As we enter the new year of 2022, many of us will continue our struggle to lose weight and get in shape.
Now, there are tons of exclusive fitness apps that can help us with that, but are they even as good as hiring a flesh-and-blood personal trainer?
Four years ago, Jenny Wiener had an exercise crisis.
She wanted to improve her physical and mental health, but her workouts lacked intensity without a proper training program to follow.
When she went to the gym, she says she often chose the "easy" options, such as jogging on the treadmill, to avoid the more strenuous exercises.
A personal trainer who could push her was out of the question because of the prohibitive costs - prices usually start at 30 pounds (about 36 euros) per hour.
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Viner, 32, who works as an events manager in St Albans, then discovered the fitness app Friletics (Freeletics).
To use this app, you first need to enter information about your past exercise experiences, goals, and goals.
The virtual trainer then uses that information to recommend a personalized training regimen.
After each workout, the Freeletics app asks Jenny Wiener for feedback on how comfortable or difficult the workout was.
The app's AI-based software system then uses her responses - plus those from her other 53 million users around the world - to better tailor future training sessions.
"The AI aspect is one of the main reasons I got interested in the first place," says Wiener.
"I used to go to the gym every day, but I didn't see any results.
"When I discovered Freeletics, I said to myself, 'Oh my God, it's a personal trainer in my pocket, my gym buddy.'"
She adds that the exercises are exciting for her, because she has never had two of them.
And with that as a result, the app helped her lose 25 pounds.
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Freeletics' digital personal trainer app, called "Coach", costs from £1,78 per week.
The company's chief product and technology officer, Kornelius Branner, says it "gets smarter and better" as users give it more feedback.
However, sports and fitness psychologist Anthony Papatomas says such apps are no substitute for real-life personal trainers.
"With interpersonal relationships, you get a heightened awareness of personal needs," says this senior lecturer at Loughborough University's National Center for Sport and Exercise Medicine.
"If you don't like the session, or you're not in the mood for it, which is often the case as exercise behavior changes," he says, "then I'm not sure your phone can appreciate that we're human beings with competing interests outside of our own." health and fitness."
On the other hand, Papatomas points out, a trainer who is a "human being" is likely to sympathize with you, and "exercise is only sustainable if we enjoy it."
Brighton-based marketing consultant Tom Burlett says he used to love exercise but lost motivation when he got into a relationship.
And then in January of this year, he and his partner received an invitation to the wedding and both decided to lose a predetermined number of kilograms to get in shape for that big day.
He discovered the app FitnessAI (Fitness AI), which uses a similar approach to Friletics - improving and personalizing all their exercises based on user data.
"I use data a lot in my business and I find it extremely useful to make sure you're constantly improving, so that whole concept was very close to me," says Burlett.
"One guilt factor in training can be that you always do the same repetitive set of exercises or lifts every week, so you don't push yourself every time.
"However, the app helped me there too by determining what I should try to achieve each week."
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And while Burlet took long breaks at the gym, two to three minutes between each set of exercises, the app's artificial intelligence helped him stay on course.
She gave him exact rest times, according to each specific exercise or weight lifting series and his personal performance.
He says that, overall, it helped him achieve the desired loss of 19 kilograms almost a month ahead of schedule.
The founder of FitnessAI, Jake Mohr, believes that the mathematical approach of artificial intelligence has more success than a personal trainer.
"FitnessAI does a ton of calculations behind the scenes to determine what your exercise plan should look like," he says.
"Although coaches are great motivators, they are not math professionals."
So perhaps it's not surprising that London-based personal trainer Amy Victoria Long disagrees with that analysis.
"Personal trainers are more expensive, but when you do one-on-one sessions, you can always check the individual's form, see if they're doing the exercises correctly," she says.
"You're making sure he doesn't get injured from the exercises he's doing, which you can't really get with an app.
"Also, I get to know not only their physical health, but also their mental state, because sometimes people train all the time, and that might not be the best for their mental health.
"And it won't show up on the app or it won't be able to recognize it."
Then again, fitness apps can sometimes help if they ask the user questions that a human trainer might not feel comfortable asking.
Take for example Janice (Jennis), the fitness application of British Olympic champion Jessica Ennis-Hill.
It asks users for data about their menstrual cycle, in order to better program their exercises.
Jessica explains: "The daily conversations we have with women through the app mean we regularly update recommendations, so you always get the sessions that best suit your hormonal profile."
"That, in turn, means you're doing what's right for your body, getting more out of your training and capitalizing on what your hormones are doing every day."
Former British soldier Rachel Carey (37) is a fan of the app.
After ovulation, she gets more strength-based exercises, while in the first 14 days of the menstrual cycle, she gets more intense exercises.
"Exercise recommendations based on cycle mapping are more physiologically relevant to what's going on inside me," Carey says.
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