iFitness, Your Workout Buddy

I'm about to introduce you to your very own personal workout buddy. If you haven't already heard about it, the iFitness app for the iPhone/iTouch is one of the best complements to any workout program. It offers a complete workout encyclopedia that's portable, electronic, and easy to use. 

One of the most important principles of weight training is the principle of progressive resistance. In short, the only way for your body to get stronger and/or build more muscle is if you challenge it to lift more than it's accustomed to. For example, if every time you bench you lift 150 pounds, never any more, your body would get really freaking good at benching 150, but you wouldn't get any closer to hitting 160. Your body adapts to lifting 150 pounds, but it won't get any stronger/bigger in the process. This is commonly referred to as a plateau.

A workout log is the best way to ensure that you're constantly progressing and lifting more weight. Typically I advocate bringing a notebook to the gym and writing down all of the exercises, sets, and the weights you've used. By writing everything down you can refer back to it during your next workout and build off of your past workouts. But lets be realistic, no one wants to carry around a stupid notebook and write everything down...it's just not practical or easy. That's where iFitness comes it. 

Functions + Features

Home Screen with Muscle Diagram

1. Design your own workouts. iFitness contains a library of over 100 different exercises searchable by body part. It also gives you the option to add your own exercises that may not be in the database. Using these exercises you can build and store custom workout programs that precisely fit your exercise needs.

2. Exercise pictures and videos. For each pre-programmed exercise, iFitness provides a picture and video demonstrating the proper form. If you ever forget how to do an exercise correctly you can quickly pull up a picture/video to refer to.

3. Log your workouts. iFitness lets you log every single rep, set, and exercise electronically. It also gives you easy access to past exercise logs so that you can quickly view how much you lifted for a specific exercise in past workouts. 

Log your workouts

4. Track and analyze your progress. Aside from simply looking at past logs, iFitness has built in graphs so that you can visually see how much you've progressed over the course of a few workouts. It also offers an export to excel feature if you wish to analyze the logs further. 

5. Rest timer. iFitness has built in rest timers for 60 and 180 seconds directly on the exercise tab.


6. Library of routines. iFitness comes pre-programmed with 20 different exercise programs aimed at a variety of different goals. Programs include: ab defining, weight loss, muscle building, strength building, business travel, expert golf, baseball conditioning, and others.  


7. Weight and body measurements tracker. Track your weight, body fat %, and body part measurements electronically. It also allows you to upload photos for "before and after" use. 


8. BMI calculator. Easily enter your height, age and sex, and weight to get your BMI. 

Track your progress

In my experience iFitness is the most comprehensive and versatile workout app available. Get it on iTunes here for the low price of $1.99.