I'm sure that when the Coronavirus pandemic hit us over here in the UK, a lot of us found ourselves stuck at home 25/8 with absolutely nothing to do. I am home relatively often anyway, however, before the pandemic, I was at least able to go outside and get some form of exercise. In the months before this happened, I had already been considering getting back into fitness as I used to exercise all the time in a variety of ways, but mostly with my netball training and swimming. When I had to give all of that up when I was seventeen, over the past two or three years I have noticed that my fitness levels have gotten significantly lower and, since June last year in particular, I have put on quite a bit of weight and was pretty unhealthy. I was originally planning on getting back into health and fitness once I finished my second year of university in May, however, when we went into lockdown in March and I found myself not knowing what was going on with my university work and having a considerable amount of more time at home, I decided to take the plunge and get back into health and fitness. One day I was scrolling through Facebook, as you do, and came across the Fitingo app as part of a Facebook ad. I know you shouldn't always pay attention to these adverts, however, I thought I had nothing to lose by downloading it and haven't looked back since. Today, I am going to give you my review of the app, the various ways it has helped me get through lockdown, and why I will be continuing to use it...
I haven't got images of what came up when I first downloaded the app, however, it asked me to choose out of seven different areas on my body, which were my problem areas, as those were the areas the app and workouts were going to focus on the most. I chose my belly and legs. I have noticed that a lot of the exercises that come up on the app are tailored to these areas, and so far am really impressed with its ability to do this.
This is the screen you are faced with when you first go into the app. You have to option of either doing the twelve-week or thirty-day plan. I have done both and I believe they completely depend on your lifestyle. For example, I used the twelve-week plan when I was still completing my university work and chose to schedule these workouts for the days when I didn't have a class. If you choose this option, you can set the days and time you want to be reminded to complete a workout. They start off for 10-15 minutes at first and gradually increase and the maximum I was at when I finished this plan was fifty minutes. As you can probably see from the screenshots, I am currently doing the thirty-day plan, and find this useful as I currently have no university work and don't have any real schedule of when I have to do anything. I guess this plan is useful if you want to do a workout every day (which I am currently doing). The first time I did this plan, both the warmups and workouts were twenty seconds each, with between twenty and thirty seconds in between for rests. I am currently on my second version of this plan, and the warmups are still twenty seconds, but the workouts are now thirty seconds, with the same amount of time as above for rests.
Before you start a workout, you can choose the intensity you want to work at. If you want to work at 1x, each exercise lasts for twenty seconds. If you want to work at 2x, each exercise lasts for forty seconds. If you want to work at 3x, each exercise lasts for sixty seconds. When I am on the twelve-week plan, I tend to work at the 2x intensity because I'm only doing it for between three and four days a week. However, when I am on the thirty-day plan, I work at the 1x intensity because I'm working out every day and this makes it much easier to do that.
One thing I like about this app is that it gives you a selection of personal trainers, along with a description of their previous work. This allows you to make an informed decision when it comes to choosing someone who best fits what you are trying to achieve by using the app to get you back into fitness or continue your fitness journey. As you can see, I have gone for Ciara as she specialises in home workouts and I believe that this makes her the most qualified to help me on my fitness journey.
This is a page I haven't used yet as I have been sticking to my scheduled workouts, however from what I can gather by looking at it, this page allows you to choose a workout to do whenever you feel like it. For example, if you decided you wanted to do two workouts in one day, you could do your scheduled workout in the morning and one of these workouts in the afternoon.
On the page I mentioned above, you have a filters page that helps tailor your workouts exclusively to you. It lets you choose whether you do a single workout or if you use one selected by the experts. You can also change your target areas from the ones you first selected upon first using the app. You can also choose how long you want to exercise for, dependent on how much time you have to put into your workouts. You can also choose whether you use equipment or not. Finally, you can choose whether you are at beginner, intermediate, or advanced level.
Finally, they also let you put your body measurements in so you can track your progress, however, I have decided not to include a screenshot of this as I understand that this can be quite triggering for some people and I also don't want people to be comparing their body measurements to mine. I have found this feature of the app relatively helpful as it also lets me set what my target weight is, so I can compare that to my current weight, however, I, again, understand that some people might not want to see this so I haven't included it.
All in all, I really like this app and it is the only fitness app out of all the ones I have used over the last few years (including watching YouTube videos) that I have used for more than a few weeks, although I'm not sure whether this is due to a change in mindset/needing to make a serious lifestyle change/not having anywhere else to be/anything else to do. If you are interested in downloading this app, you can download it on the app store (I have looked and I'm not entirely sure whether it's available on Google Play).
If you have any other questions about this app or about how I've found my fitness journey with them, please feel free to DM me on Twitter or Instagram, or you can send me an email by filling out a form in the contacts tab at the top of the page.
Love Beth xx