Moving from a country office job to a London city job had many unanticipated consequences, the most noticeable of which was the impact on my fitness.
In the country I was able to cycle to work, get outdoors for lunch time runs and even sneak a quick spin into a slot between meetings. Keeping fit was more of a way of staying awake at work rather than a conscious fitness choice and so I never had a problem keeping a healthy lifestyle.
In contrast, my fitness virtually all but disappeared when I moved to London as life and city work seemed to hamstring most of my weekly exercise routine. Meeting requests, after work beers and over crowded gyms all meant that even when I was able to make it to the running club or a gym class, my sessions would often be cut short or be half hearted.
After a few months of declining energy levels, mood swings and a bit of weight gain I decided to take my fitness back into my own hands and give my lifestyle a thorough audit.
After a few hours of searching the iStore a clever new app called Moves caught my eye and after a quick download I was putting the app through its paces.
If you have never heard of the Moves app before then here is a quick overview of the main features this clever little invention does.
The app uses the inbuilt GPS receiver of your Iphone to record your every move. Not only does the app automatically recognize the type of exercise that you do throughout the day but it also records the time and distance of these exercises so that you can easily view your daily and weekly totals. The idea is then to compare days and weeks to see if you can make improvements to your exercise routine as well as keeping track of your total exercise levels over the long term
The app runs in the background of your phone and any intensive data processing is done remotely and then zapped back to your phone via 3G. This has the benefit of hardly draining any battery and the little Internet bandwidth that is used will barely eat into any data plan.
This app is so much more than just a pedometer as you can track the time spent in various locations as well as the various different exercise sessions that you do
SO how did I use this app? Well after running the app for a few weeks and virtually forgetting about it I checked out my exercise levels and was able to see just how little exercise I do on some days of the week.
In general the app told me that my weekends were quite active, with the average distance walked and run being 18 km per day. In the week however, this figure dropped to a measly 2.8 km on some days which was absolutely shocking. In all honestly this figure would have been much lower if it wasn’t for the walk to and from the tube in the morning and evening as I spent virtually 10 hours a day sitting at my desk inside my office without even a walk at lunch
If keeping track of your daily and weekly exercise levels appeals to you or if you are looking to gather some data on your exercise habits then I cant recommend the Moves app enough. It is available completely free from the Itunes store and you can find out more information over at the Moves website.
In the country I was able to cycle to work, get outdoors for lunch time runs and even sneak a quick spin into a slot between meetings. Keeping fit was more of a way of staying awake at work rather than a conscious fitness choice and so I never had a problem keeping a healthy lifestyle.
In contrast, my fitness virtually all but disappeared when I moved to London as life and city work seemed to hamstring most of my weekly exercise routine. Meeting requests, after work beers and over crowded gyms all meant that even when I was able to make it to the running club or a gym class, my sessions would often be cut short or be half hearted.
After a few months of declining energy levels, mood swings and a bit of weight gain I decided to take my fitness back into my own hands and give my lifestyle a thorough audit.
After a few hours of searching the iStore a clever new app called Moves caught my eye and after a quick download I was putting the app through its paces.
If you have never heard of the Moves app before then here is a quick overview of the main features this clever little invention does.
The app uses the inbuilt GPS receiver of your Iphone to record your every move. Not only does the app automatically recognize the type of exercise that you do throughout the day but it also records the time and distance of these exercises so that you can easily view your daily and weekly totals. The idea is then to compare days and weeks to see if you can make improvements to your exercise routine as well as keeping track of your total exercise levels over the long term
The app runs in the background of your phone and any intensive data processing is done remotely and then zapped back to your phone via 3G. This has the benefit of hardly draining any battery and the little Internet bandwidth that is used will barely eat into any data plan.
This app is so much more than just a pedometer as you can track the time spent in various locations as well as the various different exercise sessions that you do
SO how did I use this app? Well after running the app for a few weeks and virtually forgetting about it I checked out my exercise levels and was able to see just how little exercise I do on some days of the week.
In general the app told me that my weekends were quite active, with the average distance walked and run being 18 km per day. In the week however, this figure dropped to a measly 2.8 km on some days which was absolutely shocking. In all honestly this figure would have been much lower if it wasn’t for the walk to and from the tube in the morning and evening as I spent virtually 10 hours a day sitting at my desk inside my office without even a walk at lunch
If keeping track of your daily and weekly exercise levels appeals to you or if you are looking to gather some data on your exercise habits then I cant recommend the Moves app enough. It is available completely free from the Itunes store and you can find out more information over at the Moves website.
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