I Put To Test A Fitness App And Here’s What Happened

You’ve probably seen them on social media by now and if you haven’t, then you’ve no doubt heard about them somewhere in the fitness industry. I mean, I only took note of them when Instagram began advertising a few different fitness apps and to be honest, I can’t say it sounded like something that would interest me. I mean, I enjoy CrossFit. I enjoy working out from my box and I enjoy what my coached teach me. What else would there be to learn? Especially from an app that could potentially be filled with nothing but your regular PT knowledge.

Personally, when it comes to working with gym PT’s (personal trainer’s) I’ve only ever experienced the norm. Nothing unusual, nothing too exciting and nothing that blew my socks off. Just the usual – bob’s your uncle – exercises.

However, when Peach contacted me a month or two ago asking if I would like to try out their London based fitness app my immediate response was ‘no thank you’. But then a minute or two later I started to question myself. Why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I trial out something that could possibly be the next big thing in the industry or potentially the next big flop? More so, why shouldn’t I let my followers know of the upcoming trends in the fitness industry and let them in with my most honourable and honest approach. So I thought why the heck not and from there we arranged a date to meet where I could put Peach, a personalised personal training app, to the test.

On Monday 15th March, at precisely 2.30pm, I met Peach at my local CrossFit box. Personal trainer and founder, Tim Hayes, travelled down from London with his team to meet up with me for an hour and a half, to not only give me insight into his fitness app, Peach, but to give me a personalised training session of whatever I wanted. Perfect. Something CrossFit related please. 

Beforehand, I discussed with Tim over the phone that in order for this to be relatable to my blog and I, I wanted to focus on training that was relatable to CrossFit. Otherwise, going back to regular gym movements and gym machine exercises would not only be completely pointless, but it wouldn’t represent the kind of training I do nowadays. Luckily Tim was perfectly happy to work with what I wanted and therefore, we focused on two movements on the day – the deadlift and squat. Two key movements that are massively important for not only strength, but for my overall progress when it comes to CrossFit.

Why deadlifts and squats?

At the beginning of CrossFit, I decided to strip back the weight on both my squats and deadlifts and instead, focus on my form. I’ll be the first to admit that during my gym days, I allowed my ego to overtake my common sense and therefore, it was always weight > form. A bad and messy habit. 

Since stripping back the weight for my squats I’ve now worked my way up to a comfortable 50kg for 8-10 reps. However, any more weight and I start to feel my body tilting forward, a drive coming from the front of my feet and a whole lot of quad action happening. Definitely no booty action from me. 

As for my deadlifts, I know I have a slight curve at the bottom of my back and in turn, my lower back does a lot of the work rather than my glutes which is definitely a big no no.

So what is Peach?

Before Tim got started with my PT session he gave me an in-depth understanding of the fitness app he founded and what Peach stands for.

“Peach is the new standard in personal training. Grounded in the principles of cutting-edge bio mechanics and neural psychology we help pro athletes recover from injury, celebrities get ready for the red carpet and give time poor Londoners a fitness solution they have never experienced until now. We guide your body and mind through a new standard. We are Peach personal trainers.”

Tim wanted me to understand that Peach wasn’t just an ordinary fitness app led by ordinary trainers that would go through the basics with me. No. He wanted me to understand that in order to change the way our body and mind performs, that we need to move it the way it was designed to move through a completely new standard of personal training. Ok, so not the usual PT standards, huh?

So how does it work?

Simply download the app, find the trainer that would best suit your needs by looking at their bio, specialities, pricing, schedule, location of where your PT would train you qualifications, and lastly, their location. Finally, hit the ‘get in touch’ button (you’ll need to sign up – it’s free) and tell them what you’re after! It’s that easy.

My personalised training session with Peach trainer, Tim Hayes

First things first… Tim tells me to remove my trainers and socks. Oh, and get rid of my chewing gum for health and safety reasons too. Ok, I think. What the heck have I signed myself up for? Once I remove my shoes and socks, Tim explains to me about the 3 planes of movement our body experiences when it moves.

3 planes of movement: Our body moves in three motions: forward and back (sagittal plane), side to side, right and left (frontal plane), and rotates right and left (transverse plane). A traditional deadlift is a sagittal plane. When it comes to training, you need to get your body moving in all 3 plane movements beforehand – not just the one which many of us our guilty of. For more information about this then check this post out – it goes into depth about how using all 3 planes of motions can help improve our mobility and in turn, help improve our fitness performance.

After Tim made sure I understood the 3 planes of movement fully, we got to work with my squat. Firstly, Tim made me perform air squats in different positions with my arms above my head. This allowed him to see the placement of my feet and how far my knees bended forwards and sideways. Straight away it was obvious to Tim that my left foot worked it’s way forward (only slightly) and this in turn made the weight of the barbell uneven and left one quad to do a lot more work than the other. In order to fix this, Tim worked my lower body in 3 planes of movement. I squatted on one leg, I squatted with my hands above my head rotating to the floor on my left side and a few other movements that all seemed a little bizarre to me at the time. Never, in my 3 years of training, have I performed these kind of moves.

After 10 minutes of performing these somewhat demanding moves (they weren’t easy – let me tell you that) to improve my range of motion in my lower body, Tim got me to perform my squat again with a barbell and within those few seconds, my mind was blown. In the space of 10 minutes Tim had controlled and manipulated my body into a movement to allow my body to become familiar with it and with that, my squat had increased massively in such a small amount of time. My feet were aligned, both of my quads were working together and most importantly, I was pushing through the heels of my feet to ensure my glute’s were in control. And after what felt like month’s of quad activation, I could suddenly feel my glutes working and engaging when I performed a squat.

Once Tim had improved my squat we then moved onto the deadlift. Just like the squat, Tim worked my hips to feel all 3 planes of movement (through a series of movements) and he then analysed my deadlift with weight to see what my form was like. Instantly he was able to see the arch in my back when I reached a certain point. With that, Tim then created a movement specifically for me in that range to improve on (where my back began to arch) in order for my back to get stronger when exposed to that certain position.

With the movement he created he then got me to move (pulsing a few inches up and down) for 30 seconds to help my body adjust to it. I held this movement whilst holding an empty 15kg barbell and let me tell you… it was a struggle! Never have I ever broke a sweat from just from holding a bar. But I suppose it just goes to show you how weak that particular movement was for me. I repeated Tim’s movement (pulsing in my weak spot) two more times whilst rotating to the left and to the front (view the landscape picture above). After that, Tim then got me to try my deadlift again and as you can see from this video, there was an instant improvement in my lower back. Bam, just like that, my deadlift had improved in 10 minutes. Like I said earlier, my tiny little mind was blown. 

So what did I think about the personalised fitness app, Peach? 

Ok, ok. So I was wrong. I was wrong for stereotyping the app and I was certainly wrong to ever doubt the experience Tim and his app, Peach had. In all honestly, the whole experience blew my mind. And you know what? I’m glad it did. I’m glad that in the upcoming industry, people have access to a fitness app like Peach that not only provides extreme knowledge of health and fitness but an insight to a completely different way to train.

Sometimes along our journey we need to meet people who help us open up our minds a little and fill it with more knowledge and experiences of their own. For that, I am grateful to the app, Peach for showing me a completely different way to mobilise my body that in turn, will help me with my overall fitness performance.

In the space of an hour and a half, I had learnt a whole new way to mobilise my body, improve my strength, form and overall fitness performance thanks to one tiny little app. Was I wrong to have doubts? Absolutely. Would I recommend Peach to anyone? Absolutely.

Nowadays, the fitness industry is filled with far too many PT qualifications that are quickly achieved online and quite often, in the scary time of a few months. Instead, we need increased education, a key understanding of how the body works and people who have seen, felt and experienced the human body – not just through the screen of an online fitness course. And thanks to Peach, you get exactly that.

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Whilst this is a sponsored post, I told Peach that I would provide them with an honest review of my time trialling the app and an honest review I have provided. All words, thoughts and opinions are my own.