This Apple Fitness feature completely changed the way I exercise Digital trends

I have a confession to make: I’m not good at sticking to a workout routine. I love running, high intensity interval training (HIIT), strength training, etc. In the moment of these exercises and in the post-workout euphoria, I feel amazing. But when it comes to waking up early in the morning to do these things before work? Well, that’s where I am really fight.

This has been a problem for a long time. I go to bed with the goal of waking up early and going to the gym, but as I tearfully open my eyes to snooze the alarm on my iPhone 15 Pro Max, I end up falling back asleep. And I have repeated this over and over again.

But that didn’t happen last week. No. Last week I woke up on time with my early alarm, hit the gym, and did a variety of different workouts including treadmill running, core workouts, and strength training routines. what changed I found the custom plans feature in the Apple Fitness app.

Apple added custom plans to its Fitness app as part of iOS 17 last fall. The idea is quite simple. Apple lets you create an Apple Fitness+ workout routine plan customized to your liking. You can choose the days of the week you want to exercise, the total workout time per day, the length of your plan, and what types of activity you want your plan to include. If you want to achieve really specific, you can even choose your favorite trainers and the music you want in your workouts.

Once your custom plan is created, it will appear prominently at the top of the Fitness+ page in the Fitness app. Touching Your Plan shows all workouts planned for the current day, plus a Monday-Sunday view of the current week (with a green circle indicating which days are workout days).

At first, I didn’t expect to get much out of it. If I didn’t get up to go to the gym, what was this mini pre-selected workout calendar? really will you do for me Surprisingly, a lot.

One of my biggest obstacles to exercise is not knowing what to do. I love the library of exercises available in Apple Fitness+, but it can be daunting to sift through everything and figure out what to choose. This means scrolling through training videos a lot and not feeling particularly motivated or confident about which one to choose. This frustration leads you to decide not to exercise that day. Which turns into another lost gym day… and another. Before you know it, it’s been a couple of months before you’ve had a consistent workout routine. Wow!

Custom plans are the solution to all of this.

Now, when I wake up in the morning, all I have to do is get dressed, fill my water bottle and go to the gym. When I get there, I open the Apple Fitness app and have a list of workouts to do. I don’t have to stress about picking the “right” workouts, get distracted while scrolling to pick one, or anything like that. I open the app, tap that day’s workout, and then start working my butt.

The best part? The workouts that Apple chooses for me are great. Last Tuesday, I started with an upper body strength training routine and a core workout. Wednesday was a treadmill/core day, while Thursday was a longer body workout. It’s exactly the kind of variety that I used to try to create myself, but now, for me, it’s all about the background.

Of course, all of this comes with a looming question: Will I really stick with this long-term? That remains to be seen. At the time of posting, I’m less than two weeks into the five-week plan I created for myself. But so far, I’m loving every second of it.

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