Best Apple Watch apps for Gym, Lifting, Crossfit, Etc By Techy Agent

Hey guys, what's up, my name is Eric, and I'm the techie agent, and today we're going to talk about the best Apple Watch, applications that you can use for strength, training, boot, camp, CrossFit and gym based exercise. Stick with me through the intro now before we get into this quick review of these applications. I just want to take a moment to highlight the fact that I've already done a complete review of the new Apple Watch Series for and put it through a wide variety of different exercises. So if you would like to check out that full review, I'm going to go ahead and put a link on screen now, okay, so let's go ahead and dive right in and let's talk about the applications that I use for strength, training and gym based exercises. Now there are a lot of applications available on the app market, but I'm just going to highlight three that I use or would suggest- and you know if there are others- that you have in mind feel free to put those in the description below, because you know there's a lot of applications out there that I haven't had exposure to that. You guys have and so it'd be helpful to pass along that information, so everybody can see it.

The other thing that I want to mention is that the Apple Watch does have a built-in optical heart rate sensor on the back of it, and typically these kinds of heart rate sensors. Don't do well for gym, based strength, training, CrossFit, boot camp style exercises. There's a long explanation for that, but take my word for it now, except the Apple Watch, series for I have not really had a lot of success with built-in optical heart rate sensors, but fortunately the Apple Watch does allow you to pair with external sensors. However, if you do want to use the built-in optical heart rate sensor on your Apple Watch Series for Apple Watch Series 3 or what have you I would highly suggest that you go with the sport loop band and the reason why I would suggest that is because the sport loop band and my testing has been a fantastic band that really secures the watch to your wrist and really gives you a perfectly customized snug fit and allows that sensor to work properly. So, if you'd prefer not to use a chest, strap or external heart rate sensor, you can use one of these Velcro loop bands, and I'll put a link in the description below of this video, where you can pick these up for from Amazon for a great price, you can get them for like $5, a piece.

Okay. So without any further ado, let's go ahead and talk about the three applications that I recommend and use. The first one is the activity application. This is just the generic built-in Apple Watch application for recording all activities. Secondly, I like the under armor record application and then lastly I really like the GEM colic application.

Now each of these applications are very different. They each have their own respective strengths and weaknesses, so I'll break those down for you, as I describe and kind of go through how each app functions and what they offer. So, first, let's just go ahead and talk about the activities' application. This is built-in with your iPhone and Apple Watch. So this is the native application.

All you got to do is just open up the application on your watch, scroll down to the open goal, go ahead and select that and that's it for the duration of your workout. It will get your heart rate data, and it will get your calorie information and that's really the only information that it's going to collect, but you'll get a good idea of what your heart rate is during your actual exercise, as well as a rough estimate of your calories and if that's really what you're, after just to kind of keep track of your calories. This is the perfect one-stop shop. It's built-in it works every time, syncs automatically, then with your phone when you're done working out, you just end the workout by swiping right and then ending your workout and that's it. You'll have access then, to all that information on your activities, application on the iPhone, and it's really that simple, it's just a very simple application that I enjoy using if I'm, just trying to capture my heart rate, information and calorie information from a gym based exercise.

So this is a fantastic application for those of you who are just looking for the simplest approach to tracking your calories and your heart rate information, while you're doing a gym based exercise. Now again, the heart rate data is going to be contingent upon which version of the watch the Apple Watch you're using and which watch strap you're using, but also keep in mind that the Apple Watch does pair with external heart rate, sensors, and all of that information is relayed to the application in real time. So you can see your heart rate data in real time. You can see your cumulative calories as you're working out. You can see the time elapsed.

So it's a very helpful application, just a simple application: that's great to use when you're working out in the gym and I would actually highly recommend it. The next application is probably my favorite of the bunch, and that is the Under Armour record application. Now this application is just about as simple as the built-in Apple Watch application, but it's got a few tricks up its sleeve. Now, once you go ahead and boot up, the application you'll be able to use the crown to scroll through what kind of exercises or exercise you're doing now. The great thing about this is that, if you're doing a gym, base or strength training exercise, you can differentiate between things like your upper body, your lower body or even your core and abs.

So that way we'll go ahead and keep a log, and if you forget what you did a couple of days ago, you can go back and review in the application and see what you did. So that way, you don't accidentally repeat a muscle group, so that's kind of a neat little automatic logging feature that it does after you have begun. Your workout you'll be greeted with a main workout dashboard, which will give you your current heart rate, your average heart rate and your peak heart rate, all of that being updated in real time. He'll also be given to proprietary scores, which I really like the first one, is an intensity score and then the other one is a willpower score that gives you a zero to ten score and then the willpower is based on a percentage up to a hundred percent. My understanding is that the intensity score is mostly looking at your heart rate.

So if you're doing a high-intensity interval, training, and you're having high spikes and low dips in your heart rate, that's going to really ramp up the intensity, and so it's going to give you a higher intensity score when you're doing things like high-intensity interval. Training now willpower, on the other hand, is looking at a wide variety of metrics that include your age. Your weight, your sex. It's also going to look at your heart rate data. It's also going to look at the duration of your workout.

Furthermore, it's really looking at every metric that it's collecting and then giving you a willpower score based on it based on your current exercise, so your score could be anywhere from zero, which means you basically just sat there and did nothing all the way up to ten, which really means you push yourself hard. Your heart rate was high. Maybe you exercised for a really long time, and so the willpower is gonna, be really, really high and based on those metrics, you can begin to kind of calibrate and see if you're, pushing yourself well in the gym, or you'll, be able to swipe left. In order to see your total workout duration and calories you'll be able to swipe right in order to see a pause screen and a finish button, and then you can swipe up to go ahead and take a look at your heart rate zone distribution. So that's automatically set unless you tell the app otherwise, but it's basically going to look at the different heart rate zones, and you can look at that in real time, while you're working out as well when you're all done with your workout you'll, be greeted with a workout summary which will give you kind of just an overview of all the different metrics that it collected during that workout.

And then, when you save the workout, it will go ahead and send all of that data automatically to the Under Armor application on your phone. So again, this is a simple application to use you just basically turn it on. Do your workout and then finish at the end, and it provides you with all of that data automatically, and I really like this application. This is by far my favorite application for doing gym, based and strength training based exercises. Now all the applications up to this point are free to download and use the next one on the list is gym, colic, and technically it is free to download and use, but there are some severe limitations on what it can track.

Unless you go ahead and pay with a subscription model that they have, you can do a monthly subscription model which I think at the time of this, video is about four dollars a month, or you can do a yearly model which I think comes out to $36 a year, and so this is an application that, yes, it's going to cost you $36 a year or $4 a month, but it might be an application that you want to use because it is very different from the two previous applications that we've discussed now. This application will track basic metrics like your heart rate and calories, while you're working out, but this has a couple of features that make it kind of unique compared to any other application that I've seen. This is kind of like having a digital notebook on your wrist, so you can keep track and log each specific exercise. How many reps you did during a set and the specific weight that you used. So it's you know basically doing away with a notebook and pencil, and now you can go ahead and log everything pretty easily on your wrist.

This also allows you to upload specific workouts, either ones that you built yourself or ones that you can download and that way, if you're a beginner, and you don't really know what to do, you can go ahead and download those workouts to the watch and just follow the on-screen prompts, and you know basically just do what it tells you to do. And if you have any question about what a workout is, you can even write on the watch, go ahead and see a little computer-generated graphic that will show you what the form and what the workout should look like or what the routine should look like. And then you can also access a little description, and it will tell you a little about that exercise and what it's doing the other thing that's great about this application is that it keeps track automatically of what muscle groups you're working out based on the exercises that you're doing, so that's a great way to kind of keep track of what muscle groups you're hitting and also what muscle groups you might be missing inadvertently. Now that we've gone over the strengths of each of these applications and what they entail, let's go ahead and talk about some weaknesses inherent on all of these applications, the first one being the Apple Watch activities application in a nutshell, it's just very simple, and it doesn't look great on the phone. So, yes, it's collecting your calorie information and that's accurate, and it's collecting your heart rate information and that's accurate, but that's all you're getting and the heart rate graphs.

Don't look very impressive compared to other applications that are on the market. You're. Getting these weird dots instead of you know lines, and it just doesn't look very nice. It doesn't look very pretty. It works, and it's functional, and it's simple, but it just doesn't look very nice, and you don't get very much now.

The Under Armour application is great, and it's hard for me to pick it apart, because it is my favorite. But if it's lacking one thing that the Apple Watch activities application has, it would be the built-in controls for your phones, music or your watches, music streaming. So I like to listen to music either streaming from my phone or my Apple Watch, while I work out streaming to Bluetooth headphones and from within the Apple Watch activities. Application I can control the volume and skip through different tracks, while I'm working out without having to leave the activities' application it's built in, but on the Under Armor record application. You don't have that luxury, so you have to pull out your phone to go ahead and skip through tracks or actually exit the application on your watch and go find the music player and control it by doing that and kind of going back and forth between the applications.

So I wish that it had some sort of built-in controls for native music, but it doesn't have that at this time the Jimmy colic application is probably going to be my least favorite of the bunch, and that's because one it is a paid application, so I just hate suggesting paid applications and even more than that, it's a subscription application. So it's going to keep nickel and dining you every month, as opposed to just doing a once and done payment. So I really don't like that about that application. The other thing that I don't like is then it's not completely user-friendly I mean once you get the hang of the application. You can work around.

You know all the interface, but there is a learning curve. It's a little advanced, and so you know I think it's geared towards those who are new in the gym and want some guidance with the built-in workouts and graphics that it offers. The problem is, is that it's a fairly advanced application, and it's a little tedious doing the automatic digital note-taking that it does, and that's really, where still a note paper and pen in my opinion, is still a little easier than using the gym colic application. But for those of you that really do want a digital log of your workout. This really is the best application on the market.

You'll just have to put up with a little of a clunky user interface and a learning curve to use the application itself. So that's it I've only highlighted three applications, because otherwise this would be a longer video than it already is, but make sure you leave comments down below and let me know if you agree with my assessment or, if there are other applications that you guys use for gym, based exercises that you would recommend to everyone who follows here on this channel: hey guys thanks for watching my name is Eric, and I'm the techie agent we'll catch you next time.

Source : Techy Agent