Fitness+ in IOS 17 Disappoints Me

 

Fitness+ in IOS 17 Disappoints Me

No kewpie doll for Apple



I feel disappointed.

When I first got Fitness+ through my Premier Apple One subscription, I tried it out for a bit, but soon found it was too much for my stiff scaffolding and muscles. The trainers were too fit, I’m too old, I just hurt myself and couldn’t keep up. I tried, and often drove my heart rate into the mid 180’s, which might not be a good idea for someone in their mid seventies.

So I quit for a bit, but then they added Workouts for Older Adults, so I tried that. It was better, though I’m just not that flexible, and then those workouts either disappeared or at least I couldn’t find them. I went back to my own walking, pushups, pullups, and whatever else I wanted to do at home. That does keep me fit, but I wished Apple would do more with Fitness+

IOS 17

Apple did do some things in *OS 17, so I decided to take a fresh look. There are some improvements, but my internal grumpy old man (GOM from here on) is thumping his cane and muttering under his breath about what they didn’t do.

Workouts for Older Adults

I don’t know how often they plan to update these, but what I tried was good. As usual, they have three trainers, with the one trainer doing the least difficult version of the workout, one doing a harder version, and one right in the middle.

And right there is my first gripe. You can’t make three different versions and let us switch to focus on the trainer that is giving the workout that we want? I’m sure your clever UI folks could make it easy for us to change mid stream as particular moves are too hard or too easy for us.

The “Normal” workouts

Having found the Older Adult Workouts too easy (except for flexibility), I tackled the regular, normal, not-older-adult versions again and found that my home exercise has increased my strength and endurance. I was able to complete some strength and core workouts without a lot of sweat and kept my heart rate under 150. I cannot do the flexibility moves well, but I never could, and after many years of trying, I accept that I never will.

Custom Workouts

This made my inner GOM throw his cane at the TV.

You create a custom plan by choosing the days of the week you will be exercising, the length of the workout, the type — Core, Strength, etc. — and the trainers you prefer.

If Apple had the trainer focused versions that I grumbled about above, that would make it a lot more custom, wouldn’t it?

Listen carefully. You can create this plan on your iPhone or iPad, though your TV will tell you that you need your phone.

You can do these custom workouts on your iPhone, iPad or Apple TV, but there is no creation on TV. You can do the workout they chose for today or skip to another week on Apple TV, though I don’t see that ability on iPad or iPhone.

Sometimes it seems like you don’t even try to make things consistent across platforms, Apple.

Now yes, this is beta, so maybe it will change. I hope so. But isn’t the whole thing a little flawed? People I know like to work certain muscle groups on certain days. The only true focuses you can find here are Core, Yoga and Dance. There’s no choice for Arms or Legs. What you get from the choices you make is a bit of a crap shoot. You can find workouts that focus on upper body, lower body, core, or aerobic, but you can’t say that those are the workouts you want for specific days.

Choices for Custom Workouts

My GOM says if you think that’s Custom, you are full of it. He’d like to see more focused workouts. Arms, Chest, Core, Legs at least, and be able to say that Monday is Arms, Wednesday is Legs, and so on.

But what does he know? Maybe it’s just right for you.

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