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High Intensity Interval Training, or HIIT for short, is all the range these days. HIIT are workouts that combine Aerobic training and Strength training all in one, allowing people to save time. Everybody is so busy these days that it’s no wonder why hit is all the rage these days. Of course, the team at Down dog has thrown their hat in the HIIT ring by releasing their own app. Titled Down Dog HIIT, it is part of the suite of down dog apps that I’ve been reviewing (watch the other videos in the series as well). Is this app as good as their other offerings or should you go hit up another app? Does an obese man like me burn a lot of calories doing HIIT based training with this app? Let’s see with this review of Down Dog HIIT.
[Intro]
First, let’s get started with an overview of the app. You can always skip around the chapters of the video by clicking the links below in the description. Down Dog HIIT, just like their other apps, is an auto-generative toolset. The app will create a workout based on the settings you choose from. This auto-generative nature allows for a ton of different combinations ensuring a unique workout each and every day. The app is available for purchase along with the rest of Down Dogs Suite of applications for just sixty bucks a year or ten dollars a month.
That yearly price is not a bad price with it being twenty dollars cheaper than Apple Fitness for us iPhone users. Apple Fitness is probably the closest app in comparison to Down Dog in popularity. Seriously though with it having a four-point nine-star rating across over fifty-thousand ratings down dog is among the most popular items I am reviewing. That’s just the App store with this puppy also available for you Android users. I am still hoping for a VR version as well at some point! Hey a man can dream.
Once you login with your Down Dog account, the HITT app has just an insane number of options that can custom tailor the workout to fit your needs. First, you have the circle control here that you can move to set how many minutes you want your workout to be. It goes from a brisk four minutes to eighty minutes of torcher. Swiping up brings you the settings for your practice, timing and music.
In practice we have the mix option. This will be what you want your workout to be. Opening it up you can change the sliders on how much you want your workout to be focused on Aerobic, Legs, Upper body, core and the glutes. There are also toggles if you want to include dumbbells, Fitness bands or a chair. Tons of possible combinations but if you don’t want to mess around with them you can choose a pre-defined mix. They got everything from a Total Body Shred to a day of Plank hell to abs focused cardio workout. There are so many different possibilities and I just love the variety in this option. I’ll get to my specific time doing the workout later but I tried to do a different one across the thirty days I was using this app and never hit the same routine. They update the app nearly every other month so I assume there will be new workouts thrown in constantly.
Once you choose your mix you can choose your practice type. Either Rotation, switch body parts over the course of the workout and repeat later on or progression, hit one body part then move on to the next from aerobic to glutes. From there you can set your upper body, lower body and core level which will increase or decrease your workout. You can chance the speakers voice and the model of the video. Lastly you can change how much explanation you need for the workout. A setting that Wii Fit desperately needed.
Below that you can change the timing which includes how long you want to warm up and cool down. As a side note I’ve always kept this on auto and recommend you do the same. Need to prevent injury by making your body limber enough to do the movies. After those settings you can adjust the intervals and recovery period to fit your fitness skill. Lastly there is music which allows you to pick your style. From basic pop to electro dance there are a few good choices. No Rock or Rap though which is dumb cause that’s what I most workout music people listen to is.
All of these options explained above allows for way more customizability than traditional pre-recorded workouts. However, it does all of this at the expense of losing the personal feeling. Honestly, like I said in my review of Down Dog Meditation I feel that categories with a larger skill difference like Yoga and HIIT do work better having a step-by-step course layout. That way, you can build up your skill to the point where the automatic generative workouts are more benefit. This is coming from a three-hundred-pound man whose workouts were still a bit too much even at level zero. I would want both paths and an automatic generative workout. Basically, I want my cake and to eat it too.
After your workout you can download it to your phone and use it in offline practice. There is also a calendar view that shows you your practice score. You can set up weekly goals here as well. There is a history of all workouts if you’d want to repeat a specific day. I actually use this option a lot to find the hot jams I’d want to add to the playlist. Lastly, settings which is just settings.
Now let’s get into my personal time on the application. I usually try and do sixty days for my reviews but instead did thirty days due to schedule conflicts. Within these thirty days I wanted to see at least some improvement in my cardiovascular health. I can say that I did definitely feel the burn and was sweating a lot with these workouts. Down Dog HIIT was just kicking my butt pretty regularly. Again, I am a nearly three-hundred-pound man who works as a software developer. I don’t have a ton of time dedicated to workout out which is why I started this YouTube Channel. You guys basically force me to work out which is good for my health. The styling of HIIT was perfect for me as I could squeeze a workout in before going to my home office. Also, I already have bands and a dumbbell set so everything is all ready to go.
I like to go into depths in these reviews so to cover all areas of the app I wanted to do each mix at least once. There are like twenty different options so it was definitely feasible. I set my workout time for a total of eighteen minutes per session which is within the realms of my physical capabilities. I pretty much accomplished these two aspects although I stayed far away from the mix titled “plank hell” because I know my limits. Overall did most of the workouts having to quite a few days with my weak core causing me cramps. Also, there were times where I completely forgot to start the app before doing the warm-up so some days may or may not count that. The app kicked my butt as you can probably see how sweaty I got after day 1:
[Day 1]
Here is my detailed table of the workouts over the course of the thirty days. From this table I can get a few statistics. Thanks Excel! Hopefully I did the math right on this cause otherwise the internet is going to make me look like an idiot. Over the course of the thirty days, I burned four-thousand one-hundred and thirty-six calories. That gives me a total workout of a hundred and thirty-seven calories per workout. Total time spent with the app is six hours and fifty-eight minutes. That is giving me an average time per workout of fourteen minutes and twenty-five seconds. That gives me a burn rate of Calories per minute of nine point six seven which is high. That does include the cool down stretches that I did which takes up fifteen percent of the workout. Ignoring that will give me a calorie per rate of probably close to thirteen.
In the past I said that Down Dog is my favorite Suite of applications and Down Dog HIIT continues that trend. While there are some changes, I wish could be made it is none the less one of the pest apps on the app store and possibly even better than Apple Fitness. It’s got both the Apple and Android fans happy and that’s all you can really do. I know as an obese man my fitness journey will never stop so it’s nice to know where is quality to be found to help me on my journey. Sure, there are things I would like to have added such as a journey of workouts to build up particular skills, a calorie counter and way more music style options. As is this app being still amongst my highest rated of all time.
Did you try down dog? Go ahead and leave a comment below letting me know if you like it or not. I try to respond to each and every comment posted. If you haven’t tried down dog then you can leave me a suggestion on what to review next. This whole series I’m doing on Down Dog was actually started from a comment thread that I referenced in my first video. Continue that trend by leaving a suggestion below. Will do anything within the realm of self-improvement. Subscribe to the YouTube channel and visit my website at jack-jenkins.com. Lastly, I want all you guys watching to have an incredible day. If you are wondering how we can improve… well we can improve together.