Here’s Why I’m Liking… The Fitbod App

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Hey, everyone – I thought it would be fun to start a new series called “Here’s Why I’m Liking…” I’m guessing that the title of this one should be a pretty good giveaway that I’m talking about the Fitbod app today.

I keep running into awesome products, services, apps, and just other fun stuff that I think you would enjoy as well. This series will showcase those cool things.

Sometimes there are just some great products and services out there that can make your life easier except you don’t know they exist.

Some will be free and some won’t, but if I’m loving something that can improve your life, I’ll give you a heads up on it regardless.

I don’t plan on running this series on a set schedule. I’ll just put something out there when I realize that I’ve stumbled onto something worth sharing.

So with that, let’s talk about the Fitbod App!

My uphill battle with fitness

If you’re a regular reader, you know that fitness and I aren’t best friends. Regardless, we just keep trying to work on our relationship…

• The Lazy Man’s Guide to Fitness
• Early Retirement = Healthier Lifestyle
• Would You REALLY Work Out Once You’re Retired?
• Only You Can Change Your Life… Seriously!
• My Home Workout during the Lockdown in Panama

There are two conflicting problems I have when it comes to exercise:

1. I don’t know enough about the different exercises available and which ones I should be doing.
2. I’m too cheap to hire a personal trainer.

Obviously, that presents a sort of conundrum. I’ve managed to start getting in better shape overall and build some muscle, but I was just doing some basic exercises that I thought would be good. And of course, I was also walking and hiking quite a bit here in Panama (particularly before the quarantine was in place).

Although that’s helped me somewhat, it’s just not a good solution overall.

Hello, Fitbod app!

A friend of mine here in Panama was telling me how helpful the Fitbod app was for her in working out. I was intrigued so dug into it.

The app uses artificial intelligence to help guide you along in your fitness journey. The workouts are personalized to you and adapt based on your historical workouts. It also changes things up so you’re not exercising the same muscle groups all the time.

The more I learned about it, the more excited I became. A big highlight for me was that you could also tell it what pieces of gym equipment you have. Then it’ll only utilize that equipment when it builds your workouts.

This really is what I need! Sign me up!

Wait, what? It’s only available for iPhone? What kind of a crock of crap is this?!

Ugh. Well, they can’t be the only game in town. So I started researching and trying out different apps that seemed somewhat similar.

I wasn’t impressed. They didn’t have some of the features that would make it worth it for me. I wanted the Fitbod app.

That’s when I went back to some stuff I dug up on Fitbod and found that they were working on an Android version. I signed up to be a beta tester earlier this year but never got my invite.

It didn’t matter too much since Panama had the country in lockdown… I had to just keep doing some home exercises here.

But then one day in mid-May, I did some more digging and found out how to get my hands on the early access version. I immediately downloaded it and created an account.

Setting it up and different options

Once I installed the Fitbod app and logged in, I entered my height, weight, gender, and age. I also had the option of setting my weightlifting experience (Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced).

You’re able to set the workout duration you want (I have mine set to 1 hour). And you can set your fitness goal, which is important as to whether you’ll get higher reps counts, higher weights, etc.

You also have the option to choose any equipment you have at your disposal. Lest you think that you’re limited as to what you can choose, see that black bar along the left of this paragraph? Click on it. That’s actually a shrunken-down image of the list of equipment choices showing in the Fitbod app on my phone.

Incredible, right?

The gym in our development is still closed here due to the pandemic so I’m still working out at home. I don’t have any gym equipment here except for a set of resistance bands.

Unfortunately, in that huge list of available equipment in the Fitbod app, resistance bands aren’t listed. I decided to select dumbbells instead and adjust as needed.

That’s worked well in that a lot of the exercises in my presented workouts are now using the dumbbells. I figure that’s going to be better than bodyweight-only exercises. As I’ve been using it, I just need to hit up YouTube to see how to do some of the dumbbell exercises with the bands instead. Minor detail, but I’m now rockin’ and rollin’ just fine.

Finally, if you’re more experienced, there are other settings you can tweak. There’s a bunch of stuff I didn’t toy with like the muscle groups you want to target, the muscle recovery percentage, and training splits.

That’s really it folks. You’ll have it set up and ready to go in about 10 minutes… and that’s if you sit there exploring everything like I did!

Using the Fitbod app

Easy-peasy. On the workout tab, you’ll see what your next workout routine is going to be…

If there’s an exercise you don’t like, you can click on it and then delete it. Or better yet, you can also see other options to change it out with. I found this handy since I didn’t like the Superman exercise it was recommending (bad for my back). Instead, I was easily able to see choices that were most closely related (with your available equipment). I ended up choosing Single-Leg Romanian Deadlifts instead.

You can also easily add other exercises to each workout as well. I was doing that for the first week but then I decided to just let the Fitbod app do its magic instead of me messing with it.

Adjusting the reps, sets, and weight amounts is an easy task as well.

Otherwise, you just click on “Start Workout” and you’re off and running. Once you press that button, the screen stays on by default. This is convenient so that you can just have your phone next to you and check things off as you go without having to turn on or unlock your phone all the time.

You then press on one of the exercises in your presented workout and get to work.

Here’s a feature I like. If you don’t know how to do an exercise, click on the “i” in the top right corner. You’ll get information on how to do it properly – including an animation of someone doing the exercise. That’s huge for someone like me who doesn’t know much of this stuff!

As you finish a set, you click “Log Set” to record it. Once you finished all the sets, you repeat the process for the next exercise. Easy at that.

When you’re done, you click on “Finish Workout”, log the workout, and call it a day. That’s it. You can see your past workouts at any time in the Fitbod app by clicking on the “Log” tab.

I mean, that’s all there is to it on your end. You do your heavy lifting and let the app do its own heavy lifting. It’ll figure out your next workout and adjust the exercises, weights, sets, and reps for you. That’s the stuff I’m not good at so that’s valuable to me.

Here’s how much I like it…

I paid for a year subscription.

That’s right, my cheap @#$ actually shelled out money to be able to continue using the Fitbod app… and happily at that! Don’t get me wrong, I still dug around and found a coupon code, but I then paid my $44.99 for the year.

I’ve now used the app for workouts a total of 15 times. I’ve already learned a ton of new exercises and I know it’s doing well because I’ve been sore as all get out on several occasions. The Fitbod app is helping me work out muscles in my legs, arms, and shoulders that I apparently wasn’t doing a good job with previously.

Part of the struggle for me in working out is that I’m a little intimidated. Working out isn’t something I’ve been doing all my life like a lot of people have. But the Fitbod app takes all of that out of my hands and handles it. I don’t have to think about anything – I just do what it tells me to do.

I also love that I can choose the equipment for it to draw from. If I’m traveling like I’m planning to do soon and don’t have access to any equipment, I hit one toggle on the app and it’ll change my workout to bodyweight-only exercises.

When our gym opens back up here and I feel comfortable I’m not going to die of the “VID” from going there, I can check off all that equipment into the app in just a few minutes. That’ll give me so many more options and let the app figure out how to best utilize it.

Keep in mind…

Be aware that the different platforms don’t sync up as of yet. In other words, if you use an Android phone at the gym and want to use your iPad at home while working out, you’re not going to see the same information on both devices.

In fact, that was part of my issue. I wanted to use the coupon code but could only do that on the website – not from the Android app. I ended up having to go through technical support. They had me create a separate account on the web with the same email address I was using on the app. I then subscribed to the service for the year with my discount. Then I gave the info to tech support and they linked the two accounts.

Weird, but it worked. I logged out of the Fitbod app on my phone, logged back in, and I was now able to fully use the app again. It sounds like it’s in the works to tie this all together, but there’s no ETA on it that I know of as of right now.

Regardless, a little leg work and $45 out of pocket and I’m now good to go for the year!

You can check out Fitbod at https://fitbod.me/.

If you’re in a similar boat as I was where you don’t want to hire a trainer but need some help on working out, the Fitbod app may be just what you’re after.

And that’s what I’m liking right now!

Thanks for reading!!

— Jim