Apple Fitness+ gains pregnancy workouts, older adults training, and Jane Fonda

AppleInsider

Jane Fonda is the latest celebrity to contribute her story to Time to Walk on Apple Fitness+, and her addition comes alongside new workouts for pregnant women, plus older adults.

Jane Fonda on Apple Watch's Time to Walk series

As Pelotron cuts back its support for Apple Watch fitness, Apple itself continues to build out its Apple Fitness+ program.

"Apple Fitness+ is integrated with Apple Watch to build on the goal of helping people live a better day by being more active," said Jay Blahnik, Apple's senior director of Fitness Technologies, in a statement. "With more options for getting started, and staying active and healthy during pregnancy as well as at any age or fitness level, we hope even more people will be inspired to keep moving with our amazing team of passionate trainers."

A new trainer is joining the Apple Fitness+ team too. Jonelle Lewis will be coming on board as a Yoga and Mindful Cooldown instructor. Anja Garcia, who is an existing trainer, will also start producing HIIT classes.

The new updates, and new trainers, will be available on Apple Fitness+ from April 19, 2021, just ahead of Earth Day. From that date, author, actor and activist Jane Fonda will share "inspiring stories, photos, and a few of her favorite songs," in what Apple calls the next episode of its Time to Walk series.

New workouts

Apple says that there are going to be new weekly studio sessions on yoga, strength, and High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) designed for novice users. These new workouts, which will be in the newly-created "Workouts for Beginners" category, are designed to be more approachable as to not alienate users who are new to the classes.

There will also be a new series of 10 workouts for pregnancy, lead by trainer Betina Gozo. Each workout is 10 minutes long and designed to work with any stage pregnancy, as well as any fitness level.

Similarly, new Workouts for Older Adults are 10-minute sessions focusing on helping "users stay active at any age."

Both of these new additions are intended to be used either on their own, or in conjunction with other Apple Fitness+ workouts.

Apple Fitness+ is a program of on-demand workouts available via a combination of Apple Watch and Apple TV. It's available as a standalone subscription for $9.99 per month, or as part of the Apple One Premiere bundle which costs $29.95 per month.

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Beats

Nice!!

Looks like Fitness+ will be Apple’s shining star compared to Arcade and TV at this point.

P.S.
Apple should drop the “Apple” from these service names when talking about them and allow the public to subliminally fill in the gap like they do iPhone and iPad.

”Apple Fitness Plus”, “Apple TV Plus” are too long of names. I still don’t get why there’s a “+” on Fitness if there’s no demo version. Arcade doesn’t have a “+” for that reason. It’s all too complicated. 

bakerzdosen

Some of us can't forgive and forget. Bad move Apple.

[Deleted User]

bakerzdosen said:

Some of us can't forgive and forget. Bad move Apple.

Presumably, you are bent out of shape about Jane Fonda. And while it is certainly true that some people are still hung up on her opposition to the Vietnam war, that group is tiny, doesn't fit in Apple's demographics and is generally irrelevant. Also, it isn't like Apple hasn't associated itself with other people that spoke out against that war. Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Muhammad Ali, Yoko Ono, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King Jr. just to name a few. 

Anyway, I think this part of the Think Different ad is more or less Apple's response to people in your shoes who are upset that Jane Fonda exists:

"You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them."

TellyTubby

“Hanoi Jane” sat on an anti aircraft gun laughing with her North Vietnamese friends was a disgraceful act in a disgraceful conflict. I’d no more use her services than those of Nixon if he were still around.

mknelson

TellyTubby said:

“Hanoi Jane” sat on an anti aircraft gun laughing with her North Vietnamese friends was a disgraceful act in a disgraceful conflict. I’d no more use her services than those of Nixon if he were still around.

And she knows and has admitted it! (Handlers, not "friends")
 
https://time.com/5116479/jane-fonda-hanoi-jane-nickname/

At least nobody posted the whole, very disproven, POW story that often circulates in some circles.

matrix077

Jane Fonda may be too liberal for my liking (and before someone asked, one could be too conservative for my liking as well) but I just couldn't care less for what she did 40-50 years ago. US fought Vietnam war for a wrong reason, and in the end Reagan beat Soviet empire anyway so who cares?

bestkeptsecret

Jane Fonda or not, I hope Apple opens up Fitness+ to the rest of us soon.

GeorgeBMac

AppleInsider said:

....
Similarly, new Workouts for Older Adults are 10-minute sessions focusing on helping "users stay active at any age."

....

It's not clear how Apple will approach this, but this "Workouts for Older Adults" is a destructive harmful type of ageism.

As a home health nurse I came to realize that most of my patients were sick and debilitated not by their years but because they had failed to take care of themselves -- and there was nothing the medical industry could do to reverse that.  A big part of the trouble is the expectation that "You (first) get old, then you get sick and then you die" -- which makes the person a helpless victim of the calendar unable to control their own future -- and the result is that many spend the last 10 or 20 years of their life sick and debilitated.

Conversely, I belong to "Runners 70 years old and up" group where members run anywhere from 3 miles to and beyond 50K ultras -- along with some doing triathlons -- and some are quite fast (8 minute miles).   The members of that group are very much aware of their age but choose to maintain their level of health and fitness with healthy lifestyles as best they can.

But, "Workouts for Older Adults" (meaning the workout is aimed at a debilitated individual) feeds the former paradigm.  The one that tells people that they are helpless victims of the calendar because they will "First get old, then get sick, then die".   While nobody contests the first or the last of that saying, much of the middle ("get sick") can be either aggrevated or relieved by the lifestyle they choose.

...  For myself at 70, I am stronger, faster and healthier than I was 30 years ago at 40.

...  My 14 year old grandson wants to take up running but tells me:  "I couldn't keep up with you"

The problem is less with the training (some need a whimpy, easy "chair workout") than the message it sends:

Trainers need to set their training based on the fitness level of the person they are training -- NOT their age!

Telling people to judge their workout based on their age rather than their fitness level sends the exact wrong message.   The exact opposite of what a health couch should be sending.