A woman balances on Swiss ball.
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Will mobile fitness apps elbow out gym trainers?
What you need to know:
- Many fitness trainers do not recommend the use of apps by their clients.
- Many Kenyans use their phones as exercise companions as new apps emerge every day.
Six options present themselves when you open this blue-themed mobile application. You must choose one to proceed. The options are related to the body part the user wants to exercise.
It has options for the abs, the arms, the butt, cardio, legs and the full body. We choose the abs for now. Can a man resist a chance to build a six-pack?
Choice made, the app presents a “play” button. Press it and it takes you straight to an exercise session. A woman’s voice tells you to start with a basic crunch. On the screen there are written instructions on what you should do, and before long a video plays where a man is doing the crunch as a timer counts to zero from 30 seconds.
The assumption is that the phone is kept at an elevated point so the user can watch and imitate the moves of the person in the app. Soon it directs you to a right oblique crunch, then later to another position. Each of the movements is given 30 seconds.
The app, called Daily Workouts Free, is one of the emerging innovations threatening to render human gym trainers obsolete.
Nairobi-based journalist Nyabonyi Mose is a big fan of Daily Workouts Free, an app downloaded more than 10 million times worldwide.
Video tutorials
“Its video tutorials ensure you’re doing everything right. It’s all I need right now for exercising,” she told the Sunday Nation.
There are many other Kenyans who have their phones as exercise companions thanks to apps that are emerging every day and which are getting more sophisticated with each new update.
From our conversations with Kenyan fitness enthusiasts, the apps that received the most mentions are Fitbit, Garmin, Strava — most of which are used by those who do runs.
Applications by mobile manufacturers like Huawei and Apple and from sport apparel companies like Nike and Adidas also rank high among Kenyan fitness fans.
But besides the apps that track running and exercise, there are those like Daily Workouts Free that show a person what he or she should do to have a fit body.
Most of them have room for regular input of a user’s details like weight and height — which are then used to determine how many calories a person needs to consume in a day and how much exercise is needed.
A woman woman exercising using Swiss ball in her living room.
Fitness trainers
A number of the apps also claim to have been designed by fitness trainers. For instance, one called “Home Workout – No Equipment” with 100 million installs to its name is said to have been made by a coach.
“All sport and gym workouts in this workout app are designed by a professional fitness coach. (It guides you) just like having a personal fitness coach in your pocket!” says a message on the app’s description.
While that may be the case, there are fitness trainers who do not recommend the use of such apps by their clients.
Mr Stephen Tiampati of the Way of Lyfe fitness centre is among them.
“I do not use any apps on my clients. And I do not encourage them to use any but it is in their volition to choose to comply or not. I instead draft training programmes based on the goals of a client,” he said.
As for Mr Mathew Mate, a personal trainer in Mombasa, such apps are not bad but users need a level of restraint.
“The apps seem cheap but they lack the human touch,” he said. “I advise that people should be very careful when opting for apps since not everything in a particular app will work for them.”
Fitness apps
He then gave an interesting analogy: “Training with a fitness app is like feeling sick and instead of going to a doctor, you opt to buy medicine from a chemist.”
For Ms Susan Wanjiku, a fitness trainer based in Kahawa Sukari, Nairobi, fitness apps have had the positive effect of encouraging more people to stay fit.
“But at the same time, injuries sustained during these training sessions have increased significantly,” she said.
There are dozens of fitness apps available to anyone in need, some that come for free; others that require paying anything between Sh200 and Sh2,200 on Google Play Store.
One of the free ones is called “Six Pack in 28 Days”. Roger that.
Among the fitness enthusiasts we interviewed, a number did not believe apps will replace physical trainers in the foreseeable future. One of the reasons they gave was the higher threshold of accountability when one is attached to a physical gym and a trainer.
Some cited the motivation that comes with seeing others in the gym with their well-chiselled muscles or on the way there. Others said the air of flirtation with the opposite sex in gyms is in itself a motivator that a person cannot get in an app.
