|| Fitness || Nike NTC Workout App

No longer do I have any excuse for sitting at home during the day when I'm not working, and not doing any kind of exercise! I've never been one to do workout videos, or make up my own exercises. It's all or nothing baby - gym, bootcamp, yoga or nothing.

Until...

The NTC App - Nike Training Club is like having a "personal trainer anytime, anywhere".

It's free from iTunes, which I still can't believe.

I dare you to just check it out for the sake of seeing it... delete it if you want but I bet you'll be tempted to try a workout. I think it's amazing use of technology! There are like a hundred different workouts to choose from, varying in length, target area, and difficulty. They have various uses of equipment - from none, to medicine balls, weights, and jump ropes.

I have a staff party to go to tonight and felt like it wouldn't hurt to do a 15 minute "Get Focused - Ab Blast" to tighten my tummy just a little before I squeeze into my dress. The 15 minutes flew by, as my personal music playlist played in the background, while the talking app told me which exercise to do, how to do it correctly (videos available right in the workout in case you don't know what to do), and counted me down to the last second while I was just about to die in (positive) abdominal agony.

The only thing I didn't like about the whole 15 minute workout itself was it was an exact repetition of the same five exercises for the whole 15 minutes. I take bootcamp classes at Body Buster Fitness (which I will write about another time) which is rarely repetitive and will always be a better workout just because of the real-life motivation - I can still slack off at home and not work as hard if I really want to lol... but this is a good thing for 'off' days when I'm not taking bootcamp classes. I also don't know if all the workouts are this repetitive as this was my first time trying the app.

Also, the workout had a 30 second recovery period after each repetition of the five exercises. In my opinion, that is too long, and I could have gotten an extra minute or so of exercise in instead. I'm sure if I was doing cardio I would have loved the 30 seconds, but this was just focused ab work so I didn't really need it.

Besides those two sort of downsides, I still HIGHLY recommend this for at-home workouts. Super easy to understand and navigate the app, the workout I did was made up of excellent exercises, you don't have to think about anything or plan your workout, and my abs are already burning like crazy!

I found this video on YouTube which gives a good visual:


You get 'badges' for accomplishing certain time and exercise difficulty achievements, you can share progress on Facebook or Twitter, and you can win rewards such as new workouts which were previously hidden to you until you reached the next reward level. Good incentive!

Can't wait to do the 45 minute "Get Lean - Hurricane" workout! Hopefully on Wednesday.

Check it out! Seriously. I mean it. :)