As I mentioned in a previous blog post, the lockdown has led me to trying different styles of training, and even taken on some of the online programmes that are available to people. There are so many paid and free apps available, and one that caught my initial interest is the Undersun fitness programmes. I had heard James Grage speak on a fitness podcast some months ago, and I since I don’t have a lot of any weights at home, I went ahead and decided to see what he offered with his bands.
His website offers equipment (fitness bands, door anchors,etc) and also fitness and nutrition plans. They provide a facebook group for customers, which they offer as a way for customers to encourage and support each other.
I haven’t tried everything they have to offer on the site, but I have had a go through some of their fitness programmes and have a few thoughts. Specifically, I tried James’ strength programme, and Nik’s HIIT&Tabata programme.
The price may be people’s initial concern, but the website does say they offer a guarantee – one page says 30 days, the other says 90, so I’m not sure which is true(this is an example of my criticisms, which I’ll come to later).
I obviously wasn’t going to be purchasing the bands, as they ship from the US and I can find perfectly fine resistance bands within the UK.
As for the programmes and coaches – there’s plenty to like about them. Both James and Nik come across as very positive, people and while Nik is more ‘enthusiastic’ than James, I don’t find her over the top, like I’ve seen with some other programmes, and I think the actual programme designs, overall, give you a good workout (though I find James’s programme a little more balanced than Nik’s)
The programmes are set-up to run over three months each, and so you’ll click the month that you’re on, then the week, and then the day – they label the actual days of the week (Monday, Tuesday, etc) but there’s no reason to follow that specifically, you can pick any day to start and then follow their pattern of workout and rest days.
Once you’re onto the day’s workout, it provides a page that lists the exercises that they’ll be going through with video and photo demonstrations. James videos are per exercise(eg. Video of chest press) as you’ll be doing sets and reps, like you’ve experienced with gym equipment. You aren’t following along in his videos – he demonstrates and then you do it at your own pace.
Nik’s exercises run in sets(circuits, if you will), so she’ll provide a few exercises at a time, and you can watch the video to follow along with her, as she’ll help you keep time. For example, 20 seconds of jumping jacks, 10 second rest, 20 seconds pushups, 10 second rest, etc)
Logging in through their website is fine, though I do sometimes wish it was through an app, as I find having to log-in to the website every time I want to do a workout an unnecessary inconvenience.
I also find that there are a lot of mistakes in both the web site and the videos. Nothing that completely breaks everything, but when you’re paying for something, you do expect a certain level of quality. For example, they’ll often re-use videos across different days and weeks, such as
She’ll say ‘hi guys I’m Nik from undersun fitness and we’re going to start off week 1 with ….’, and then that same video plays in weeks two to four. James seems to be a one take type of person – there are times when he fumbles his speech, or corrects himself ‘Okay so for month two we’re going to be doing xxxx. No wait, I might use this again in week 3, so let’s cut that out’. It’s really not professional.
They also don’t often show a consistency between what they show in videos and what they show in the photos. So the band may be placed quite high in the photo and then be much lower in the video. And they don’t give an explanation of why they place things in a certain place or even if it’s still working the same muscles to move the bands up or down.
They also sometimes provide the wrong photos for the exercises they have on the list, and they sometimes miss things off the lists that are in the videos. James will say to do 4 sets of 20 reps on something in the video but on the screen, it’ll say sets of 20/10/10/15. Again, you’d think that if they want to sell themselves, they’d want to have better attention to detail.
Sometimes Nik doesn’t give much time to remind watchers what the next exercise is until she starts it – when she has plenty of time during the rest periods to do so. I’ve noticed in particular that at in month two she forgets to even rest on one exercise and says ‘the exercise will look like this’ and goes to demonstrate, but then keeps doing it and says ‘ten seconds left”! you have to clearly tell people when to start and finish!
My final thought is about the balance. One thing that really sticks out to me, is when instructors don’t work things evenly. It’s important that if you are doing 10 reps on one side, then you want to do 10 reps on the other side. Muscle imbalance can lead to pain or injury later. Undersun videos do make sure that if they work both left and right sides. I do find that Nik’s workouts can be a little unbalanced in the muscles she’s working. For example, working shoulders a lot and barely touching the chest or back, or putting in lots of core/ab exercises. Core is useful, but these muscles are used in pretty much every exercise you’re doing, so if you really work them early in the workout, it can affect how well you do other exercises – such as your squats, etc. These really (IMO) should always be towards the end.
I also think that since they are already giving a step by step programme, they might as well include some warm up and cooldown videos – even if it’s the same for the entire programme, warm-up and cooldown are super important parts of workouts!
Final word – For the price of one or two months in the gym, you’ll get a three month programme that can be done from home (or pretty much anywhere) for a year. There’s also plenty of free videos on James’s youtube account, as well. I don’t see any reason why I should tell anyone to completely avoid it. If anyone else has experience with other programmes, let me know and I’d love to take a look at them and offer my views!
I’m going to tack this onto the end of my review. I had a scroll through the facebook group. The people posting in there all seem a very positive and supportive bunch, and that’s at no additional cost to the purchase price. I personally tend to be put off by people calling each other ‘bro’ or ‘mate’ or things like that, so it’s not really my cup of tea in there. I will also find it unnecessary for people to show off form with half their clothes off – yes, people will rightly feel proud of the hard work they’ve done, but I find it completely off-putting, as it’s not realistic to aim for that type of look for most people( those with day jobs, families, life responsibilities).
But as I said, they seem a positive bunch, so this could be a great way for the extroverts to socialise and support others. The introverts, feel free to contribute content to my facebook page -1up is very much a home for the geeks and introverts to support each other.
1-Up Fitness (Matt Sanders PT) 