'I tried the personal trainer app that's seen people lose two stone - it works'

The gym. It's hard, right? All those giant men by the weights, mirrors amplifying every potential mistake, putting gym newbies into a panopticon of judgement that makes you think: I can't do this.

But that's the biggest misconception with the gym. The mirrors are there to look at yourself during your rest sets, like a little birdie, or to correct your own form, whatever. And the muscle guys will help anyone if asked - I've seen two of them save two guys from dying on a bench press this week alone (I was too busy looking in the mirror). The problem is not knowing where to start.

That's where anapp like Muscle Booster comes in. The app - which currently has a 61% discount for new users - uses a short quiz to make a tailored fitness programme, like an AI personal trainer.

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And with solid reviews, including a 4.6 from 122,800 ratings on the Apple App Store and 4.4 from 234,000 reviews from the Play Store, it's already creating buzz from fitness newbies and veterans alike.

So to make sure it lived up to the hype as someone who spends 80% of their life thinking about the gym and food, I took the app for a spin.

How the Muscle Booster App Works

After downloadingthe app, I was prompted to fill out a questionnaire going through my current fitness levels and my goals. However, putting in the wrong information doesn't set the workout out in stone, as once you're fully in the app the settings are easily adjustable.

Once the quiz is done, the AI then creates a daily fitness plan set out with an easy-to-read calendar. Depending on the settings, it will fit rest days where you need as well as workouts based around the gym or home workouts. The app can also track your steps, one of the most vital ways to boost weight loss as I wrote about forThe Mirror before.

The app also provides a meal plan complete with recipes attached. The recipes will lay out the ingredients (thankfully in metric) alongside your macros, to make sure you are getting enough nutrition. These recipes also adjust for the amount of people served, making it ideal for couples or families hitting their fitness goals.

I set mine up for putting on some weight (I'm in a bulk phase after a year of cutting), and it provided three meals and two snacks. Adding up the macros, it came to 1,827 calories, quite below my current 2,700 calories. It did provide enough fat at 132g, but not enough protein at 99g, when I need 2g per kg of body weight (minimum of 198g), and carbs were just 51g when I need 132g.

I would say it's a good starting point, but make sure you're tracking the nutrition in an app like MyFitnessPal. This will mean you can see the nutritional gaps and add to them. Low-fat Greek Yoghurt with some fruit, like raisins, would fill some of the missing nutrition. Just make sure you're treating it as a guideline rather than a bible.

There's also challenges you can opt into, including mobility, core and calisthenics, great for those who need a bit of competition to keep them motivated.

Workouts

Now I couldn't testthe app without doing a workout myself. While the workouts are provided every day, the app comes with functions to swap out what you want, including changing the body part worked, length of time and what equipment you have available to you.

I'll go through the gym workouts shortly, but I do think the home routines are where the app really shines. I set up a full body workout with just 15 minutes, with difficulty at 'hard'. Within seconds, I received the day's session, which was:

• 12x Reverse Lunge leg kicks
• 15x Squat Bounce
• 16x Lying Alternate Frog Kick
• 45x Astride Jumps
• 45 secs x Iso Push-up hold
• 15x Lying Floor Row with Bent Knee
• 22x Scapula Push-up
• 15x The Superman
• 22x Diagonal Mountain Climbers

Each workout comes with a virtual person doing the exercises, meaning it was really simple to follow along even with exercises I hadn't done before (The Superman...?). On first glance, I thought: This is surely too easy for hard mode? While I had already done a proper workout earlier in the day, it did put me through my paces, and with just 15 minutes to work with, it did genuinely hit all the main muscle groups.

For a regular gym-goer, these home workouts without equipment are absolutely perfect for going on holiday. Even if there's a hotel gym, it's always three dumbbells, a Smith machine with a localised earthquake in its foundations, and a cable machine if you're really lucky. This means you can keep on top of your fitness in the limited amounts of free time a tourist has between sightseeing/drinking, and eating too much.

As for the gym workouts, I would say they are a good starting point. The flexibility of the routines - including adjusting which muscle group you want to work with, if you're doing the 'Bro Split'. Looking at the chest workouts, it does include the Golden Three - bench press, incline, and flies. This means if you know nothing about working out, it's pretty good.

However, one issue I did encounter was it kept recommending floor workouts when I specified I had access to a bench. For the chest specifically, that would mean losing out on the full range of motion and therefore not getting the most out of the workout. Again, you need to adapt it a bit to make it fully work.

Would I recommend Muscle Booster?

For a beginner I would recommend it 100%. One of the biggest issues facing new gym-goers is not knowing where to start and this takes the thinking off you. Those who are a bit more advance I would recommend for the Challenge functions or tracking your steps, thougha FitBit is a good alternative.

The meal planning also takes a lot of the thinking off anyone's plate, and the recipes are really easy, so 9-to-5-ers could really benefit. Otherwise, it's the ideal holiday companion, meaning you don't need to miss a workout while away. It's a decent all-rounder app with lots to help people of various skill levels. Muscle Booster currently has a 61% discount for first-time users.

Looking for something else? The Simple App is very good for helping people with weight loss in particular (you can read my review on The Mirror). The NHS also provides basic home workouts on their site, whilePureGym has free templates you can fill out if there's a bit of gym knowledge in your brain.