What you need to know
- Apple released Time to Run on Apple Fitness+ earlier this month.
- An Apple exec has now revealed the company's goals and inspiration behind the new feature.
- The new feature brings running coaching and energetic playlists in new custom running workouts.
Apple's vice president of fitness technologies Jay Blahnik has revealed the company's inspiration behind its new Time to Run feature for Apple Fitness+.
The new Fitness+ feature brings episodes for running workouts in a similar vein to its Time To Walk feature, using trainers from Apple Fitness+. The guided workouts include encouragements and motivation as well as energetic music. Three new episodes came with the debut and new episodes are being added each Monday.
Speaking to Runner's World Blahnik said:
Our key inspiration was determining how we could take your everyday neighborhood run—that's a part of a regular habit of running—and provide a little bit of adventure, a little bit of variety, a little bit of coaching, and some motivation to make running easier and something that you want to do more often
Blahnik said that one important feature was escape, with both the creative team and the trainers highlighting the importance of just getting away from it all while running. That means coaching and encouragement comes in "at just the right time", but there is also plenty of space to enjoy the music and the exercise too.
One of Apple's new running trainers, Cory Wharton-Malcolm, told the outlet "Often we get stuck doing the same run the same way, but Time to Run takes the responsibility of figuring out how to add variation so you can just concentrate on the fun part: the run itself," and that the new feature had the power "to make a 30-minute run fell like 10 minutes." Wharton-Malcolm said the group hoped the feature would help users become more consistent and better runners.
Apple Fitness+ is one of the best Apple Watch features going, offering a range of workouts for the gym, your home, or outdoors and excellent integration with Apple TV and Music.
