Apple Fitness + launches today, and if you have an Apple Watch Series 3 or newer, you can try it out. The service costs $ 9.99 / month (or $ 79.99 / year), but if you buy a watch (or upgrade yours)you get one month of free access.
The idea behind it Fitness + means that you can watch a workout video on a screen (on your phone, iPad or Apple TV) while the system is also recording heart rate and other statistics from your watch. You can also do workouts on your iPgrinding or iPad, without the watch.
How to start using Fitness +
Fitness + required iOS 14.3, that was just releasedand WatchOS 7.2, so before you start, check for updates on both your watch and your phone or iPad.
Open up the Fitness app on your phone, formerly called Activity. (It’s the “close your rings” app you used to get automatically when setting up your Apple Watch.) You will see a tab for “Fitness +” at the bottom that allows you to sign up for the service.
On an iPad you have to install the Fitness app from the app store.
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What can you do with Fitness +?
The opening screen gives you a variety of workout options including HIIT, yoga, strength training, core, treadmill, cycling, dance, and “mindful cooldown” training. New workouts will be added weekly, Apple says. The opening screen suggests some workouts to browse through (‘popular’, ‘for beginners,And “simple and fast” were on my screen). Once you have a favorite instructor, you can find other workouts from that person.
Each workout includes a description of the type of music that is provided: some examples are ‘happy anthems’, ‘hip hop / R & B’ and ‘chill vibes’.
Some workouts use equipment. Besides workouts on the treadmill and indoor cycling, there are also workouts that use a rowing machine or that ask you to grab some “light and heavy dumbbells.” There are many 10-, 20-, and 30 minute workouts. The longest I could find were a few 45-minute bike and yoga workouts, and the shortest was a 5-minute cooldown.
If you like a workout, you can click “Add” and it will appear at the bottom of the screen in a “My Workouts” section. I tried some of the 10 minute workouts.
How the workouts are
As soon as you tap “Let’s Go” on your screen, your watch will give you a home button. The watch interface is the same as if you are following another workout with the Activity (now Fitness) app on the watch.
The Absolute Beginner HIIT workout lived up to the first part of its name, a gentle series of 30 second exercises that I would happily recommend to anyone who is completely new to training. (Most of the “HIIT” workouts you will see online are not, in fact, high-intensity intervals, nor are they.)
I also did the first minutes of a Reggaeton dance workout, which was easy to follow and good, moderate intensity.
A “burn bar” shows how your effort compares to that of other people who have done the same workout. (If you agree, the app sends your effort level to the data against which future users will be compared.) At the end of the workout, you will see your elapsed time, calories burned, and heart rate, and you have the option to quit or do one of the app’s ‘conscious cooldowns’.
The biggest thing the app lacks is the ability to browse workouts by intensity level, although each workout has a “preview” that shows you a little bit of what you’re getting into. Overall, it seems like a pretty solid, albeit simple, training app.