GymFu review

Can your iPhone improve your health? GymFu sells a series of fitness related apps for the iPhone that help you with your workouts using a training system that is tied into the iPhone’s accelerometer for keeping track of your repetitions. Much like the Wii Fit, the the main app called CrunchFu is aimed at healthy individuals looking to do crunches with the iPhone as a personal trainer, tracker and note taker. The app also adds social challenge aspects that help push you while adding some excitement to your workouts.

There are 4 main tabs in CrunchFu. Home, Training, Battle Mode and Leagues.

Home: From here you you can edit your settings and see your progress including your reps, score and graphs after you have at least 2 days of activity. The app also sends you messages you can read through on the home tab. Finally the app always tries to sell you its other apps (SquatFu, PushupFu, PullupFu) on the home tab which we found to be kind of annoying and there is no way to get rid of these apparently. On first load, you should go into Settings/Account and create a new account. You can do it the old fashioned way, or use your twitter account. Then go to your settings and be sure to enable sounds. This assures you get a vocal response from the app while you do your workouts. From there go edit your details if you wish, adding more personal information. You can access your Gymfu account from the iPhone app or on your computer by going to http://myaccount.gymfu.com/

Training: Tap here to get started. You are guided through a series of instructional reading pages. Read some instructions on how to use the app and position your iPhone to track your motion. First you read about the secrets of doing good crunches, including good form and recovery time needed between training sessions, stretching out and consulting your doctor before starting out. The app only counts full crunches, that are performed in a steady timed fashion. Next you can read about how to use the CrunchFu app itself. Once you have gone through reading the manual, you must do a few test crunches in the practice page to get a feel for the app. Based on the CrunchFu instructions, the best way is to place the iPhone upside down over your chest and come up 30 degrees, with your eyes looking up at the ceiling, not towards your toes and don’t bend your neck. Press the green start button and CrunchFu will speak to you, “Stay Still”, “Go” and it will count off your reps as you do them. If you don’t have sounds enabled, you will just feel a vibration each time, and you can also choose from various voice packs to buy. In the First Test, you do as many reps as you can to unlock the right stage for you.

The training is broken down into states (1-10) with a Finale at the end. Each stage is made of 3 days of exercises. Each day consists of 5 sets each with a various amount of reps. The app is very good at counting your reps as you move, and motivating you to keep going. You get 5 points for each crunch you do. Work your way up to 200 reps.

Battle Mode: Challenge your friends or strangers to face-off crunch battles. You get more points when you battle someone. To battle someone you need to know their username. You can search for people by username.

League Mode: Here you can find random people from around the world to challenge to a crunch off. They are broken down either by max reps or max core and you can choose global people or local ones. We found some people who had hundreds and thousands of reps, in these listings. These people are either faking their reps by moving the iPhone without doing any work, which is just silly, or they are absolute freaks of nature.

Currently the app is on sale for $1.99. If you are willing to share your GymFu progress on your Facebook or Twitter account, you can also get the Sarge and Missy voice packs for free.

CrunchFu is a wonderful iPhone app for getting in shape and having fun doing it. Make your iPhone into a personal trainer and work out anytime, anywhere you are. The app also incorporates the gym peer pressure influence using its social battling modes to pump you up. What’s more you get a complete log of all your workouts and your progress is shown to you on a graph and stored for later viewing at anytime, online and in your iPhone or iPod touch app. Grab a copy of GymFu and get your abs in shape.

Here is a video demo of the GymFu app on the iPhone

AppSafari review of GymFu was written by Joe Seifi on October 7th, 2009 and categorized under App Store, Health, Notes, Productivity, Utilities. Page viewed 5172 times, 1 so far today. Need help on using these apps? Please read the Help Page.