Fall In Love With A Yoga App Today

I’ve been experimenting with a few different yoga apps recently because I wanted to get into a habit of doing small amounts of manageable exercise. The reason for this is that my health issue causes me to have low exercise tolerance, and so far, none of my doctors can help improve it. My preference out of all the yoga apps I tried was ‘Yoga for Weight Loss-Yoga Daily Workout‘, which will be the yoga app I’ll talk about in this article.

 

 

The Benefits Of Using A Yoga App

 

• Exercise is not only good for your physical health, but your mental health.
• It’s a low-intensity way of improving flexibility and strength.
• Yoga apps like ‘Yoga for Weight Loss-Yoga Daily Workout‘ are good for setting yourself exercise challenges.
• Most yoga apps will allow you to set reminders so they’ll send you a notification for your preferred time to do your yoga session.
• Yoga can help with back pain.
• If you’re like me, you’re never more than a few feet from your phone, so you’ll always be able to do your yoga session whenever and wherever you want.
• Doing yoga is good for stress as part of your self-care.
• Yoga can improve balance, although I’ve yet to see improvements to my persistent postural-perceptual dizziness (PPPD) disorder.

 

 

My Yoga App Diary

 

Much like I did when I reviewed Woebot, I’ll do a two-week diary-style run of me using the yoga app, then review it. That way you can get the gist of what the app is like to use before I offer my review. But if you’re not interested in this two-week diary of me using the yoga app, then feel free to skip straight to the review. However, you may miss some of the issues with the app that I’d found.

 

Day 1

I set the yoga app up the night before, based on my weight, height, gender, and my lack of skill (started on the easy plan). I also set it for a 09.00 notification because I wanted to start the day by exercising, so I would be less likely to avoid doing it. So this should be interesting with my current lack of sleep.

 

I managed to do the first set of exercises, well, all but one. The one I struggled with was the downward-facing dog exercise, which wasn’t one within my ability to do accept in small bursts. Hopefully, I’ll get better with this particular exercise as I complete more of the sessions.

 

Day 2

Day two complete. One of the exercises, warrior 3, wasn’t easy due to my PPPD. Balancing on one leg while leaning forward with the other leg moving backwards into a standing superman like pose, is hard to do when you have dizziness and balance issues. But I got through it. 

 

 

I also struggled with the yoga squat because I couldn’t get close to the ground. Plus, my feet kept slipping further and further apart, which added to the difficulty. Nevertheless, I did my best and finished the exercise.

 

Day 3

I did this session before breakfast, which I hoped would help me lose weight by tapping into my fat stores for energy. But at the same time, due to my reactive hypoglycaemia and low exercise tolerance, I started to feel pretty rough halfway through. I managed to get through the session, however; I didn’t have anything ready to eat after finishing. I felt really weird and unwell on my feet some 10 minutes after the session while I was preparing my food. As a result, I decided to rethink doing using the yoga app before eating my first meal of the day, as the symptoms only reduced once I’d be able to eat.

 

Day 4

I ended up skipping the session for this day due to not being able to shake my reactive hypoglycaemia symptoms and my muscles aching from the day before.

 

 

Day 5

Back on it before breakfast. Today’s session was hard. The first exercise was hard due to my PPPD, as my balance sucks, then the planking rinsed my back, which always hurts, even on a good day, because I couldn’t hold the pose properly. Furthermore, because of my reactive hypoglycaemia and low exercise tolerance, I had to pause doing one of the exercises due to the severity of my symptoms. But I did return to doing the exercise after a minute, even though I felt terrible. Also, being a man got in the way of one of the exercises: chafing my family jewels.

 

It was a real struggle to get through this session’s exercises. When I started, I thought yoga was just about getting into a pose and holding it, so low cardio. However, the app gives a lot of exercises that require some cardio movements that are still too much for my reactive hypoglycaemia. Words can not express how awful I feel right now.

 

I ticked off day 5, which was meant to be my rest day, but I’d already taken my rest day for day 4.

 

 

Day 6

Today I did my yoga session after I’d had breakfast in the hope I wouldn’t feel so rough, which I didn’t. The only thing that let me down today was my back and muscle weakness, which really hampered my ability to fully do the last two exercises. However, I did wait about 2-3 hours after I had breakfast, so I’d left it a little late. Thus, once I finished exercising, I still felt too rough to proofread my articles for my blog, which was my task for afterwards.

 

Also, the first two exercises were basically the same, with the second exercise completely covering the first exercise, so the first exercise wasn’t needed. Let me explain that in more detail. The first exercise was to do ‘revolved easy pose variation hands left’ and only that for 60 seconds. The second exercise was to do ‘revolved easy pose variation hands right’ but for 120 seconds. However, that 120 seconds was split into doing half hands right and half hands left. Therefore, I split the last 60 seconds between hands right and hands left to even out both sides.

 

Day 7

Today’s exercises were more my speed, which was nice, as I hadn’t eaten in about four hours and was already feeling my reactive hypoglycaemia symptoms creeping up on me. However, somehow I managed to get through the session with no issues.

 

However, in the crescent low lunge pose, we didn’t switch legs at any point, even though the leg I was using to kneel in this pose was getting a stretch workout while I was doing this. It feels weird to not do the same exercise for the other leg. I think the yoga app might not have had a person check what exercises they put together for the three 30 day exercise sessions.

 

 

Day 8

A similar issue keeps popping up with these exercises, the ‘bridge raise one left leg’ was an exercise that got you to switch to the right leg halfway through, followed by the next exercise ‘bridge raise one right leg’ that was for the same length of time and also got you to switch legs halfway through. You’re just doing the same exercise twice.

 

Day 9

I thought today was a break day. But after checking the app, I’d miss read and the break day was day 10, so I’ll be doing day nine’s exercises on day 10.

 

Day 10

As stated, I did day nine’s exercises today with minimal issues.

 

 

Day 11

Today’s exercises were within my ability but taxing on my upper leg and knees, but nonetheless, I finished with ease. Although short of breath.

 

One thing that bugs me about these exercises is that when you’ve finished the last set in the session, there’s no sound to indicate it’s ended. What happens instead is the screen changes to an end of season screen which shows the time it took and the estimated calories burnt. Having the sound they use when the other exercises finish during the session also happens at the end of the session, shouldn’t be that hard. If you’re anything like me, you’ll have your own music playing while following the app and you won’t always be able to see the screen depending on what exercise you’re doing. Thus, the end of exercise sound would be really handy at the end of the session as well.

 

Day 12

This set of exercises was nice and easy, right up until the last one, downward-facing dog, my arch nemeses. I’m not very good at the downward-facing dog at all. I can’t get into the V shape they tell you to get into and I never have the muscle energy to hold the pose. It doesn’t help when the blood is rushing to my head, which antagonises my dizziness and light-headedness either.

 

I’ve now fully switched to doing the yoga app exercises before bed, as it seems to cause me fewer issues than doing it during the day. The difference is literally like night and day.

 

Day 13

Today’s session had a variation of the downward-facing dog, whereby you bend one leg at a time at the knee, then after you’ve done both legs you go into the plank pose, then back into downward facing dog. I’m still really struggling with the downward-facing dog, let alone its variations. I’m still unable to do the full allotted time for this kind of exercise without taking breaks while doing it. My bad back is a real problem. However, the rest of the session was fine and had a couple of exercises that seemed to stretch out my back, which helped with the pain.

 

Day 14

Today is another break day, so nothing to report.

 

 

Other Features On The Yoga App

 

They have a section where there are different sessions you can choose that are for different requirements. For example, they have a session designed for knee pain and correcting posture. You can also customise your own plan in that section, which the app will then take you through. However, to open some of the additional sessions in the discovery section or to create your own, you first need to earn enough points by using the yoga app, doing the exercises, checking in, and watching advertising videos (if you want to speed up the point collecting process).

 

The app also offered a limited meal suggestion. However, I didn’t follow any of their meal advice as it’s not well suited for my reactive hypoglycaemia nor the amount of effort I’m willing to put into cooking due to my lack of motivation.

 

 

App Update

 

I’ve been using the app for about 40 days when they brought out an app that adds a notable change. Now when you start your daily exercise session, the app asks you if you want to do add a two-minute warm-up session.

 

If you didn’t agree to the warm-up you get a set of nine exercises, but if you agree to the warm-up, you get a different set of exercises for the session, with a set of 12 exercises in total. At least that was the case while I was still working through the 30 days ‘normal’ yoga exercise plan. However, that seemed to have been fixed, so now you just get an extra few short exercises to start your session with.

 

The warm-up is doesn’t add anything different, it just gives you a few extra exercises, which you do for smaller time frames than the main exercises. Although, I guess all the yoga exercises are basically warm-up exercises in the first place.

 

 

The Review

 

Apart from the few minor things I mentioned in my diary-style play through of my experience, the yoga app is pretty good. For me personally, doing the exercises before bed was better suited to my health issues, although I couldn’t tell you why.

 

The main thing that bugged me with the app is that I completed the easy plan, doing the full 30 days, but it only says it’s 96% complete. I find this really annoying every time I look at it. It doesn’t affect anything on the app, I just find it annoying. I wondered if starting the normal plan would get me the last 4%, but it didn’t move to 100% after completing the first day of the normal plan. When I completed the normal plan, that at least showed 100% but the easy plan still remains at 96%. It shouldn’t bother me, but it does.

 

 

This isn’t a problem, per se, just something I’m wondering about the app and its calorie counter, because of the massive difference between this app and another yoga app I had tried. The ‘calories used’ count for this yoga app seems to be very generous for such a short amount of exercise. Especially when compared to ‘Yoga For Beginners | Workouts for the mind & body!‘ who put the same kind of exercises at around 18-33 calories rather than the 152 calories average I’ve been seeing on this ‘Yoga for Weight Loss-Yoga Daily Workout‘.

 

It’s possible that because ‘Yoga For Beginners | Workouts for the mind & body!‘ mainly uses yoga poses you hold rather than repeatedly going in and out of for each poses like on ‘Yoga for Weight Loss-Yoga Daily Workout‘ that you’ll burn more calories. But it just feels like it’s a lot more than you’d expect. Obviously, this isn’t my area of expertise, so I could be wrong, but it would be nice if the app explained how it calculates the calories burned for their exercises sets.

 

Furthermore, it’s a shame the daily session exercises seemed to have been put together by an algorithm rather than by a person who’d check that the exercises were evened out for both sides of the body. Seems like a careless oversight to not check that. Wouldn’t take long to do.

 

Also, I get that they wanted to motivate you to watch the advertising videos, but the points system doesn’t make sense. You get 500 points to watch an ad, but only 200 points for checking in three days in a row, 100 points for finishing five sessions, and another 100 points for completing 100 hours of exercising. The points for watching an ad are just too high in comparison to everything else you can get points for.

 

I’m not sure if I’m imagining it, but it seems like the app skips an exercise sometimes when they’re meant to be the same exercises but switching legs.

 

One of the great things about this yoga app is its animated yoga instructor, which makes it easier to figure out the moves than going by the voice description alone. However, if that’s not enough, before you start the yoga session you can pre-check the exercises which all have a video icon, you can click to see a real person demonstrate the exercise while talking you through it. Both are really handy features.

 

Also, the ability to create your own yoga sessions for the app to then guide you through means you can tailor a series of exercises that met your needs. For me, a combination of back, knee, and posture exercises are something I’m trying to create as I put together my own session. There are so mnay exercises to pick from that it may take some time to do, but it’ll be worth it.

 

Overall, I would recommend this ‘Yoga for Weight Loss-Yoga Daily Workout‘ as a yoga app everyone should try, although I’ve only compared it to one other yoga app in this review. However, I do want to keep using the yoga app and now do a session from the app with my partner during our weekly workout by video chat. Therefore, I give ‘Yoga for Weight Loss-Yoga Daily Workout‘ 4/5.

 

 

If you’d like to download this app and give it a go, you can do so by clicking here or clicking the button below to be taken to the Google Play Store.

 

 

As always, leave your feedback in the comments section below. Also, feel free to share your experiences of using this yoga app or any yoga app in the comments section below as well. Don’t forget to bookmark my site and if you want to stay up-to-date with my blog, then sign up for my newsletter below. Alternatively, get push notifications for new articles by clicking the red bell icon in the bottom right corner.

 

Lastly, if you’d like to support my blog, you can make a donation of any size below. Until next time, Unwanted Life readers.