In our fourth Barry’s virtual fitness event, we teamed up with Adjust and Tapjoy on July 15, 2020. Barry’s motivational instructor Rio Hall brought back another 35-minute bodyweight workout including squats, lunges and burpees.
This workout marked our final event in our Barry’s at-home fitness series, so we upped the ante by giving away luxury prizes like Tidal one-year HiFi Standard memberships from our playlist sponsor, Barry’s bands and a few future Barry’s class credits! We organized the series as a way to bring all of us in the mobile marketing community together during Shelter-In-Place restrictions in the name of health, wellness and continued fitness goals.
Health & Fitness Apps See Record Growth in H1 2020
Health and fitness apps have been on the rise since the start of lockdown. In May, apps in this category saw record revenue, generating $160.5 million in user spending. Historically, January is the top month for health and fitness app downloads, but with COVID19 shelter in place measures, 2020 bucked this trend. March and April represented record months for health & fitness app adoption, peaking at $339.7 million in April. This represents 83.6% growth from January and about 42% from March. Overall, in Q2, the health and fitness app category grew 57.7% in the App Store and 114.3% in the Google Play Store.
Source: Sensor Tower
The top grossing Health & Fitness app worldwide in June was MyFitnessPal with more than $6.7 million in user spending. This represented over 8% growth since June 2019. Sixty-one percent of MyFitnessPal’s revenue was from the United States, followed by 12.6% from Great Britain and 5% from Australia.
Calm was the second highest-earning health and fitness app in June with more than $6.6 million in gross revenue, a 1.6% spike from June 2019. Over 50% of Calm’s revenue was from the U.S. The next top grossing apps were Headspace, Strava and Weight Watchers.
More At-Home Fitness Questions Answered
We hosted another post-workout Q&A. This time we capped it off with a tequila toast to Rio, Barry’s, our sponsors and attendees. Here are the highlights from the fitness Q&A:
Q: How should I utilize a HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) workout strategy?
Rio: In general for strength training, if you are trying to build muscle, I recommend working out 2-3 times a week for about 45 minutes each time. If you are trying to lose weight and get lean, work out 4-5 times a week for 45 minutes to an hour.
Q: What is the best type of food to eat to stay lean and lose weight?
Rio: If you are looking to lose weight, as long as you eat 350-500 calories below your daily required calorie intake, you’ll lose weight in a good way. If you eat too little, your body will go into starvation mode. When it comes to staying tight, stay within those calories and find a balance of good protein, less-than-starchy carbohydrates (brown rice, sweet potatoes) and vegetables. Vegetables are your best friend. The greener the better. Broccoli, spinach and kale are good options.
Q: How do I improve my push-ups?
Rio: The first thing to focus on is the negative. That means the movement on the way down. So, what you will do is get up on your toes in a high plank position and lower yourself down to the ground. Then drop to your knees and push yourself back up. What you’ll realize is that it’s in the negative movement of an exercise that your muscles develop strength. The contraction of the muscle is what gives it its shape. If you’re looking for the strength to increase, focus on increasing the load on the negative, and then you can adjust the weight on the positive which is the push back up to the top.
Another thing is tempo control. Once you get comfortable with the pushups on your toes, then you control the speed. So, instead of just going down and up all the time, sometimes go down slowly, come up slowly but then always end with a burn out where you go fast. That will get a lot of activation through your muscle to improve the strength of that muscle.
Finally, try different angles: hands on the floor, hands on a bench, seat on a bench and hands on the floor, or hands on a wall (if you’re having trouble doing push ups at all). Hands on a wall can help you get used to the basics of bending and extending those elbows. Different angles will give you different loads and use different parts of your chest.
Q: Do you recommend intermittent fasting?
Rio: First question to ask yourself is, does it work with my lifestyle? If you find that you’re so busy that you always miss lunch, then maybe intermittent fasting isn't for you.
Second thing to ask yourself: do you give into cravings? Because if you’re intermittent fasting, then you can’t be snacking on a handful of nuts in the middle of the day. You have to be true to it for it to work properly.
The third thing is that if you’re intermittent fasting, you still have to hit your calories. You can’t go 18 hours without eating and then eat 1-2 meals and not fill your calories. You have to use your eating window to eat all of your calories because your body still needs that food so it can feed the muscles properly so that the exercise you do can then have an effect on how your body is shaped and the strength that you have. You have to make sure you’re hitting all of your calories in your eating window.
Q: Pre-workout for expecting mothers?
Rio: I’m a big believer in keeping things as natural as possible. Drink a lot of water, take your vitamins, rest. If you feel extra fatigued, you shouldn’t be forcing your body to workout anyway. You should be resting when you need to rest and when you feel great, then have a great, fantastic workout. When it comes to our bodies, listening to ourselves and understanding that nature is taking its course is key. Rest is important.
Q: What should I do about tightness from sitting down all day?
Rio: Set an alarm for every 1-1.5 hours where you stand up and walk around. Do 20 squats. Move. Movement is important. For your upper body, to deal with the hunching, take a broomstick, hold it as wide as you can and bring it above your head a few times. Hold it down behind your neck a few times. You can turn this into a workout: hold the broom above your head as wide as you can, do some squats. Those exercises will open up your rotators, work through your sit region and activate your shoulders to work through any stiffness.
Q: How do I maintain a healthy lifestyle?
Rio: Follow the 80-20 rule. If you eat healthy 80% of the time (vegetables, clean proteins), then the 20% of the time you have fun isn’t going to kill you. Also, drink a lot of water. People don’t realize how much they can affect their body weight just by drinking enough water. About 5-10 pounds of the weight you want to lose is water retention. When you increase your water intake and stimulate your diuretic system, your body expels some of that water. You can affect your body by about 5 lbs just by drinking more water.
Thanks For Joining Us!
For those of you who joined one of our Barry’s virtual events, thanks for sweating with us! If you couldn’t make it, you can catch up on what you missed by reading our recaps from our previous events on April 28, June 2 and June 24. Also, check out motivational instructor, Rio Hall on Twitter and Instagram to learn more fitness tips and how to stay active during quarantine.
