Les Mills Releases

Usability has steadily gone downhill over the past five years. The app crashes, freezes, logs me out at least once a week, refuses to save my login credentials (shame on me for having a long email address), “updates my releases” literally every time I open it, but most egregiously I cannot open the app unless I have WiFi or data access. There is a literal function within the app to download notes and music for offline use, but the app itself now cannot be opened offline. With the constant unnecessary “updates” (sometimes interrupting while I am actively using the app), the app is terrorizing me: will it stop playing the music while I am actively teaching? I can’t stop it because I can’t disconnect my phone from data without the app also disconnecting. I shouldn’t have to brick my phone to use the app without fear of disruption, but I also should be able to brick my phone and still access the material I have paid for. I understand DRM but this is now essentially unusable and super frustrating, especially as the only way we are allowed to access the releases. Please fix it - at the very least, reenable offline mode.

The high pulls and walking bench push-ups provide great challenges to participants👍. Be aware that the backward stepping lunges can easily cause Achilles tendinitis… It did in my right leg, and as a result, I have been unable to teach for three months and counting!😩 I’m really glad that the app is so user-friendly, facilitates creating playlists quickly and efficiently, and that everything I need to practice is all in one spot. I have one complaint about the download (not the app). Sometimes when I print out a page of the choreography notes, they bleed off the page and sometimes as much as five lines are cut off; yet when I view the page preview, it’s all complete and NOT cut off. Why?

This app has come a long way! It is very stable, and offers essential learning features that iTunes just can’t match. The ability to fast forward and rewind in 15 second chunks is probably my most used feature. So helpful when you want to zoom in on one section of choreography. The ability to see the choreography notes along with the video has also been a game changer. Now that it has a playlist feature where you can add spaces of silence between certain tracks, clutch! I highly recommend this app now to all instructors. I’ve made the switch to using it in all of my classes.