Online training apps, why you shouldn't use them!

If you're lacking the imagination and motivation to exercise regularly, then you may be forgiven for picking up your phone and downloading the latest app to help you get fitter.

With the ability to set daily reminder and log and track your progress, surely these apps are the way forward?

By the sheer fact that I am writing this, tells you that my answer is no! I have downloaded a couple of these in the past, just to assess their efficacy and more importantly their accuracy.

Many of them go by the prefix 30 day... I have seen abs challenge, beach body challenge, squat challenge to name but a few. I put myself through the abs challenge and the beach body challenge to see how they lived up to.

The idea with these is, they make you perform 4 - 5 exercises per day, per app. There is a small tutorial for each exercise and depending on which app you download, some have a video of someone performing 1 repetition of the exercise. As I said above, you can set them to give you a daily reminder to perform them and you can share your achievements to social media to encourage your friends give it a go.

So what's the problem with these?

As a physiotherapist, I have said this before and I will continue to say it until I retire: It's all about the quality and not the quantity. That is what's missing from these apps.

Day 1 is typically quite low key. A few ab crunches and say, maybe 10 - 15 squats, with a 20 second plank thrown in. Once you get a few days in, you're expected to perform and this is no exaggeration, 200 sit ups, 100 squats and possibly 200 burpees!

This really infuriates me as a clinician. I would not send a client or a patient home to perform this sort of program without monitoring their technique. People see these figures and their technique suffers to get the quantity performed. There is no one on these online apps ensuring you are performing the technique correctly. I know I can perform 200 sit ups, but I need after a while, to hook my ankles under a solid object to continue. Now as a clinician, I know this is targeting your hip flexors and not your abdominals.

So is it any wonder that after performing these kinds of apps, people start reporting hip, groin and lower back pain? To perform an ab crunch correctly, you have to engage your pelvis and performing 200 sit ups is nigh on impossible. To perform 200 sit ups, you will almost certainly have to disengage your pelvis, which leads to an increase lordosis (curve on the lower spine) which will lead to an increased risk of low back pain! Asking people to perform significant amounts of squats, again, makes me cringe! I know as a clinician when I am suggesting people perform squats and I ask them to show me one squat, I have to correct their technique. Therefore, again, is it any wonder that after 30 days of performing numerous amounts of squats, burpees, lunges, people have knee pain, shin pain, and low back pain? I am all for anything that gets people more active. The more active we are, the less likely we are to suffer from significant illness like stroke, heart disease and many cancers, but I do not think online exercise apps are the way forward. They just lead to an increased risk of injury.

My advice is, if you want to get fitter, seek professional advice from a trained healthcare professional. Like your friendly, local physiotherapist for a program that is right for your ability, whereby your clinician can progress and regress you accordingly.