Dear readers,
I’ve got my fitness goal started, and I hope that there will be exercise every single day for the next 365 days in the year. The reason? Well, I’ve been on and off meds for more than twelve years, and don’t like the side effects, plus I heard a friend got gastric bypass surgery, but that’s too risky. I don’t want to take risks and lose weight that way because it would mean cutting my stomach up. Ugh.
What I’m here to write about is my first training with Jessica, one of the yoga instructors. Well, all the trainers do different stuff in Apple Fitness Plus, and let me just say the app is fully usable with voiceover. It’s powered by your apple watch and integrates tightly with workout app and the exercise rings. So how to close your rings? First, don’t forget that you can go on DND on whatever device you’re using, I learned that the hard way, especially on iPad or iPhone. Or you can use the Apple TV to do workouts on, and then you choose the workout you want, then make sure your watch is bluetoothed and unlocked, then press play on the watch. Then, away you go. I want to talk about a yoga thing I did with trainer Jessica. She’s pretty amazing, and I brought back my inner yogi. Let’s talk about this.
First, Jessica is a fast paced but easy flow trainer to work with. I haven’t done others yet, but will do soon. Second, yoga trainers generally describe how to do the workouts in detail, but you have to have some working knowledge of yoga in order to do this.
I think I could be a yogi at heart, and I enjoy practicing yoga because you don’t have to worry about the no pain no gain thing, and I feel a bit more flexible now than I did before. Core training is very cool, too. But let’s face it, I still have to do the workouts correctly. Jessica always recommends that you go at your pace, and if you don’t understand a move, you’ll understand it later on in some way. Jessica focused on spinal and low back twists and such, which is great for women. I’m talking to you, prenatal and postnatal women at most. However, I think a lot of other people could benefit from lower back and spinal twisting and a bit of warrior pose. While I got in to postures, I had to remind myself that this wasn’t Hot Yoga anymore, and I dare not use the name of that guy who invented it. He was a weirdo, so they changed his studios to Hot Yoga. India is the birthplace of yoga, but a lot of people love it, and it works a lot. Jessica even understood the resting poses like downward dog and such, things I need to get back into at all. I felt at home with her, so far. So far so good, but there are improvements I would make.
One, I think the trainer and all trainers, according to some Apple Vis subscribers to the forums, might want to consider describing and doing textual word pictures for the totally blind yogis like myself, but if you’re doing core or HIT (high intensity training), you should know how to do all the moves, and getting a good description of each move in a small attached screen is a great idea. Also, you can share the playlists each trainer does in Apple Music. I’m going to try that, and there are lots of treadmill and cycling training things, but bear with me. I don’t have a bicycle or exercise spin bike. Why? Because what else? No room. My apartment is a teeny tiny box, and we can’t put too much other crap in here.
So what is my rating for Apple Fitness Plus? I’d say 4 out of 5 stars because of the need for descriptions of movements, not in the workout tracks themselves, but anywhere and any sort of screen attached would work fine. However, this is a great way for all of us, including the deaf and blind, to get our fitness goals met. Please note that though a totally blind person can do fitness at all, we’re going to have to bear with the trainers. What I wish the thing would have done was to show my heart rate at other times too, but it was cool that voiceover read my heart rate metrics, all as shown on my watch. Another thing, my watch announced that my exercise ring was closed. Awesome, right?
Today is an all three rings got closed kind of day, but let’s be real. I want to make sure that my body loses that weight and gets stronger every day. Chicago would be absolutely proud to hear me sing that song, stronger Every Day. That’s my theme song, so my dad would say.
Anyway, tune in for more fitness journeys with me, the denver queen, here in the blog. There will be some good stuff happening.
Thank you for reading this and have a wonderful happy new year.
Beth