Why Joe Wicks trains with Seconds Interval Timer
The Body Coach has tried a stack of fitness apps. The one he reaches for on almost every workout is a simple interval timer.
P.E. with Joe
When lockdown closed the schools in 2020, Wicks turned his living room into the nation’s gym class. Every morning, millions followed his “P.E. with Joe” workouts — and behind each move ran the steady beep of an interval timer counting down the clock.
That timer is Seconds. “The one I use more than everything though — the one I use almost every day and on every workout — is Seconds Interval Timer,” Wicks says.
Why a simple timer wins
Wicks is a High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) coach, and HIIT lives and dies by its clock: fixed bursts of work, fixed bursts of rest, repeated until you are spent. What he wants from an app is not dashboards — it is a countdown he can read across the room and hear over his own breathing.
“It’s a basic interval timer, but it’s really clear,” he says. The screen turns green when you work and red when you rest, with audible cues for every change. “It’s really visual, so if it’s far away and you haven’t got your glasses on, you’ve got the sound and the visual.”
That clarity is the whole point. With nothing to fiddle with mid-set, the timer becomes a coach instead of a distraction.
It really motivates me to stick to an interval and push right until I hear that bell.
He is also refreshingly uninterested in the data arms race. “I’m not really a stats man,” Wicks says. “There are plenty of people who love monitoring every step they take, and it’s great technology, but for me, I’m more about getting your heart rate up and working as hard as you can.” For that, a timer that simply keeps time is exactly enough — “Seconds is the one I truly engage in.”
Build the same work and rest intervals
You don’t need Joe’s schedule to train like this. Set your own work/rest intervals in the Seconds Interval Timer app, then let the green-and-red countdown do the coaching.
Quotes are from the Apple App Store’s feature on Joe Wicks and Seconds Interval Timer, published October 6, 2017.