The Pear Personal Coach app is among the best fitness apps you'll find for Android and iOS. The app has a wealth of workout routines, everything from outdoor runs to at-home resistance training, and each has an audio track of a real coach who talks you through the motions. You can pipe in your own music, too, which dials down automatically whenever the coach is speaking. The app works best when you wear a heart rate monitor, though it's not required. There's even a calibration workout, a run, that finds your lactic threshold and customizes your heart rate training in all the workouts based on your personalized number. Pear Personal Coach is an excellent workout app, and a PCMag Editors' choice.
Getting Fit With Pear
As with most fitness apps, you have to create an account in Pear Personal Coach and enter details about your age, sex, height, and weight so the app can estimate how many calories you burn. You also select types of workouts that are interesting to you, which the app uses to suggest training programs for you.
New users can start with an initial heart rate calibration session, a 20-minute walk-run used to determine your lactic threshold, which in turn lets the app personalize your heart rate zones. The calibration session is actually enjoyable. You need a heart rate monitor to do it, but the app supports a wide variety, so if you already own one, there's a chance it will be compatible. I used the Wahoo Tickr ($59.95 at Amazon) . You'll also need earphones or your volume turned up because the audio coaching is central to both the calibration session and the app at large. It's clear from the start what you'll be doing (walking, jogging, and running at progressively faster speeds) and how long it will take (20 minutes). When you're done, you'll see a chart of your heart rate zones.
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To work out, you can choose a free training session or buy one as an in-app purchase. The paid sessions run anywhere from $0.99 to $24.99. Some of them are single workouts while others are weeks-long training programs, such as a marathon training plan.
I found a free workout session with trainer Matt Dixon, designed to help runners and cyclists get back some range of motion and strengthen a few particular muscles. Before I used this plan for the first time, I watched a few short videos that are included to see the moves I'd be doing in action. They help a lot, as some of the moves are difficult to explain. Unfortunately, not all the videos played smoothly, even when my iPhone was connected to Wi-Fi. One video stuttered so much that the back half of it was impossible to watch at all.
I got to work with a short warmup, then listened at Dixon told me to do some wall-facing squats, wide arm push-ups, lunges, and a few other moves.
If you leave the screen on during the workout, you can see a graph of your heart rate over time. You'll see a final chart when the workout is complete. Calories burned, total time, and a few other metrics appear here as well.
I explored some of the other free workouts, such as a stretching program and a 40-minute yoga routine. There are a lot of options among the free content, and plenty more if you're willing to pay. I'd recommend trying out as many of the free workouts as you can until you find a coach that you like, then searching for more content from that particular person. You can browse around in the app, and you can also search on Pear's website, though you need to log in with your account to see the options.
Music and More
Pear lets you pipe in your own music from any other app. I'd been listening to the fitness music app FIT Radio, so I would launch that app, stream a station I liked, and flip back to the Pear workout.
You can customize the app to announce whatever key stats you like, such as your heart rate or your pace if you run during your workouts. The app keeps track of how many workouts you complete, too.
It's said that good deeds go unnoticed, but after using a lot of workouts app that weren't always clear with their information, I definitely noticed the thoughtful work put into Pear in terms of how much detail you get in advance before buying any training pack or single session workout. If there's any equipment needed, it's listed. The amount of time you're supposed to spend in each heart zone is shown, helping you get an idea of the intensity level. The duration of the program, description of what you'll do, and often training videos that show particular moves in action really help guide decisions and purchases.
I mentioned earlier that Pear works best with a heart rate monitor, and if you don't have one, you can buy a whole kit from the company, called Pear Mobile Training Intelligence System for iPhone and Android. This $99.95 kit includes a chest strap heart rate monitor (Bluetooth), earbuds designed for high-intensity activity, and an armband that holds a smartphone.
You only really need the heart rate monitor to use the app, and the earbuds (which don't have great bass) probably drive up the cost by $15-$30. A Bluetooth-enabled heart rate monitor on its own costs about $60. The Wahoo Tickr I mentioned I used sells for $59.99, and a comparable model from Garmin lists for exactly $60. I've used the Pear heart rate monitor and earbuds before, and they're fine, but these other two models are compatible with many other apps and devices. Additionally, if you have a wearable activity tracker that has optical heart rate monitoring, such as the Garmin Forerunner 225 ($237.98 at Amazon) it might be compatible, so you won't have to buy yet another gadget.
An Excellent Fitness App
Pear Personal Coach is an excellent fitness app that's motivating, well designed, and fun to use. I loved the real-time coaching, and I loved that the app adjusts the workouts based on my calibrated heart rate zones and lactic threshold. The Pear app is a PCMag Editors' Choice.
The Pear Personal Coach app talks you through runs, at-home workouts, yoga routines, and even training programs for running races. Real human voices make the audio part of the experience excellent. The app is free, but in-app purchases can add up.
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