Stealth is a large, bright-yellow piece of exercise equipment that has three parts: a platform for you to rest your arms on while you plank; a ball to let you move around to work more muscle groups; and your phone, which sits in a tray and displays games via a free app that hypothetically enhances the shredding process by guiding you through exercises without you even knowing you’re exercising. The Stealth’s idea of having something to focus on to distract from my entire body feeling like it’s on fire, or at least provide some sneaky guidance to my workout, is a good one. I tried it out to see how well it would work. And I hate it. So, yeah, it works great.
Rock the Plank
Planking is one of those exercises that seems easier than it is. You don’t even have to move; you just lay there, holding yourself above the floor. But if you do it right, it’s not only a good exercise that works most of your muscles, but you also don’t have to do it long to get some value. Stealth provides some convenient videos that show you the proper form for this exercise. But when you’re down there trying to do one, it can be hard to know you’re doing it right; if you’ve been as long without exercise as I have recently, it’ll hurt either way. Once you’ve mastered the plank and can hold one for minutes at a time, you can start taking advantage of the other major benefit Stealth offers. You can put your phone into the huge tray that’ll be under your face while you’re exercising and use the company’s app to play games that get you moving to work even more muscles. The T-shaped tray is about 7 by 4 inches per section and should hold most phones in both portrait and landscape orientations. And the little grippy pads held my device firmly in place even when my poor balance made me fall over. And I did, often, but that’s unrelated.
But How Are the Games?
Stealth’s games have to accomplish two things. Along with providing good exercise, they also have to be fun enough to want to play. They mostly succeed, although they are, at their heart, mediocre mobile titles. The free version of the app includes four games; for $25 a year, you get access to the premium subscription which includes 15 games, a new game released each month, and access to previously released games. I didn’t feel the need for a premium subscription. Galaxy Adventure has you tilting and holding your position to blow up planets like a sweaty Death Star. Speed Gliding asks you to balance while steering a hang glider and not flying into trees. Color Chase is a “driving” game where you steer a ball through gates based on which color it is. Finally, in Space Escape, you guide a bouncing robot up a series of platforms. If you were just playing these on their own, they wouldn’t hold your attention for long. But for the scant minutes, you’ll spend holding a plank, they’re just good enough. And you’ll probably be too busy blasting your core or whatever to get bored. The app also includes leaderboards for each title. But those are almost completely pointless for the main reason that your phone doesn’t know if it’s in the tray, so people may just be playing them on their own. That’s not to say that it’s impossible to hold a plank for 45 minutes (the world records are several hours), but it’s probably more productive to watch how you’re improving than to compare your performance with people who may be submitting false results.
Form, not Style
The Stealth easily fits under a bed or in a closet, which is good because it’s not the most stylish thing you’ll have in your apartment. But it is comfortable to use, especially with the pads for your arms. And it supports a variety of grips, whether you prefer to lay your palms flat, make fists, or cling to the platform like you’re afraid of falling off (which I’m not; I don’t care what you’ve heard or imagined). I have felt its effects after the briefest sessions, too, and the games are just good enough to keep me playing them for these purposes and these only. It’s generally a convenient, quick workout option with a good-enough hook, and while it still doesn’t manage to make exercising fun, it does at least make it different.
