The one feature Apple Fitness Plus was missing is finally here. Here’s everything you need to know about Gym Strength
Latest from Tom's Guide ·
Jane McGuire is Tom's Guide's Fitness Managing Editor, which means she looks after everything fitness-related — from running gear and fitness trackers to yoga mats and sports bras. An avid runner, Jane has tested and reviewed fitness products for the past five years, so she knows what to look for when finding a good running watch or a pair of shorts with pockets big enough for your smartphone, running gels, and house keys. Jane has run six marathons — the London Marathon five times, and the Berlin Marathon once -and is still on a quest to tick off all of the marathon majors. Her marathon PR is 3:30, which she ran in the New Balance Supercomp Elite V5's, but she also spends a lot of time talking about her ‘joy plan’, where she runs for happiness, not for PR’s. Previous to Tom’s Guide, Jane worked for Runner’s World, where she co-hosted the Runner’s World podcast. She also presents on a YouTube channel called the Run Testers, alongside other running-mad journalists, where they review the latest shoes, kit, and tech. Her work has also appeared in Coach, Get Sweat Go, and Women’s Health. When she's not pounding the pavements, you'll find Jane striding round the Surrey Hills, taking far too many photos of her spaniel, Toby.
I’ve been writing about Apple Fitness Plus since it launched in December 2020 — what started as workouts with your favorite trainers has evolved into a much larger ecosystem, and this might be one of its most exciting transformations to date. Today, Apple has announced new Gym Strength plans, launching on Fitness Plus.
These personalized four-week training plans move away from group classes and more towards helping users reach their own fitness goals. The plans are progressive and work with larger commercial gyms, as well as with minimal equipment at home. Let’s dive into everything you can expect from this update:
Gym Strength is designed to take the guesswork out of the gym. You’ll find it in the Fitness Plus menu, and you’ll be asked to answer a few questions before you begin. This helps the algorithm to create a programme best suited to you. You’ll input how familiar you are with strength training, your goal, the areas of your body you want to work, the days of the week you prefer to work out on, and, most importantly, the equipment you have available.
Once you’ve got your plan, you can turn on Apple Intelligence-powered training notes, or leave them off. The note is designed to summarize your progress and give you an overview of how this workout can help you reach your goals.
One of the most difficult things about working out alone is making sure you’re moving with good form. You can move through the Gym Strength workouts at your own pace, with your own music, but each exercise will be demoed by a Fitness Plus trainer to ensure you’re getting the form right. You can tap on the video to expand it and see the trainer from three different angles.
Each exercise has recommended sets, reps, and load, depending on what you’ve lifted before and what you are hoping to achieve. You can easily tap Swap on an exercise if you just don’t want to do it, and swap out the equipment available if you’re in a busy gym and don’t want to wait.
On-screen, you’ll also see a dynamic bar, which shows you at a glance how you’re progressing through your workout.
Of course, this is Apple, so seamless integration is a given. You can see your exercises, reps, and load from your wrist if you’re using an Apple Watch during the workout, as well as what’s coming next.
You can also see your heart rate data and how many calories you’ve burned.
Unlike a strength plan you’ve downloaded from the internet or grabbed from ChatGPT, the Gym Strength plans are designed to progress with you session by session. With input from the Fitness Plus strength trainers, the plans give you an estimated load when suggesting an exercise you’ve not done before. Using your inputs, the plan will tell you when it thinks you need to increase the weight you’re lifting, based on your past performances.
I’ll be grabbing some weights and heading to the gym to test my own Gym Strength plan over the next few weeks. Watch this space!