By NICOLA McCASKILL
Health and fitness apps have been voted one of the most popular categories of downloaded applications from Apple, outranking photo and video, social networking and news categories for a market share in billions of downloads each year.
This genre of apps currently account for 448 items in the iTunes App Store and 540 in Google Play.
These apps and devices can track our steps, routes, speed and improvement; they can even help plan and motivate us.
They help us compare and compete against our friends and even monitor our diets, moods, sleep patterns, periods and medications.
But how many of these apps actually help users get something done – and how much is just useless data collection?
Monash Sport personal trainer Michael Ludekens says the apps are hugely popular.
“I’d say 90 per cent of the people that train (here) have some sort of app or are using some sort of digital tracking device … over the last couple of years there’s been a big emergence of fitness apps,” he said.
The Fitbit is a popular activity tracker, priced between $79.95 and $349.95. The wearable device syncs to a phone app and tracks the user’s steps and sleep. It also allows users to connect with friends and family, taking part in challenges for the most steps.
Fitbit users gave the product mixed reviews – while some found it useful for training, others couldn’t see its benefits.
Fitbit wearer and high school teacher Jennifer Lim says she doesn’t find the instant feedback motivating and doesn’t have a use for the information gathered each day.
“Well, the days I get the most steps is when I go shopping, so that is good motivation – for shopping,” she says.
“I look at it, but I use the information for absolutely nothing.”
PhD marketing student and fitness tech fan Jason Pallant has a different take on the fitness app.
“If I get to 10,000 steps, it starts vibrating and if I press it, little fireworks come up on the screen” he says.
“It’s the corniest little thing, but then it’s like – yeah, I feel good.”
Mr Pallant believes it’s this positive reinforcement that’s the key to fitness apps’ success in helping him train more effectively and efficiently.
In an endeavour that can have very long-term gains, these apps cn help people see quantifiable results more quickly.
As well as the Fitbit, Mr Pallant also uses Nike+ basketball shoes (which use a computer chip to measure the wearer’s vertical jump, among other functions) and the PUSH band – an arm band whose functions include measuring movement speed when weight lifting.
“It’s obviously pretty easy to see how much weight you’re lifting, but this [PUSH band] tracks the movement speed based on a theory called velocity-based training,” he says.
“There’s a certain speed that you want to be able to move to get the maximum power.”
Both devices connect with apps on Mr Pallant's phone, and instantly churn out feedback and graphs based on the data generated while he works out.
He believes this technology has positively changed the way he works out and records his progress.
“I’m a bit of a stats nerd – I actually tracked myself over a few days … with the PUSH Band I could work out my force, and with my Nike+ shoes I could work out how high I was getting.
“I did a bit of a rough calculation of force compared to vertical jump … then I worked out what power range and velocity I want to be training at to maximise my jump,” he says.
“That’s made me change the weights and reps that I was doing in the gym.”
Mr Pallant doesn’t believe this technology will replace the need for a personal trainer.
“I think it’s more of a motivational tool,” he says.
“It can give you that motivation, but you need to know what you’re doing first, or have someone there helping you do it.”
Monash Sport personal trainer Jeremy O’Halloram agrees that while fitness apps can help motivate people and challenge themselves, they don’t replace a specialist opinion.
“I’m a bit old school, I prefer to talk to somebody, get a program and follow it that way, rather than get the data on an app,” he says.
“I don’t necessarily think the app stuff is completely right.”
Mr O’Halloram says it’s important that people have the right information to begin with.
“I think you’ve got to be a realist about it… maybe you’ve got to go to a gym or go to a specialist to make sure that the detail and the data that you’re putting on the app is correct.
“So go to your doctor and have your heart checked, do a test with somebody and make sure that the data there is real data,” he says.
For personal trainer Michael Ludekens, fitness technology not only has value for professional athletes and coaches but beginners as well.
“A lot of fitness coaches use apps as well, they compliment each other really,” he says.
“The apps really provide that tracking and measuring medium [while] the coach can link up that data and information with different performance or training advice.
“But especially for people that are beginning, they might just download an app to start off with and see that it’s all listed in there, it’s easy to follow.
“People who are just starting out might go to a phone app before they go to see a health coach.”
Mr Ludekens says in the end it’s how people use these fitness apps that will make all the difference.
“They’re just tools, so it’s about how you use them – if people want to put the time in to get the most out of it, most of them would be okay.”
Five of the best
Top health and fitness apps recommended by students and trainers
Strava
Free
Tracking app popular with Monash Sport Caulfield trainers for tracking rides and competing against each other.
MyFitnessPal
Free
A nutrition and calorie database. Lauren Brooker, personal trainer, Monash Sport says: “Good for people with specific medical conditions that you can handle with nutrition, or people that are athletic and want to track exact nutrient intake. If I didn’t have this, I would have to be getting the nutritional information of every single thing that I eat, saving the packets of everything … it would be very time consuming.”
Zombies, Run!
$1.99-$3.99
An audio-based game and story that motivates you to run “further and faster than ever before”.
Headspace
Free
A “gym membership for the mind” – learn mindfulness through 10 minutes of meditation a day.
$0.99
A sleep tracker that wakes you up at the perfect time so you feel like you just woke up naturally. In this reporter opinion, “the best 99 cents I ever spent”.
