5BX

I wanted a straightforward app to step me through the 5BX program every day. This does that. The one feature missing is simple audio prompts. If it had that it would be super useful. WHAT I LIKE. I was looking for a simple 5BX app that remind me (visually) of each exercise, in sequence, for each stage of each chart. I wanted something that would help me do the routine, every day, and move me up the charts automatically. In other words, make it super simple to put in my age and, day by day, make it easy to put in the 11 minutes per day and slowly level up. No thinking. Just start the app and press go and 11 minutes later I’m done. This will do that. Almost. That’s where audio comes into play. THE AUDIO FEATURE. I wanted an audio feature to prompt me when to do another rep of an exercise and when to switch exercises. Suppose I’m on Level C. I’m supposed to do exercise 1 for 7 reps over 2 minutes, then exercise 2 for 8 reps over 1 minute, and so forth. I don’t want to be constantly checking my phone, or watching a timer, or guessing if it’s time for another rep. The audio feature would tell me I’m starting the first exercise (maybe name the exercise), then beep 7 times over the next two minutes at regular intervals, then tell me when I’m done, tell me the next exercise and give me a few seconds to get ready. When I move to level C+ it would do the same but automatically adjust the timings. I could use and app like Seconds Pro for this. And it work just fine. But every time I move to a new level I would need to manually adjust the timings for each exercise, or create a timing for each one. That’s a lot of work. The app has the information I need. It has the right idea. But without audio I’m going to use Seconds Pro instead. With audio this would be perfect.

I use an iPod Touch and not all the information fit the screen which makes the app harder to use. This would be a 2 star but I absolutely appreciate the fact that someone made a 5BX app as it’s simple, effective and cheap to do for great general health. Please fix the scaling for small screens.

A big thanks to the developer for putting this together! I used to do this as a kid back in the 70s and have done it off and on over the years. Nice to have an app again. And I like the choice of stationary run, mile walk, or 1/2 mile run for X5.