Exercise Software App Review Series; Walk Tracker Pro

Welcome to my new series exploring technical advancements to help all of us track our exercise progress.  Whether you are an exercise novice or a seasoned athlete, you will benefit from this series.

We begin with IPhone Apps, specifically Walk Tracker Pro which has been my personal favorite for two years now.  It uses a GPS signal to tell me how far I have walked, and I can control my music choices right from that app.  You, of course, need to have your music selection already downloaded to your phone.  Then you may start the music, pause it, or change it right from the Walk Tracker Pro app.

There is a voice that will break into the music to let you know the distance you have traveled, your average pace, and the calories you have burned.  Since this is also tracked on the display, I typically turn off these announcements and just enjoy my music or audio tape.

It contains nice bar or line graphs showing your progress.  It can be used whether walking, running, or cycling but it does not recognize a combination of exercises and records everything under the type of exercise you chose to begin the workout.

Walk Tracker Pro can be used on any IPad, IPod, or IPhone with an iOS (operating system) version 5.0 or higher. Each workout can be saved.  I use that feature to know the distance of each of my routes and about how long they will last.  When I walk or run on my lunch hour, I don’t want to be late getting back.  If I want to add a meditation to the end of my workout, I will look in my history to choose a shorter route.  By default, the app saves the workout by date and time, but you can use any name you wish.  I typically name the workout for the route I took.  For example I will name it “Once around Campus” or “Long way around Campus” or “Short trip around water falls”, etc.

The only complaint I have is that the use of the phone’s GPS tends to drain the phone’s battery even when you are finished using the app.  To get around this, you have to turn off the GPS to disengage it from Walk Tracker Pro.  I typically keep it turned off until I need it again.  This can be done in the phone’s Settings App in the Privacy setting, then turn off Location Services.

I also use the display’s Elapsed Time seconds to count my heart rate. I begin counting my pulse when the seconds read x4 (example; 04, 14, 24, 34 and so on).  I keep counting my pulse until the display reads x0 (10, 20, 30 etc.) which means that I have been counting my pulse for 6 seconds.  Then I add a zero to the back of the number of pulses I counted which gives me my beats per minute (60 seconds). I wish there was a way to record the heart rate but this one does not have that feature.

It even has a graphic display of the route you took which takes advantage of the Pinching zoom-in, zoom-out feature of the operating system.  The display can be viewed either in portrait or landscape mode as well.  You can also sign up with Trainingpeaks.com free, upload your progress and brag about it on Facebook to your friends.  I, admittedly, have never used this feature since I prefer to keep my workouts private.

In reading other reviews, there was apparently problems with versions 14.0 and 14.1.  Some people had trouble launching the app, others report it crashing while in use.  I have used this product for years and have not seen these issues.  After several updates over the years, I am now using version 14.3.3 without any issues.

The app costs a very reasonable $2.99 in the app store which is well worth the money.  I have always found this app to be very accurate in both time and distance and is very easy to use.  If you would like to be successful tracking your progress right out of the gate without much fuss and bother, Walk Tracker Pro is a good app to use.

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