I like working out, but I like a lot of things and working out usually does not make my priority list as much these days. I used to spend a lot of time in a gym. By “a lot of time” I really mean a lot of time. Some weeks I must have spend as many as 20 hours in the gym. I was really fit but I had absolutely no time for other things.

I have started to wonder why my workouts are taking so much of my time. What in those workouts take the time and if there is a way to workout as hard but in less time. I bought a stopwatch and started measuring where the time was going. As you may expect it was not going into working out. Most of my time was spent on breaks. Breaks could take up as much as 90% of my time in the gym.

90% seems like a lot of time, so I have stated to experiment with different break times and I have noticed that I did not need to take such long breaks.  For most exercises a 45 second break was adequate where others were ok at 60 seconds.  Needless to say stopwatch became a necessary accessory at the gym.  Yes one more thing to carry while I work out.

And then … Apple came out with the iPhone.  Thanks, Apple.  It is the device that has replaced 3 items I used to carry with me at the gym.  The phone, an iPod and the stopwatch.

I have written FitTimer to be the way to keep track of my breaks.  Simplicity and nice design where the top priorities during the design process.

It had to be simpler then a stopwatch. After all no one want’s to struggle with a program while they are working out.  Your focus should be always on working out and not on operating a device.  Tracking your workout should be almost incidental and not the primary goal of working out.

It had to look good.  As one of the “gym rats” I know full well that we are somewhat vain.  OK, some of us are really vain, but I am talking about the average “gym rat.”  We go to the gym to look good.  Why would we have an app in the gym that makes us look worse?  Well, we would not.

So here is what I came up with:

Simple, functional and elegant.

Now I can fit my workouts in under an hour.  That’s 2 hours I save every day.

I bet if you work out and not measuring your times you are wasting your time just I use to so if you have an iPhone or an iPod touch you can get the app at the apple AppStore: FitTimer

You can also see more screen shot on our company website: http://www.eideticsoftware.com/fittimer