Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

If you look at the iPhone app section on iTunes, you will find hundreds of fitness and health applications for your phone. Finding the good ones, however, can be a little difficult. A couple of weeks ago, I downloaded the Nike Women Training Club App (iTunes Link) because it was free.

You have to register on their website, which is a bunch of advertisement for their shoes, but after that, you can use your app on your iPhone to exercise.

• Nike Women – Home

Just like the iPump workouts, you are given a series of exercises to do. The videos show you how to do them and then you can check off whether you did them or not.

The best part is that they give you points for completing workouts. I’m a sucker for points and I love to see myself on the leaderboard. I don’t have any friends yet, so I can’t see how I am competing against others, but I LOVE collecting points for a workout.

You don’t need an iPhone to participate in this program. You can log in online, start a workout, invite friends, see the videos and even print out the workout to take to the gym or just to do at home. You don’t need a lot of equipment to do the workouts either. It would probably help to have some Nike training shoes, so that’s probably why Nike has invested in this program.

This app isn’t perfect, of course, Their idea of beginner workouts has some exercises that are FAR too difficult for a beginner. I really wish they would let me choose to do an easier exercise for less points. On one of the exercises, I modified it to an easier exercise and said that I did the “real” exercise. On another, I was just completely incapable of doing the workout, so I had to skip it.

I’d also like to see how I compare to other people. I don’t have very many friends who are willing to play with every new iPhone app that comes along, so I felt like the workouts were just me competing against myself. I would have loved to see how other people were doing, even if I didn’t know them. What’s the point of earning points if I can’t kick somebody’s butt?

On the whole, I like the Nike Women Training Club app for the iPhone. It has a wide variety of exercises to do, but most importantly, it was free. A free workout program that you can carry in your pocket with you at all times, is a great thing to have!

This new Wii game called Sports Active looks pretty interesting. It’s compatible with the Wii Balance Board, but it also uses a cool leg band thing with the Wiimote nunchucks. In addition, there is a flex band included to increase the difficulty of some of the exercises. It doesn’t come out until May, so it will be a while before I can try it out.

Here is a video about it:

The workouts from iPump cost two bucks a piece and they are worth every penny. I worked out with iPump Fat Burn.

• iPump Fat Burn: iTunes Link

They have a FREE workout that you can download to your iPhone to see what they are like:

• iPump Free Workout: iTunes Link

They have many other workouts to choose from. You can see them all here:

• iPump on iTunes

Each exercise has a video showing how to perform the exercise correctly. To play the video, press the green circle with the letter P in it. I didn’t notice this the first time I used iPump and wrote a VERY different review of this application. After a few emails with Craig Schlossberg, the founder of PumpOne, he pointed out where the play button was. That dedication to customer service is what separates a good company from an excellent company.

The videos showing how the exercises work are only accessible when you have Internet access, but you don’t need the videos to complete the workout. After you’ve done each workout several times, you can probably do the whole thing just by looking at the exercise photos. I tried accessing iPump Fat Burn while my iPhone was in Airplane Mode and it allowed me to go through the whole workout just showing me the photos and instructions. When I tried to play a video, it just popped up a dialog box saying, “This movie could not be played,” and let me continue.

As with MANY exercise programs, their idea of a beginner workout is sorely mistaken. Take, for example this exercise: the push up.

Asking a 200 pound beginner to do a push up is like asking them to do a bench press with nearly 200 pound weights on the bar. What trainer in their right mind would have a beginner bench press almost 200 pounds? That is essentially what you’re asking a beginner to do when you have them do a push up. Sure, you don’t need “special equipment” to do this exercise, but a first-timer should be doing a modified push up or push ups against a wall in the beginning. Asking beginners to do push ups or bench dips is just an exercise in frustration or a recipe for injury. As a beginner, if you find any of the exercises to be too advanced for you, do your best, modify the exercises or skip them altogether until you are strong enough to master them.

Despite their miscalculations about what beginners can actually do, iPump Fat Burn is a great workout tool. You could take it with you to the gym, use it while traveling or just workout at home. You don’t need any exercise equipment to do the workout aside from a bench or stool that can support your full weight. More importantly, PumpOne is a company that is dedicated to customer service. If you are looking for something to change up your workout, then try one of the iPhone applications from iPump.

I’ve been attending the Interactive portion of the South By Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas. I attended a Core Conversation session called: Reduce MySpace Between Waist & Thighs So Wiki Live Longer. It was about using technology to be active. It got off to a rocky start, but ended strong. Here are my notes:

David Eckoff President, Revolutionary Ventures
Biray Alsac Health/Fitness Educator, FITTmaxx Institute

David Eckoff:

So many of us are plugged in all the time. Unfortunately, that comes at the expense of fitness and health. We’re not going to talk about theory.

Twitter: Follow DavidEckoff

Biray Alsac:

Biray is pronounced BEEReye.

She has worked on exergaming. It’s not just to do exercise, but the motivation is important as well.

How inactive are we as a country? She’s trying to scare us with all the CDC findings about obesity. HELLO! We came to this session for a REASON! I think we ALL agree that being fat is BAD!

Exercise 30 minutes a day. We all know this, yet 51% of the US does not move.

We tend to blame technology on that. Why aren’t we doing it?

David Eckoff: How can we use technology to its advantages?

Biray Alsac:

Stop calling it exercise. She brings up the OLD cliche of taking the stairs instead of the elevator.

Theory of Change: Precontemplation, Contemplation, Preparation, Action, Maintenance

Most technology focuses on precontemplation, contemplation and preparation stages.

She just stole the Weight Watchers speech from two weeks ago.

If you’re not an exerciser, you’re not around people who like to exercise.

Technologies that are good for exercising:

Gyminee.com You can track your workouts online. There are TONS of these kinds of websites and each one is different. Some are very social. Some are focused on athletic events like triathlons. With Gyminee: every time you complete a workout, it will cross link to Twitter. Then people can look at your workouts and see what you did. It spreads your conversation about exercise. It’s important to get people to start talking about being active.

MapMyRun will map your routes.

Fitizens Fitness professionals can hook up with the enthusiasts.

Exercise Friends Find a workout buddy

EC-Fit You put your workout schedule and it will call you or text you to remind you to workout. Or after your workout asking if you completed your workout. (Sorry, couldn’t find the link to this one and she didn’t have any visuals to give me a clue.)

Stickk.com You put out a contract on yourself and you put money down if you don’t do the goal. Not just for fitness.

WalkerTracker.com Works with your pedometer and posts a widget on your blog that counts your steps.

These all send a message that say “I’m doing something about being active.”

Twitter: Follow Befitt

Food Tracking:

Daily Plate

Utterli.com phone podcasting

Posting pictures of all your food and knowing everyone is going to see it, then you’re make different decisions about what you’re going to eat.

David Eckoff: If the tools make it convenient, then I’m more likely to do it.

Biray Alsac:

Fitness Podcasts: Nutrition Diva Podcast, Cardio Coach, Gymp3, Pod Fitness

Gadgets: Nike Plus, Heart Rate Monitor, Body Bugg

Twitter Apps: TWYE: Tweet What You Eat, Food Feed Twitter: @having a banana, Twit To Fit, Twittercise

David Eckoff: It’s good to be plugged in to people who are into this. It will be motivating. Surround yourself with people who are active and fit. Raise the standard of your peer group. You’ll become like your peer group.

Biray Alsac: Second Life There is a huge fitness community in Second Life. The have virtual classes where you can spin on your exercise bike on Second Life with their VOIP.

David Eckoff: We are in the first generation of exergaming. By the time the second and third gen of exergaming comes out, it will be so awesome.

Biray Alsac:

Wii Fit is a gateway game. It’s a stepping stone to REAL fitness.

100 Fabulous iPhone apps for health and fitness

David Eckoff:

Non Tech Things That I Do

Get Leverage: Associate pleasure with working out. Associate massive pain without working out. Ghost of the future. Imagine yourself at age 75 without muscle mass. Pleasure with working out. Put yourself through a mental exercise. Focus on what I’m grateful for. Flood yourself with good feelings while you’re working out. Trick your body to feeling good with the workout. It’s not intellectual. You need to actually FEEL it.

Schedule it: I schedule it in the morning because if I don’t do it in the morning, I won’t do it. Schedule it like a meeting. Protect that time.

Hydrostatic Body Composition Analysis: Body composition measurement. It cost about $40. I do it every six months.

Biray Alsac: Go to your local university and see if they have grad students who are willing to do this to you.

David Eckoff:

Self Identity: How do you see yourself? Think of yourself as an athlete. The most powerful force within the human body is to remain consistent with how we see ourselves.

Static Contraction Training: Who has enough time for anything? Least amount of time, most amount of results. Tony Robbins strength training.

Biray Alsac: We’re not doing enough. We’re going to pay for it in our health care. We’ll have to pay for it in the end. Think about the process of being active.

Eventually, she’ll post a complete list of online tools here:

• Be Fit With Biray | Tools

One of the founders of a new website called Nutritter, was at the session. He gave me two invites to the Alpha release. If you would like to try it out, contact me.

Every time I see an advertisement for a new kind of exercise machine, I just roll my eyes and wish they would just quit trying. This time, however, I got a little excited. I got an email about Real Ryder, which is an exercise bike that acts more like a real bicycle.

• Real Ryder-The Next Generation of Indoor Cycling

Introducing the RealRyder: It tilts, turns, and banks like an outdoor bike–works out the core, upper body, legs, cardio, and improves balance the way other indoor cycling bikes can’t.

Here is a video of it in action:

The biggest problem that I can see with the Real Ryder is that you can’t buy one. Just like so many other exercise products being advertised on the Internet, it’s not just a simple case of giving them your credit card number to get one. There is no price listed on their website and buying one isn’t as easy as filling out a form and waiting for FedEx. In fact, you have to contact a Sales & Marketing representative to even find out more information. Additionally, two of these “sales” people have the same last name. That smacks of nepotism to me, and I’ve found that it isn’t the best way to run a company.

The Real Ryder is a GREAT idea. I’d love to see it made into a video game controller so I could play motocross video games using this bike instead of buttons. I have so many good ideas that could work with Real Ryder, but if I can’t just give them my credit card and BUY one, I’m not going to believe they exist.

Update 07-22-12: It is nearly FOUR years later and the SHOP section of their website STILL says “Coming Soon.” I think I can safely assume that they’re never coming.

The media is quick to call us all lazy and unmotivated because many people don’t play with their Wii Fit anymore. Check out this article:

• The Truth About Wii Fit And Weight Loss – Video Game Feature – Yahoo! Video Games

Don’t blame Nintendo for people’s sloth, observers say. The company has marketed its new cash cow brilliantly, and it’s not responsible for whether consumers play the game or not. Nintendo declined to comment for this article, but Wii Fit creator Shigeru Miyamoto has previously gone on record and said that the game is less about people losing weight and more about broadening the videogame market. Still, it seems a little disingenuous for Nintendo to heavily market a fitness tool that’s sitting in more than a million American living rooms collecting dust.

I say the fact that I haven’t played Wii Fit for months is most CERTAINLY Nintendo’s fault. Wii Fit isn’t really the be-all fitness game that we all were hoping it would be. It’s fun, but my heart rate rarely gets high enough to hit the cardio level unless I do the running or hula hoop. There is only so much hula hoop and running in place that I can do before I get BORED!

Not to mention the inordinate amount of time I end up pressing the A button to get to the next exercise. For every 30 minute workout I’ve done, it has taken me 55 minutes of real time. That’s half the time working out and half the time standing on the Wii Balance Board watching a stupid animation or the virtual trainer tell me something that I don’t need to hear. If I spend the same 55 minutes on the treadmill, I burn twice as many calories.

And of course, the daily ridicule didn’t help. If you play every day, the Wii Fit calls you obese and if you don’t play, it bugs the other players wondering where you are!

Sure, I liked the yoga and the balance sections, but those were really games more than a good workout. I can’t wait for a SERIOUS company to create a real fitness game for the Wii Balance Board. I wish Konami would create something for that controller. After ten years of DDR, Konami knows how to make fitness games. Honestly, I’ve been playing DDR for over five years now and I still LOVE it. It’s my favorite active game.

What about you? Are you still playing with your Wii Fit? Is it because you’re lazy like Yahoo Games accuses us? Or have you been doing something else for exercise because the thought of doing any more Wii Fit stepping just makes you cringe with boredom?

Via: An email tip from Iportion.

Skateboarding has been around for over thirty years. Longboards are skateboards that are bigger and react more like a surfboard on the road. These are both great exercise and give you an awesome lower body workout. If you want to add an upper body workout, now there is Land Paddling.

Kahuna Creations has invented the Big Stick, which allows you to paddle along the street on your longboard. You can still move using your feet like a skateboard, but the Big Stick gives you the option of working your arms, back, abs and chest.

Here is a video showing it in motion:

For all of you out there who are financially challenged, you can probably create something like this on your own. As soon as the snow melts off the sidewalks and the streets, you can get out there and enjoy a whole new way to exercise!

If you like to log your runs outside, you might want to look into Trailrunner.

• TrailRunner – Mac OS X route planning and journaling for iPhone, Nike+ SportBand, Garmin ForeRunner GPS

It’s a software program that works with the iPhone, Nike+, and the Garmin ForeRunner to log and map your workouts. Since I use the Nike+ on all my runs, I used it to download all my runs for the last two and a half years. Of course, the Nike+ doesn’t have a GPS, so it can’t show any maps of those runs. If I download iTrail, on my iPhone, however, it will log my runs AND map them on the screen.

Personally, I like the desktop application that works with my iPhone. It’s like they took the online capabilities of RunKeeper and let ME control them on my desktop instead of making me log onto a website.

The biggest problem with both TrailRunner AND Runkeeper is the lack of interactivity. The killer feature of Nike+ is that I can compete with other people. There are thousands of people online at Nike’s website that I can run races against. When I’m trying to rack up the miles on my Nike+, I do it to kick somebody’s butt. That feature of the Nike+ makes all of these other applications pale in comparison.

I have been downloading Podrunner onto my iPod for a LONG time and I’m surprised that I have never talked about it here. You don’t have to subscribe using iTunes. You can download the latest podcast here:

• Podrunner: – Free Workout Music
• Podrunner on iTunes

Running is much easier when I have the right music. Podrunner always gives me music with a thumping bass that makes keeping active easy. I hate it when I have my iPod on shuffle and a slow, mellow song comes on, so a mix like Podrunner lets me exercise without having to worry about skipping songs. I just start it playing and I have an hour of run-friendly music to keep me company.

I’ve talked about treadmill desks before, but here is an awesome video that shows them in action:

There is a blog that talks about treadmill desks here:

• Treadmill Desk Blog

I have some entries about them here:

• Starling Fitness » A Whole Website About Treadputers!

• Starling Fitness » The Walking Desk Blog

• Starling Fitness » The Walkstation from Steelcase

A couple of years ago, I thought that I would encourage myself to be more active by having a standing desk, where I could type at my computer by standing up. The funny thing is, I avoided that desk and started working on my laptop on the couch instead. After months of this, Mike finally said, “Let’s face it, the standing desk is a failure.” He was right and I immediately reorganized my desk space to be more comfortable. Walking all day long might be healthy, but if I have any choice in the matter, I’m pretty sure I’d just avoid doing work at my treadmill desk and take the laptop to the kitchen table if I had to.

Video via: Coming Here Soon :: cowork utah

Treadmill Desk Blog via: The Treadmill Desk Blog