What I think of the Nike Training Club App

The moment I heard about the NTC app, I got really excited. I was eager to switch up my workouts at the gym, adding more High Intensity Cardio intervals and some new ideas for core and weight work.

Generally you don't need any fancy equipment. Mostly, you'll need some sort of weight (dumbells, medicine ball), sometimes a mat to lie down on, and enough space to jump around, lunge and do pushups. I have no weights at home, so I used a juice bottle. Apple Mango got SO lifted.

Overall, I'm pretty impressed with the sequencing of the standard routines.

Here are the home screens:

My translation of the 4 categories:
Get Lean = "Omg that was only 15 seconds? Ican'tbreatheIcan'tbreatheIcan'tbreathe"
Get Toned = "Am I doing this deadlift right? I don't feel anything."
Get Strong = "Oh gawds THE BURN, give me some cardio I can't do this anymore!"

Each category has 3 levels: Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced.

Steven and I tried the "Get Focused" Ab Burner workout first. As a "Focused" workout, it does not have levels; you just plunge in and do it. Unfortunately, both Steven and I got pretty bored quickly. Once we realized that the workout is just 3 repeats of the same sequence, we stopped the workout and continued our regular P90X-inspired core workout, which has more variety and challenge. There is only one core-focused workout pre-loaded in the app, though there are other bonus core workouts you have to download.

Despite a bad first workout, I was determined to try the others before giving my verdict.

The workouts in the other 3 sections (Lean, Toned and Strong) are very good. They are challenging with diverse movements and plenty of cardio bursts (like high knees, tuck jumps, ski jumps, etc.) that work into a full range of motion. I was plenty sore after all of my NTC workouts, even if I only completed 20 or 15 minutes of them ---> I think this has more to do with my general suckiness at High Intensity Cardio though.

Here are a few things I'd like to see changed:

1) Better Warmups
Nearly all the warmups are silly things like jogging in place for 2 minutes, or straight leg lifts for 2 minutes. Do you realize HOW BORING it is to jog in one place it is?! Or Slide and Glide (which does nothing for me, frankly; I might as well stand around) for TWO minutes?! Please let me do ANYTHING else, or just skip this completely... which leads to #2...

2) Why can't I skip anything?
Usually, I'm already warmed up from a run or ab work before I start on the NTC workouts. However, there are only 2 buttons on this thing: Start and Stop (ok, there's a Pause as well). I'd like to see a Skip button please for activities I don't want to do. For instance, my most recent workout had a 2 minute recovery. By 30 seconds I was bored of standing around, I had caught my breath, and yet I couldn't do anything to speed up the damn app.

3) Shorter Workouts
All workouts are at minimum 30 minutes long. In some cases this is too long for my short attention span, or if Steven wants to leave the gym early or I'm low on energy that day. It gives me a stinking sense of failure when I see "Workout Incomplete" when I Stop the Workout. I wish there were shorter workouts where I could just get to the juicy bits and be done with it.

4)  My boyfriend won't do any of this with me
To be honest, a lot of the exercises are plyometric body weight exercises, and Steven won't have anything to do with them. Even the "Get Strong" series of workouts incorporates plenty High Intensity Cardio, which Steven is strongly against (even though he really shouldn't be....*ahem* IT'S GOOD FOR YOU BABY!). He wants weights and lifting and growling and grunting and chest-pounding... which I'm quite happy to do if it were offered.

Nike, please make an app that my boyfriend will do with me.

5) If I lock my phone, the app pauses
I'm not sure if I like or hate this feature. For instance, I can see that it's a great shortcut to pause the app and grab any equipment, like heavier weights, you might need for the next exercise. However, what if I want to stick my phone in my pocket while I'm lunging? I'm not just going to leave the screen active. Maybe this should be something each user can customize in a "settings" page, which is currently non-existent.

6) You want me to do a what?!
To get the most out of the quick intervals, you should be prepared to get familiar with the most common exercises before you start the app. For instance, I had no idea what single leg dead lifts were from the picture, so I needed to play the video before I could do the exercise. This means I basically have to pause the app, watch the video, and then restart once I knew what I was doing. Because I'm a left-right retard, I also had to play the '360 lunges' instructional video like 5 times before I caught on to the purpose of it. Now that I've done about 5 of the workouts, I'm finally comfortable moving from one exercise to the next without playing every single instruction video first (Don't worry, you will probably be better at this; heck, I didn't even know what a deadlift was when I started... still not sure I do).

Otherwise, the app is great for times you're stuck at home with nothing but soup cans or juice bottles as "weights". You will definitely get a sweaty workout, even if you only built juice-bottle strong muscles.

I'm looking forward to doing the additional "Bonus Workouts" named after famous athletes. So far, I've only done Kara Goucher's Pro Running Stretches, which I found terribly lacking. Hopefully, the other workouts are better.

Would I recommend the NTC app? 

Hell yes, I've already recommended it to a bunch of yoga friends! It's free, simple to learn, definitely gives good workout, and generally fulfills it's purpose. Like anything, it could use some improvements, but I'd like a higher IQ, and we can't get everything we want, can we?

After 2 weeks without running hills, I got schooled

Since I've joined the gym, I've been enjoying the lower impact treadmill runs immensely. As such, I haven't pounded the neighbourhood pavement in a while. My legs have completely forgotten about the hills.. Oh, the hills...

Today, I took both Garmin and Run Keeper out for a bit of a comparison.

Garmin said this:

Run Keeper said this:

Garmin said:
3.50 miles in 40:12 minutes with an average pace of 11.29 minutes/mile

Run Keeper said:
3.42 miles in 38:55 minutes with an average pace of 11:23 minutes/mile

As you can see, there is really hardly any difference between the two, just the time it took for me to take my cell phone out of my pocket and stop Run Keeper while gasping like a asthmatic 90-year-old. So I'm pretty happy with using Run Keeper whenever Garmin's satellites cannot be found.

Run Keeper isn't good enough to make me put away my Garmin for good, however. Not only is Garmin lighter than my cell phone, but it's also less bulky. I track my runs on Garmin Connect, so switching to Run Keeper would be way too much work.

After my run, I put on my new Nike Training Club app and attempted the Kickin' It 30 minute workout with the morning news in the background.

 I think I made it to 20 minutes, and then I couldn't take any more burn in my thighs.

 Now I'm just chillin' in front of our beloved space heater.

Sydney doesn't get cold enough for central heating, so we have this little space heater. You can stand in front of it and watch your skin blister, or step out of it's heat ray and freeze. As a compromise, I have it mostly facing away from me, and I'll walk in front of it every once in a while.

What are your plans for the day?

A Long Australian Weekend: The Queen's Birthday!

Down here, under the equator, the Queen's Birthday is celebrated the second Monday of June. That means it's a long weekend for us working folk!

Steven and I had planned to go to the Blue Mountains to do some sight seeing and tourist-ing, but Lazy, Cheap, and Car-less struck us hard. So, we stayed home.

We did all my favourite things:

Run:

Stretch (ouch):

Eat Japanese Tofu Donburi:

Eat Chimney Cakes from Kurtosh:

Eat pies from Pie Face:

Yes, there was a lot more eating than exercising, and that's the way we like it!

Now, I'm downloading Nike Training Club app so that Steven and I have something to play with the next time we hit the gym. From what I can tell, it looks like a good idea, but the initial download also took like 20 web-minutes (which is really like 3 real minutes), so I've already lost half my interest. There are bonus workouts named after (or created by) famous athletes, like the Kara Goucher Pro Running Stretches that you have to download individually.

By the way, the Kara Goucher Pro Running Stretches workout is EXTREMELY basic. It covers the major areas I always do after a run: low lunge (hip flexor), triangle (outer hip, glute, inner thigh), and IT band (twist with straight leg - she does it supine while I usually do revolved triangle). But it's missing a whole lot of other stuff, like your feet, ankles, calves, quads, piriformis, spine.... yep, the entire spine.... I don't think they did one twist....

Maybe I'll do my own post-run yoga/stretch routine to show you guys... What say you, Interwebs?

Anyway, I'll write a bigger update on what Steven and I think of the Nike Training Club app soon!