By Eric Tung for Police1 BrandFocus
For years, navigating workout programs and regimens has been dizzying. The fitness industry has always been ripe with so many options that the average person trying to start a routine often doesn’t know where to start. Weight training, CrossFit or Pilates? Cardio boot camps, yoga or calisthenics? Even within weight training, there are a myriad of rep schemes, body part splits and anything from two to seven days a week.
I took deep dives into everything health, fitness and nutrition after starting my career in law enforcement. Working patrol in a busy jurisdiction, including a stint as a K-9 handler, I focused on how I could optimize my efforts to maximize muscle-building, strength, force production and cardiovascular ability at varying degrees. I poured myself into troves of articles, blogs, YouTube accounts and podcasts to inundate my knowledge base. I began customizing my own workout plans for myself, friends and coworkers.
Although there’s more free content than ever, therein creates a potential problem: there’s more free content than ever. In policing, I recognize sometimes a good plan now is better than the best plan later – and that best plan may never be discovered or achieved.
Enter the Fitbod fitness app, which can provide a customizable framework for one’s starting point, goals, abilities, time available and equipment preferences. I used the individual version and then shared with a few colleagues. Now, Fitbod for Police is available as a package deal for police departments nationwide. It’s a quick and easy set up and Fitbod trainers are always available to help with any questions.
WHY USE AN APP AT ALL?
1. Instruction: Some people don’t know what to do or how to do it. An app with a proper design interface can make that simple with tutorial, demonstration or other instructions.
2. Routine: They say old habits die hard. If that’s true, new habits have a rocky start. Most experts say it takes a few weeks or 21 days to build a new habit. If working out is one, using an app can keep you on track with reminders and tracking components.
3. Accountability: Any regular exerciser knows the difference between putting in a certain amount of time and a certain amount of work. There’s a difference between running for 20 minutes and running 3 miles. Or lifting for 30 minutes and lifting with five exercises for a total of 15 working sets. The measuring component and a drafted-out template keeps you accountable to your commitment. Even if you have to abort the mission, you have to knowingly walk away from those targeted sets – even delete them off your day’s workout. (Ouch!)
4. Convenience: I spent years carrying a notepad and pen around the gym, and then kept up with it in my home gym years later. I had some of the best results in those years. But it was clunky, and to be honest, oftentimes not objective. I didn’t account for sleep, recovery and my targeted sets and reps were based on my ego trying to add more, without utilizing any calculations that experienced trainers or exercise scientists would support.
ENTER FITBOD
I had the opportunity to trial the Fitbod app and play with it for a few weeks. I had some experience with other apps personally as well as observation from people in my circles using others. After being able to regularly use and manipulate the features, along with some response from Fitbod representatives, I was able to analyze the benefits sections as outlined above.
1. Instruction: The app is very visually appealing and easy to navigate. Intuitive design matters – think about why people use certain tech devices or websites: usability. When you start a profile you answer some questions which help the app design a program for you. You can even add preferences like how often you want to train, and later toggle this for what type of split you want. I am partial to a “leg/push/pull” split, which would repeat those affected muscle groups in that order over and over. However, on a specific day, I could still opt for an “upper” day which would be push and pull muscles/movements together.
Also, among the initial program design, you select what equipment you have available. This feature is huge. You can have a workout program designed solely as bodyweight with no equipment or bodyweight with a pull bar and bench. Although I have access to a full-range weight room at my PD, I was able to toggle with checkboxes my specific home setup. This meant I could select barbells, pull-up bar, two sets of specific weight dumbbells and two specific weights for kettlebells. Talk about customization!
In the workout modules for the day, as you move between sets or supersets, a simple video diagram of a figure performing that movement is playing in the background of your set and rep scheme. For instance, when I am about to begin four sets of five reps of a barbell row at 155 lbs., I see a figure slowly performing a barbell row. I have a simple visual cue that can tell the average person what this is, which is extremely helpful as you get into more specific, curated exercises like birddog dumbbell rows. (And they have over 1,600 of these videos!)
2. Routine: The worst type of workouts are when you show up not knowing what to do. Fitbod makes that easy, as you can not only get a peek of your next workout after each one is wrapped, but the morning of. You can mentally prepare, or as I have done, feel my body, recognize the long bike ride the day prior is causing me to swap a leg day or an upper-body day.
Like many successful apps, there are aspects of “gamification” and reminders of the good progress you are making. Knowing you have hit a new workout streak of 10 days in a row would be validating for anyone putting in the work. Further, there are many capacities and features available, like syncing to your other fitness trackers or wearables for a more holistic view on your goals and progress.
Another thing that helps build and solidify routines is your own buy-in. I’ve done workout programs where, upon starting, I wasn’t bought in. With my years of study and self-experimentation, I often didn’t see how the program even made sense. With Fitbod, you toggle the weight and reps you actually performed and have the option of noting how difficult it was on a scale (exertion rating, or as experienced lifters will call RPE/rate of perceived exertion). These data points are then used to continue your programming via algorithms. (These include data points from other users from those workouts – like a crowd-sourced formula.) For someone like me, this makes it far easier to trust the process, stay bought in and thus continue solidifying that routine.
Further, as Fitbod relays, in the longer term, users can get strength scores and be provided with an analysis of where they are progressing well versus areas where they may be lacking. Talk about a motivator of feedback: Gimme those plates!
3. Accountability: If I say I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it. However, as I mentioned before, saying I will get in the gym and lift isn’t a specific goal. There is no objective measurement. I can go in, of course, move some things around, breathe kind of hard, be scrolling on my phone way too much and come out with little to no value.
However, with a charted workout, I can see what lies ahead. Sure, I can decide to remove or edit things based on time constraints or a joint feeling sore, but those modifications are good things. Being adaptable with reason can further enhance personal accountability – you aren’t just driving into a wall. With the algorithms explained above, this helps me recognize it is all being factored into future workout recommendations.
I mentioned the reward system boost of seeing how many days you have been on a streak and certainly with the feedback analysis and strength score, routine building fosters increased accountability with program usage and thus personal fitness commitments.
4. Convenience: I hearkened back earlier to my days of a notepad and pen (which would, in time, get extremely frayed and dirty). Beyond that, I was flipping around to see what I lifted the prior time, and if I was adjusting exercises, it got more cumbersome. Being on your phone makes things simple, but Fitbod of course is not unique in this.
Where Fitbod stands out in my experience is in several areas. Having the video cues on the same screen as your working sets and reps is extremely convenient. You don’t have to pull up YouTube for a video on what that movement is, sit through a commercial, wait for the trainer’s intro and little speech, and then question if it’s even the best video. It’s right there. Even if other apps have a link, then you’re clicking a link. Time is money, and this time is better served doing the work.
In addition, with the volumes of exercises you can select as replacements, this streamlines your workout time and thus, overall success. For instance, I had a workout where it prompted a superset (one after the next) of barbell bench press and barbell overhead press. Due to time, I didn’t want to swap the weights back and forth on my barbell, so I swapped the barbell overhead press for dumbbell overhead press. Doing so took seconds – just swapping the exercise, typing it and selecting it in the search field. I then was able to enter my weights of dumbbells and enter a reasonable rep scheme. This populated it for the remaining sets (as it always will).
Another example of this is if you have four sets of 15 reps of an exercise. If you do 15 the first set, then 12 the second set, entering that will automatically lower all remaining sets to 12 reps. This is intuitive as you clearly couldn’t hit those numbers. If you can only do 10 the next time, the last one will auto-adjust to 10.
MY FINAL THOUGHTS
As someone who continually tries new approaches and regimens through the years, but generally doesn’t use workout apps, I was extremely pleased about my experience. From being user-friendly, intuitive and visually appealing, I can see it being a successful basis for fitness newbies to workout enthusiasts. Fitbod comes in at about $80 per year for an individual. Fitbod for Police is the department version and gets discounted on a case-by-case basis. They tailor it to exactly what your officers need and adjust from there – kind of like the app’s workouts!
Fitbod’s scope of customization for a range of abilities, fitness goals and access to equipment makes it an appealing option for individuals and groups alike. When it comes to police and first responder fitness, there’s no doubt we have an obligation to continually build and properly maintain our abilities in a host of capacities. With competing stressors, needs on- and off-duty, fitness is not only a requisite but a performance maximizer. Anything that can make the barrier of entry lower or the continued pursuit easier is a worthwhile investment – and Fitbod is just that.
Fitbod is available for individuals and entire departments. Fitbod for Police offers tailored fitness programs for every member of the department and includes additional benefits like employee engagement reports to track who is training, integration with personal fitness trackers and pro trainers on call to answer questions via email.
To learn more, visit Fitbod.
