Now There Is a Fitness App for People With Short Attention Span
I love to have some direction in my life, but signing up for a 12 week running program or a full week with a specific meal plan is kind of a big commitment. Adidas’s new All Day fitness app (free for iOS and Android ) takes a different approach: It’s full of short, self-contained adventures to choose from.
Get the strength and high-intensity interval training (HIIT) plan from Stephen Chuck. In fact, these are just two workouts: one for strength, the other for HIIT. The app helps you set up reminders – three times a week for two weeks, as it suggests – and when the time comes, you choose one of the workouts and do it. That’s all.
Discoveries, as the app calls them, aren’t just exercises. For example, there are collections of recipes. Let’s say you want to try the discovery of “H2O Know,” which includes seven infused water recipes. You choose how much you want to do – let’s say three – and the app marks the opening as complete as soon as you do that much. (Best of the set: Replenish, which includes half a chopped orange, half a chopped lemon, one tablespoon of honey, and half a teaspoon of sea salt. I doubt it makes me healthier, but it tastes great.)
There’s also the Sleep Sounds opening with seven hours of ambient music tracks that are really great for getting you to sleep. I also loved Yoga for Running, which is a series of five-minute activities you can do before heading out for a run. If that’s not your speed, try Yoga Before Sleep.
I have a few complaints, but only a few. You can’t see what’s in the opening without downloading it and setting reminders, although it’s easy enough to do, take a look, and then uninstall. Exercise videos also lack music and play poorly with third-party music apps; During my HIIT workout, I played some flashback tunes, but Spotify would stop every time the timer rang. So I had to work in silence.
The best thing about the app, however, is its casual approach. Did you miss a week without completing three sessions? All Day will ask if you would like to keep this on your schedule for another week. And the process of signing up for an opening includes setting reminders: you choose when and how often, but you cannot launch the program until you choose something . The app will then remind you when it’s time to do what you said you were going to do. As if they know I have short attention.