EliteStrengthCoach: Your Own Personal Trainer On Your iPhone (Sponsored)

There are quite a few personal trainer apps on the market now, so I was interested to see what sets EliteStrengthCoach apart from the rest, so I downloaded it and set about trying to get myself into shape.

The first thing that separates it from its competitors is that it was designed by a world class trainer, Jacob Moore, who trains professional athletes all around the country; he has clearly put his 15 years experience into the app with the detailed workouts and exercises. One of his many high profile clients is Kevin Martin from the Houston Rockets who is quoted on the App Store as saying, “Working hard with Jake the whole summer of 2010 has improved my strength, flexibility, and understanding of my body,” and credits his fantastic 2011 performance to the training that he did with Jake. Well, I’m no NBA superstar, but I was curious to see what this app could do for my sporting performance…

This, uh, isn’t me.

The layout of the app is simple to navigate but has a myriad of options when you tap the ‘Workouts’ and ‘Exercise’ tabs; the workouts are categorised into ‘Rookie’, ‘Pro’ and ‘MVP’ (which is a list of athletes that Jake works with, each with their own bespoke training schedules). I started with ‘Rookie’. Even at the basic level, the workouts have cool names, like ‘Wolverine’ and ‘Knight’; this may seem like a basic touch, but from a psychological perspective, it’s a lot more fun to do a ‘Grizzly’ workout than an ‘arms shoulders and back’ exercise program. Each exercise comes with a visual instruction, a video and an audio overdub that gives you encouraging advice such as ‘Russian Twist: you’re doing this one right if your knees go side to side”. This personal touch is present throughout the app and it really does add a pleasant atmosphere to your workouts.

Choose which body part you want to work and focus your training on that particular area.

If you want to target specific body parts, you can go to the ‘Exercises’ tab, which shows a picture of a human body, with arrows pointing to particular areas; tap on the names and it takes you through to a list of exercises that will work that area. This is good for people who want to, say, define their abs or build up their shoulders as you find some interesting exercises that you may not necessarily think would work that area.

The ‘Goals’ section is actually really useful; it tells you how to do a good warm ups, stretches and cardiovascular exercise how to select the right weight for your strength and size and how to monitor your heart rate. You can also set yourself personal targets in the ‘Plan’ section, so that you can check of goals as you hit them.

Summary

So, how did I do? Well, I have been going through the exercises in the Rookie section and have discovered a few that I really like and can feel working certain areas of my body; I’m not Mr. universe yet, but the depth of detail and variety of exercises will keep from me getting bored and back to my coach potato ways…overall, I would definitely recommend this app to anyone wanting to get fit, tone up or build strength.

Pros

• Very intuitive layout, which that makes the app simple and fun to use.
• With almost 200 exercises, you’re not going to get bored easily.
• The fact that it’s endorsed by so many of the pro athletes that Jacob has worked with lends EliteStrengthCoach a lot of credit.
• With his encouraging voice, you almost want to continue working out so as not to let Jacob down!!

Room For Improvement

At $5.99, it’s more expensive than some of the other apps; however, as it says on the App Store, it’s less than the price of a lunch and could potentially improve your health and lifestyle by a long way. Alternatively, you could just test out EliteStrengthCoach Lite for free, which has 6 of the 30 workouts, about 40 of the 200 exercises and is ad supported.