PreCentral: App Review: A1 Fit Interval Trainer

[News Reporter]

Last week as part of

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we took a look at , an interval training timer app. The gist of interval training is that exercising in bursts of high-intensity instead of a continuous moderate intensity results in a more effective workout. While Workout provides a pretty basic approach to the concept of interval training, by A1 Development takes comes at it with more customizability information presentation.

Upon launch you're presented with a set-up screen asking you to specify your warm-up and cool-down times, how long you'd like each high- and low-intensity period to last, and how many cycles you'd like the app to run you through. Hit the big green start button and you're thrown to the timer screen. There are two countdown timers, with your current period timer at the top and the total time remaining at the bottom. Each is accompanied by a shrinking progress bar, with the period timer's also listing the current activity (warm-up, high intensity, et al). Smack dab in the middle is a count of how many intervals through you are in the workout.

Since you're not likely to have your smartphone up by your face when you're working out, A1 Fit has taken a number of steps to help you workout from a distance. There's the large bold text for the timers and the contrast of the progress bars and a loudly repeating chime at the change of each interval. Additionally, the background color changes with each interval, becoming orange for the warmup phase, red for high intensity workouts, green for low intensity, and a cool blue for the cool down period. You can turn off both the chime and the color change if you want to keep things calm. Smartly, A1 Fit also keeps the screen turned on through your workout.

It might seem like a simple concept, but proper and consistent timing is important for interval training to be effective. Apps like the $1.49 aim to make it as easy as possible to do so.