I was talking to a friend at work about my i30×5 workout program yesterday.  He is considering doing it so he asked me what he needed.  I told him that he would need either some dumbbells or resistance bands.  I also told him that an interval timer, while not required, would be highly recommended.  The Gymboss Interval Timer, I said, would be a good choice.  It’s a pretty cool timer and it works out great for the i30×5 workouts.  It has become the “gold standard” for Tabata training.

As a fellow iPhone user, my friend said that he was going to look for an interval timer for the iPhone.  Why didn’t I think of that!!!  So we searched iTunes for interval timer apps and we found a bunch of them.  In fact, Gymboss makes an iPhone interval timer app.  These apps pick up where the hardware Gymboss leaves off.  It is way easier to set the timer.  The settings are very flexible.  You can set delays at the start.  You can use different sounds and many of them can play music from your playlists.  Another great feature of these timers is that you can have it sound a different tone to signal the last interval.  You can even set some of them to signal a few seconds before the end of each interval.  The cool thing is that many of these apps go for “free” or for very little ($1.99 or less).

So for anyone thinking about getting an interval timer, check out software timers for your computer or smart devices.