Equipment used: heart rate monitor, fitbit, my iphone, yoga mat and dip bar.
Media Used: The following iphone fitness games:
- FitQuest Lite (http://www.joghop.com/)
- Jump Rope Workout (http://underlogic.com)
- FitFu (http://www.fitfu.com/)
After my own warm-up, I played 10 minutes of FitQuest Lite. In FitQuest, the goal is to help “Baby Squirrel” find his way home using your body movements. Along the way, you need to to avoid certain danger in the form of eagles, snakes, alligators and foxes. Oh my! You basically run in place, jump or duck to keep him moving forward and help him evade his foes. I’ve played this game a few times for a few minutes here and there (usually during television commercials), but this is the first time that I played it for 13 minutes and wore my heart rate monitor. Verdict– the game is simple and fun and the graphics very cute and colorful. I was actually surprised that it is also a good aerobic workout. My heart rate reached similar beats per minute as when running or jumping rope. I guess I was so distracted by the cute characters that I failed to notice I was exercising. It is also a good way to work on coordination and reaction time. My only complaint is the game is too short right now. I hope in time they add more levels. This app is a very nice example of using the iphone‘s built in accelerometer!
Next was 10 minutes of “Jump Rope Workout”. This is the second time I tried this app. You hold your phone and basically “air jump rope”. It counts the number of times you turn your arm as jumps. I enjoy real life jump roping, so why use an app to air jump rope? Well, I noticed the first time I tried, I actually get a slightly better workout air jumping (according to my heart rate monitor). Well, I suppose my ability to jump rope is slightly hindered by my coordination! I don’t think this will replace my jump rope, but it is nice for short intervals when I don’t want to hassle with my jump rope. It tracks the number of jumps, estimates METS and calorie burn and can post it to Twitter when you are finished. The calorie burn was very much in line with the estimate made by both my heart rate monitor and fitbit for actual time spent jumping. Very nice!
Finally, I had another go with FitFu. This app is fun and shows a lot of promise. My one issue is finding the best placement for the phone for each exercise to get the correct rep count without breaking the flow of my workout. Today I did two random sets–where FitFu chooses random exercises and puts them in two 5 minute circuits. Today’s workout:
Squats: 50 (accurate count, held in front with right hand)
Dips: 50 (accurate count, worn in exercise top)
Crunches: 34 (accurate count, held with arms crossed in front)
Wall pushups: 25 (accurate count, work in exercise top)
Lunges: 25 each leg (25 actual, but was difficult to get accurate count, for some reason it was better on right side)
Plank with glute kick backs: 34 (slow to start, seemed to over count at end and under at first, ended up about right)
Bridges: 30 (accurate count, worn in waist band of exercise pants)
Jack knives: 17 (accurate count held in right hand)
Modified pull-ups: 13 (not sure, didn’t count at first, then over counted, seems about right at end)
Pushups: 11 (accurate, worn in exercise top)
Knee pushups: 31 (accurate, worn in exercise top)
Bicycle crunches: 21 (accurate held behind head)
Overall, these three apps provided a good clean sweaty fun and a great workout!
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