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Updown Fitness app review: Your personal workout trainer for home, work, or the gym

Reviews

Introduction

We all have our own personal fitness goals and that’s why it’s hard to find a fitness training app that works for all people, but there is one app I’ve recently come across that seems to do just that. Updown Fitness is one of the most comprehensive fitness training solutions I’ve ever come across in the App Store. It’s informative, fully customizable, and highly motivating. It doesn’t matter whether your fitness goals are to lose weight, tone up a little bit, or train for that next big marathon – this app is right for anybody. Best of all, Updown Fitness is a free app. However, you can purchase a plus membership which gives you access to extra rewards from their partners such as Adidas. It’s compatible with the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

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Updown Fitness - Gym & Home Personal Workout Coach

Free

Customized Workouts

Perhaps the biggest problem most people face when starting a new workout routine is trying to stay motivated. The great thing about this app is that it allows you to customize your workout based on how you’re feeling on any given day. You simply tap on a workout category and the app will generate a workout based on your selection. There are five different workout categories to choose from including: cardio, strength, cross, core, and stretch. You can even customize it based on how intense of a workout you want and how long you plan on working out for. If you prefer to create a custom workout you can choose from over 1500 exercises and design your own.

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The cofounder of Updown Fitness, Chris Freise, a Notre Dame graduate, felt existing apps weren’t motivating people enough and that’s why he developed this app which is far more customizable than any other app in the fitness category today. The company believes that when people have their own personal trainer in their pocket that’s willing to provide them with workouts tailored to their own goals they’re more likely to succeed. For all of the tools that this app provides you it’s surprisingly small taking up only 25.2 MB of the space on your iOS device.

Fantastic Workout Features

As you progress through your workout, the app lets you know how long you have left in each exercise, how long you should rest for, and when it’s time to start the next exercise – all with simple voice cues that keep you moving. One of the biggest problems I ran into in the past when working out was trying to decide how long my rest periods should last and keeping on track so that I wasn’t spending all day at the gym. With these simple voice cues you can avoid that type of problem as the app keeps you moving along at a steady pace.

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One of my favorite features in this app is a little calorie updater that sits in the top left corner of every exercise as you work through it. As you complete your reps the calorie updater is continuously updated to indicate how many calories you’ve burned. It’s another great little motivating tool that adds to the overall dynamic of the app.

As we’ve already mentioned there are over 1500 different exercises available in this app and chances are you won’t be familiar with all of them. That’s not a problem though as they also include little mini videos with each one that demonstrate the proper form for that particular exercise. It eliminates a lot of the frustration that you might otherwise experience in trying to figure each exercise out and it will also help you avoid injury by performing the exercise properly.

Updown Fitness - Gym & Home Personal Workout Coach

Free

Another Set of Iron Pumpin' Features

One of the greatest motivators for any workout is being able to track your history and compare how you’re doing this week against how you did last. This app also has a great stats and history category that you can access by tapping on the menu icon in the top left corner that allows you to keep track of how you’re doing from week to week. It gives you a quick breakdown of the calories burned and the time spent exercising each day as well. The only thing it’s really missing is the ability to track your weight loss goals directly as there’s nowhere to enter your weight or your height.

When Friese and his partners decided to create this app they recognized that companies weren’t doing enough to encourage healthy lifestyles amongst their employees. They saw an opportunity here to convince corporate entities to try their app out and use it to create a healthier workplace. Because of that mindset they also included the ability to share goals and progress with teammates in the workplace, or friends outside the workplace as well. The social nature of the app helps to give it another dynamic that will motivate and keep pushing you toward your workout goals.

There are times when you want to do a workout that’s totally unrelated to the workouts offered by this app. Perhaps, you simply want to jump on the elliptical machine for half an hour, or go for a jog around the park. If that’s the case you can simply log this exercise and the time it took you to complete your workout manually within the app. This allows you to keep track of all your exercise in one place even when you’re not using the suggested workouts provided by the app.

You can easily edit previous workouts, to add an exercise, duplicate an exercise or even swap with a similar exercise. This makes it easy to add workouts and/or exercises that aren't included in already created workouts. The customization and ease of use, makes this app awesome in my opinion. 

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Choose from five different workout categories or create your own custom workout
  • Includes voice cues to help move your workout along
  • Provides you with a calorie updater to let you know how many calories you’ve burnt
  • Offers video examples of each exercise
  • Allows you to swap individual exercise
  • Keep track of your workout stats
  • You can share your workout progress with friends and coworkers
  • When you perform exercises not included in the app you can log them manually

Cons

  • To access membership rewards you have to sign up for a paid monthly membership
  • Does not include weight tracking

Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere

There’s no doubt in my mind that this is the best exercise app currently available for download from the App Store. It’s a comprehensive fitness trainer that allows you to tailor your workout to your needs based on several different categories and it also allows you to share your progress with friends. I was really impressed with the sample videos for each exercise and with the ability to customize workouts anyway you want. If you’re ready to get in shape then you should head on over to the App Store and download this app to help you along your way.

Updown Fitness - Gym & Home Personal Workout Coach

Free
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Allan Calder

Allan is a freelance writer who loves scouring the App Store for exciting, intriguing and unique apps.