iFitness from Medical Productions Inc calls itself the “solution for expensive personal trainers at your local gym” all for a one time cost of $1.99. While we may not totally agree totally with their claim, it does offer an inexpensive way to learn exercises, log and track your results that comes with 9 predefined cardio activities, 29 stretches and 100 exercises.

Overall iFitness does a very nice job in how it organizes, presents and explains exercises and stretches, in a visually appealing and easy to use display, and offers the ability to expand beyond the preset data.

While presented as an exercise program it’s nice to see that iFitness does offer cardio activities, even if in a limited way. If you are looking for either running, walking or hiking, you have to use the generic jogging activity.

More importantly is the fact that iFitness does address the often overlooked area of doing proper stretches for people to maintain their flexibility. Although a gentle reminder from the program to not forget to do them would be a nice feature. (iFitness also offers the ability to track you weight and a BMI calculator/tracker ability)

The main focus of iFitness is on exercises which can be accessed either from a list of preset body areas or by the ‘exercise by muscle’ option. The later brings up an interactive graphic of the human body muscular system from which you can tap the body area you would like to exercise to display a list of the Primary Target Exercises plus Secondary Exercises for that specific muscle.

Calling up any of the stretches or exercises brings up a realistic photo image of a person performing the exercise, and you can access a brief written explanation on how to perform it by tapping the double quotes icon. While a written explanation is a great feature it does not take the place of a personal trainer who can observe and adjust/correct your form or weight being used to ensure you are exercising in a safe and productive way.

A nice feature of iFitness is that it does not limit you just its predefined exercises, by allowing you the option to Add/Edit Custom Exercises. You can add as much information as you want, Exercise Name, Description, Image, Difficulty, but it will also integrate the Target Region and Target Muscles information you provide not only into the list of exercises by body area but also the interactive ‘exercise by muscle’. (It would be nice to see this ability expanded upon so you can add additional stretches and cardio activities.)

If you want to be able to track your progress and build a custom exercise routine you can take advantage of the ‘My Workout’ which allows you to select and organize your exercises, stretches and cardio activities into the routine you perform them in. iFitness does not limit you to just one ‘My Workout’ but allows you to create several if you would like to build your routines by day, body area or whatever criteria you want to define.

With a ‘My Workout’ created you can then enter your information for each exercise by entering the weight used (lbs or kg), the number of reps, a note if required and each entry of one exercise is treated as a set. (For cardio actives you can enter Duration, Calories, Speed, Average Heart Rate). If you would like do an exercise by time (preset to 60 or 180 seconds) you can utilize the stop watch function on the screen.

You can also visually track your progress using the Graph icon from 7, 14, 28 or 56 days and selecting any one of the parameters you entered. Even if you do not create a custom workout, you can simply select an exercise from the main list and still log the information and view a graph as well.

The one minor irritant about the graph function is that while the program runs in portrait mode, graph mode requires you to turn your device sideways, and the first time I used it I expected to see a done button or back arrow to return to the main program, which is actually done simply by tapping the graph.

If you need a preset workout, iFitness comes with a dozen routines covering everything from beginner, to body specific, and even a golf program (I won’t make any comments about a program created by medical professionals reinforcing any stereotypes some may have)

While the creators claim iFitness is the “solution for expensive personal trainers at your local gym” it does allow those who do use a personal trainer to be able to email your results either as a .csv file or a .pdf file. However while Excel imports the .csv file with no issues, the .pdf file creates an ‘unable to display’ message when I’ve tried to open the file iFitness created in either Abode Standard or Reader.

Bottom line is that for the meagre investment of $1.99 (motivation not included) iFitness is the most inexpensive way to learn, track and work towards a healthier lifestyle.