I choose a sport without a smartphone, or why the application harm healthy lifestyle
Health / / December 19, 2019
I run with RunKeeper. Until recently, information about all eaten food I was carrying in MyFitnessPal, to track the number of calories consumed. Workout in the gym is not possible without JefitAnd when I'm too lazy to go to the gym, I have been at home with the application Quick 7.
For me, everything connected with sports and keeping fit, not without application. And until recently, I thought it was great. For there, on the other side, there are people who are smarter than me and know better what to me and my health.
A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon article Stuart Hall, the developer who created the application 7 Minute Workout. The story was about how Stewart made an application and downloaded 2.3 million times. Excellent article, in which Hall has given a lot of useful tips for developers on how to promote the application, how to succeed and how to make it popular. But the article has slipped one phrase that gave me off:
I took the 12 exercises and made it a workout. I had to dig into Google, to find the descriptions (I do not even know what a strap).
My friend, let me clarify. You're doing a sports application, in the expectation that they will enjoy and exercise real people, and he did not know that there is added? Excellent.
After some time, Stewart bought the app sports company Wahoo Fitness. A set of exercises could change several times and possibly a better place. But before that application is already used by hundreds of thousands of people around the world.
You see, what I am? Most sports athletes do not create applications, and developers. Sometimes they are a little knowledgeable in what they do, sometimes (as in the case of Stewart Hall) - no. And make uninformed people believe it is not so difficult in the application utility. For this is marketing.
MyFitnessPal, for example, takes into account the number of calories you consume and spend the day. But for most of these applications are equal to 500 kcal Nutella 500 calories of chicken breast that is not really so. They also do not care about the speed of your metabolism. Although long known that the rate of digestion in all different. And that's not even talking about how Different drugs affect on this.
While I have touched only two aspects that make fitness applications rather harmful than useful:
- Incompetence in the field of sports development.
- Accounting for all the calories as the same. Although in reality it is not.
Finally, there is another very important aspect. Fitness apps force you to do it, but can not force love sports. Most of the applications in the App Store and Google Play are associated with the running theme and workouts at home. You can download them, you will be engaged in the day. Then a week. Then two. Then you get tired, and you delete them. What is the problem? The fact that they do not take into account the preferences of real people. But what if you like football and you would prefer to lose weight with it? Or squash, which is also a heck of energy consumption?
So what?
On Layfhakere there is a tradition that should not be followed. It lies in the answer to the question "What is life hacking?". And it is as follows:
If you are at the beginning of the way of sports, send to hell sports applications.
At first glance it seems that it is easier to them. They are like virtual sensei, who always praise you and tell you what to do next. The problem is that Sensei too is universal and can not give each person what he needs. If you need a sports knowledge, read books, ask people you trust and on which it is clear that they can give useful advice. But do not trust blindly fitness applications.