus.
I think if I become a significantly stronger rider
which I'm hoping will happen sooner rather than later,
it'll be too easy, but I am looking forward to see
where Apple Fitness Plus goes.
I'm excited to see them diversify their offerings
and expand what they have.
I think when it's found its footing,
Fitness Plus will be an excellent program.
- Overall Fitness Plus isn't going to become
my go-to fitness app.
Because I'm a month long Peloton user,
I'm already in that world and possibly too far gone.
It's hard for me to switch up my routine
when I can get everything done through the Peloton.
But if Apple really wants to keep people like me logging on,
it needs to sweeten the offerings
with equipment like Peloton
and have a larger catalog of classes to choose from.
- I found that I only really used the Time to Walk feature
with an Apple Fitness Plus and that's simply not enough
to keep me subscribed to the service as a whole,
but it did make me think
that Apple could do some really cool site specific workouts,
like in terms of walking, imagine walking through Yosemite
with Alex Honnold or down Broadway in New York city
with Fran Leibowitz.
Now that's something I could definitely get behind
and yes, it might start to feel like a guided museum
to her with like heart rate tracking and calorie counts,
but I don't know something cool to think about.
- As for me, I'm already paying for Fitness Plus anyway
because I'm an Apple's big bundle
and you know what since I have a bad back,
I'm actually using the service itself
more than I've ever used a gym membership.
I really enjoy the core exercises
and you know, even though I like riding my bike outside
more than I like sitting on a trainer,
I am finding that I'm doing a little bit more of both
now that Fitness Plus is around.
They're sort of a virtuous cycle around it
and it's become a bit more of a habit for me.
It's not something that I would go out
and buy an Apple Watch just to get,
but Fitness Plus is something
that makes it slightly more likely
that I wanna keep using this Apple watch
instead of switching to something else someday.
There is no way that Apple could make a fitness service
that appeals to everybody, especially right out of the gate.
So I do think it was kind of smart to aim Fitness Plus
at a broad beginner audience.
If you already have an exercise routine,
Apple Fitness Plus might not be advanced enough
to hold your attention yet, but if you don't exercise much,
well, Apple Fitness Plus is literally better than nothing.
Hey everybody thanks so much, no Vjeran.
Vjeran is gonna do the end card.
Yeah.
- Wait, what did I do wrong?
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