Find a path to health and relaxation using this course-driven app.
Years ago, I put myself on the road to be physically fit and in good health. I made some amazing strides, but as life happens, I now find myself in a position where I need to restart that healthier lifestyle. Today, there are many more opportunities for me to connect with health and wellness tools through my tech devices. One of the methods of exercise that I’ve found to be both relaxing and strengthening is yoga. I’ve always enjoyed yoga and in the past, I’ve found it to be a good building block for other wellness ventures. So, I decided to start my new wellness journey with a yoga app and I decided to give Daily Yoga – Yoga Fitness Plan for iOS a try. It’s a top-ranked fitness app in the App Store and you can start with it at no charge to you.
Details
Daily Yoga is a true yoga app for beginners up through advanced gurus. The app offers more than 500 asanas, 200 guided classes of yoga, pilates, meditation, 50+ workout plans, and more than 10 coaches workshops to get you started. The app is a ‘freemium’ style app that is free to download, but has many in-app purchases and subscription offers to consider. You can successfully use the app and its yoga courses without purchasing a pro subscription, but you end up running into some adds throughout the process. Daily Yoga is designed to help you stay with yoga workouts every day and also provides health benefits for your mind and body.
FEATURES
- More than 250 yoga sessions and fitness programs, bundles of guided meditation tracks, 500+ yoga poses, and 37 yoga music for BGM
- 50+ Scheduled plans focused on beginners, weight control, body sculptor, glowing skin, strength & flexibility, inner shine, etc.
- 16:9 HD Videos with live voice instructions
- 3 different intensities for your choice
- Various duration of your choice
- New contents added continuously each month
- Works on iPod, iPhone, and iPad
User Experience
Getting started with Daily Yoga is easy. You do have to sign-up with your email or Facebook login but then you have full access to all the app’s free features. Once you get through the login options, you will be asked if you are a beginner, intermediate, or advanced user. You will then be presented with a list of potential plans that might work for you. I opted to skip through this to see the rest of the app before I committed to a plan. The first thing I saw when I tapped on ‘skip’ was an ad for one of the pro subscriptions. I selected ‘No, Thanks’ and moved on. I discovered after closing the app and reopening it, that the same ad appears each time.
Navigating the app can be a little intimidating if you don’t know what you are looking for. There are five categories at the bottom of the screen to choose from — home, exercises, audio options, community, and settings/profile. When I download the app, I was just looking to do some simple exercises to alleviate the strain I was feeling in my back from sitting at my desk for so long. Fortunately, there is a search function when you go to the exercises menu. I typed in “back” and was given several different classes to choose from. The majority of them were for pro users only but there was one option of “Daily Yoga for Back”. So, I downloaded it and moved through several of the poses. I really liked how easy it was to find a class of exercises that was specified to be for certain problems and I loved that I had the option to stop after a few poses if I wanted. There was also a timing selection — 10, 15, 20 minutes — so that you can make a decision about what you can fit into your schedule.
The only thing I really am not a fan of is the incessant ads that pop-up throughout the use of the app. In addition to the one that appears when you start up the app, you will meet several others when you have to pause a workout. I had to do that a few times and each time I paused or locked my iPhone screen, there was an ad waiting for me. I also wish the pro features were a bit more affordable. Daily Yoga has auto-renewing subscription options including $12.99/month (1 month), $1.67/month (12 months), or $199.99 (Lifetime). Even though the app is consistently updated with new content, I feel like that is a bit much. I think it can be argued that if you were joining a health club, then you would be paying is the neighborhood of $40/month or more with a 12-month commitment.
Conclusions
Overall, I’m really glad I downloaded this app because it does help get you back into the swing of things. I wish that it was a little less heavy-handed when it comes to trying to get you to subscribe but think if you use it consistently enough that the pro features are worth it.
For more information, visit dailyyoga.com.
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