Apple Fitness trainer reveals workout tips after man uses app's 30 min plan to shed almost 6 stone in less than a year
Jamie Harris, Assistant Technology and Science Editor
Published: Invalid Date,
AN Apple Fitness trainer has revealed top tips to help people get in shape this summer using the tech giant's 21p-a-day workout platform.
Apple Fitness+ added new programs for strength, pickleball, yoga, and breath meditation earlier this year as the service continues to expand.
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"Pickleball is one of the fastest growing sports in the world," Apple Fitness trainer Brian Cochrane told The Sun.
"So we've designed a conditioning program to help people improve their strength and conditioning for pickleball, which is going to be huge."
New workouts for more common activities such as rowing, treadmill running, strength and kickboxing are added regularly.
And workout time lengths range from as little as five minutes to 45 minutes.
Brain says that the variety is ideal as people get caught up in doing too much too soon when a balanced approach to fitness is best.
"For the longest time, fitness was about 'how much can I do, how much can I crush myself, I'm not going to think about recovery, I'm just going to go all out every day'," he explained.
"But we're actually realising that a balanced fitness regime is better overall.
"So even if you're only training 10, 20 minutes, two or three times a week, that's enough.
"It might not be enough forever, but it's enough for now.
"And building consistency now is going to build adherence longer term.
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"So you might find that after two months or three months, you want to build up to three or four workouts or go from a 10 minute to a 20 minute or a 30 minute."
The Scotland -native also revealed there are plenty of workouts on the app that require no equipment and can be done in smaller home spaces, which tend to be popular.
At £79.99 for the year, Apple Fitness+ works out to about 21p per day.
However, you can maximise the value further with the ability to share with five members of your family at no extra cost.
And some users are getting positive weight loss results too.
"One that I've had recently is a gentleman called Ricardo from Portugal," Brian reveals.
"He was 105 kilos and he's now 68. So he lost 37 kilos in less than a year just by doing HIIT workouts on Fitness+, which is insane.
"But we have so many stories like that every single day."
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Using this method as part, rather than all, of your daily steps could be a better approach for achieving your health goals. However, if you only have 30 minutes per day free, it still offers dramatically more benefits than not moving at all, and improved return on investment over a regular 30-minute walk. Another area where the Japanese walking method loses out to walking 10,000 steps per day is movement regularity. While the former involves a concentrated 30-minute dose of activity, the latter can be spread throughout the day, encouraging you to abandon your office chair and sofa more often. A 10-year study of 8,000 people, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, found that those replaced 30 minutes of daily sitting with light activity had a 17 per cent lower risk of dying in that period. This even applied if they accrued these 30 minutes across short intervals throughout the day – hence why your smartwatch is constantly sending you reminders to stand up and move. 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For those looking for a minimum effective dose: any movement will do you a lot of good, particularly if your starting point is a sedentary lifestyle. But if you can fit one or two quick full-body strength training sessions, regular aerobic activity (like walking) and an occasional dash of more intense exercise into each week, it will stand you in very good stead. Walking is among the most accessible forms of exercise there is, lowering the barrier to entry for exercise for billions of people, which is why I'm always keen to promote it. However, in the modern world, even finding time for a quick walk can be tricky for particularly busy individuals. The Japanese walking method provides a time-savvy way to enjoy many of the benefits of a greater volume of daily walking. Sure, you could enjoy higher-intensity exercise in any number of other forms, from cycling to a HIIT workout, but walking remains the most efficient – you don't even need a change of clothes. So should you try it? Yes, especially if you're short on time and looking for a way to squeeze health-boosting movement into your day. And should you stick with it? This depends. If you enjoy this framework, or find it's something you can stick to with a good degree of regularity, that's the ticket to a sustainable movement habit and the many health benefits that come from it. If not, look for an alternative form of moderate- to high-intensity exercise that you find fun, and commit to this instead – consistency is the key to long-term results.
