Interval training is huge. It’s a fantastic way to increase the efficiency of a workout and develop increased cardiorespiratory ability and work on metabolic conditioning.
Unfortunately, intervals can be somewhat difficult to time. This is especially the case when you don’t have someone dedicated to be the official “time keeper” for a workout.
In programs such as Crossfit, for example, a workout like the infamous “Fight Gone Bad” requires numerous rounds of numerous sets of intervals. Using a wrist watch or normal digital timer is not necessarily an effective way to time the workout, even when someone is the designated timer.
I figured that having some sort of automated timer would be super nice to have. So I decided to experiment a bit and came up with the WOD Timer.
This is my first Adobe Flex app, so despite the seeming simplicity of the concept, creating this thing admittedly took a while. At the moment it’s in “beta”, but the feature list includes:
- Standard timer
- Countdown timer
- Setup and execute intervals
- Audio notifications of interval and countdown events
- Pause timer by any key press
- Simple, intuitive interface
I’m looking at future enhancements to include things like,
- Background music streaming (possible support for XSPF)
- WOD presets (for programming such as Crossfit)
- Full-screen support
Some feedback on what you would think would be good features for a WOD timer would be appreciated. Let me know in the comments!
6 Comments, Comment or Ping
This is awesome.
I don’t have an internet connection where I workout.
Is it possible to download this timer?
Thanks.
January 19th, 2009
Alexander, not yet. But that’s easily solvable. Look for it soon.
January 20th, 2009
Jamie,
Love your blog. Linked to it off of your post at MDA.
Great work on the timer. So far the best I’ve found online for free. I’m going back to edit a blogpost I made a few days ago to link to it, as I mentioned another free timer which is not nearly as nice.
Thanks for putting it out there. I’ll check back for updates, and assuming they’re as good as the beta, I’ll announce them when they come out via my blog.
January 20th, 2009
Jamie,
Don’t know if you saw it, but I gave you some love in this post: http://trainsmarteatright.blogspot.com/2009/01/this-one-for-john-g-part-ii.html
Hope you like the granola.
January 21st, 2009
Very fancy Jamie.. make this downloadable and we can use it at the space! hehehe
January 21st, 2009
Tracey - I’m workin on it
January 21st, 2009
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