Centr App Review – Is it Worth Subscribing to Chris Hemsworth’s Fitness App?

I’ve been interested in the Centr app by Chris Hemsworth since it came out last year. After all, who better to be your personal trainer than Thor himself? 

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Although I already have my tried and true favorites when it comes to fitness programs, (like this one or this one) I do like mix it up to keep things fresh. So last month, I finally tried it out in order to bring you this Centr app review. 

I won’t keep you in suspense: I found more problems with the Centr app than virtues. 

If you want the Coles Notes, I have a pros and cons list at the end followed by a quick FAQ that pretty much summarizes my Centr app review. 

Otherwise, read-on and I will break it all down for you. And I’ll try to refrain from the eye-rolling Thor jokes.

But I make no promises. 

(This is not a sponsored post and I am not in any way associated with Centr App. I used the app’s free 7-day trial to bring you my honest, unbiased thoughts!)

What is the Centr App?

In a nutshell, Centr is a health and fitness app launched by Chris Hemsworth in 2019. According to Hemsworth’s app introduction, the program is designed to not only help you get in shape, but to facilitate a healthier and happier life with workouts, healthy meals, meditations, and thought-provoking podcasts/blog posts. 

Like most apps, you can download it on your phone and access anywhere you have the internet. 

How Much Does the Centr App Cost?

At the time of this writing, Centr offers three different payment options for access to the app:

• $119 USD for 12 months
• $59.99 USD for 3 months
• $29.99 USD for 1 month

I wouldn’t expect an app made by a movie-star to be free, but that monthly price-tag caused my eyes to bulge more than the Asgardian’s bicep. (Especially considering it’s close to $40 per month after you convert it to Canadian funds!) 

Clearly, they want you to make the “best value” purchase by paying for a full year upfront, but this does put them at a disadvantage when you compare to competing apps on the market.

For example, Kayla Itsine’s Sweat App is currently available for 19.99 USD per month and Jillian Michael’s fitness app is even less at $14.99 per month.

And there’s nothing this app has that those two don’t. 

Format

The layout is pretty straight forward and easy to use. Your dashboard includes access to the settings, a daily planner, the Centr blog, the weekly grocery shopping list, and “Explore” which is an archive of all the workouts, recipes, meditations, and features. 

The daily planner includes your workouts, meals, and other features for the day.

You can easily swap out a recipe or workout for another if what’s there doesn’t tickle your fancy. You can also look ahead on the calendar by a few days to see what’s planned.

One thing that stuck out to me right away was that there are no real “programs” within the app.

I appreciate that it’s designed to be an app that you use every day as part of your lifestyle, but I’ve always preferred a collection of programs that have a set number of weeks so that you can tackle your fitness goals in a structured way.

The Workouts

Some workouts are guided videos with voice over and music, some are self-guided with silent video clips, and some have options for both.

A lot of them require minimal equipment while others you would need a gym for. 

I preferred the workouts in video format since the self-guided workouts require a bit more interaction with the app, as you need to tap the screen to move on to the next exercise. 

The app’s integration with my Apple Watch is pretty disappointing. It keeps a running tally on calories burned during the workout, but the standard exercise app the iWatch comes with does the same thin, and more accurately. 

Not only that, I couldn’t get the app to close on my watch – a fact that I realized when I glanced down at the end of the day and was astonished to see that I had somehow burned an extra 1100 calories even though I’d spent the rest of the afternoon working on my computer. 

That’s when I noticed I couldn’t get the app to close, and I ultimately ended up needing to uninstall it from my watch altogether in order to shut it off.

Centr’s Meal Plans and Nutrition

The Centr app subscription comes with meal plans and weekly shopping lists that you can tailor to your dietary preferences (including vegetarian, gluten-free, vegan, and pescetarian.) 

Although meals are automatically populated in your daily planner, you can easily swap them out for something else if you’re not into what they have on the menu for that day.

You can also generate a shopping list for the week with just a few taps.

Admittedly, I can’t really say how good the meals are because I pretty much never follow meal plans. Just like most other apps I’ve tried, I find these recipes too fussy and time-consuming to make. 

That said, I’m also the kind of person who won’t allot more than five minutes of total prep time to make breakfast and lunch. And dinner has a hard 30-minute limit. 

So feel free to take my opinion with a grain of salt... 

[EDIT: I had originally commented that some of the recipes didn’t seem particularly conducive to Thor-like abs, and I used the example of the gnocchi recipe. But as someone pointed out in the comments, this is actually a modified gnocchi recipe and not made with potato. So this is obviously a much healthier version than the traditional version! I stand corrected and rescind the comment.]

My Experience & Results with Centr

The very first thing I noticed when I started using the Centr app, was that although there are 9 trainers who have a library of workouts on the app, Mr. Hemsworth is not one of them.

I did find one self-guided workout start featuring him, but the video intro was done by one of the other trainers.

For a movie-star, he sure seems camera-shy in this app. 

I went on to use the app for seven more days and had mixed feelings about the workouts.

Even though the app asks you customization questions when you first log in and you can toggle the difficulty of the workouts, all the workouts felt really “one-size-fits-all” to me. 

The workouts on the planner are wildly different from one day to the next, and while I crave variety in my workouts, the lack of consistency makes me feel like I might not be getting the most out of my workout sessions.

For example, I did one of the intermediate-level Ashley Joi workouts, and by the end of 23 minutes, I had only burned 100 active calories. I’m used to burning closer to 200 in that time frame.

That said, I liked Ashley Joi’s style as a trainer, I just felt it wasn’t as challenging as it should have been at the intermediate level. 

This was supposed to be a cardio workout, yet there was a lot of resting in between each exercise and I had a hard time keeping my heart rate up. 

Sure, I could have swapped it out for something different, but I was already 10 minutes in by the time I realized this workout wasn’t what I wanted.

Jumping one day to the next from HIIT to MMA to Pilates didn’t make me feel like I was working towards anything or working out muscle groups in a targeted manner.

It all felt a bit random.  

This feeling is not allayed by the complete lack of logging features on Centr. You can mark workouts complete and meals eaten. 

But that’s the total extent of tracking your progress on Centr. 

How many workouts did you miss this week?

How many slices of that Gingerbread Loaf did you wolf down? 

Where are you progress pictures and measurements?

Better make sure you’re tracking these things somewhere (maybe with Cronometer?) because the app isn’t going to help you out with that.

The results are usually my favorite part to write about but alas, not for this Centr app review;

I used the app for the 7-day free trial but then I canceled my account.

Because there are no real milestones or goals to work towards. 

And for me, it resulted in a lack of motivation to continue. 

Centr App Review Final Verdict

I like Chris Hemsworth as an actor. But for me, Centr is a pass. 

To be clear, it’s not a terrible app. I’d wager that if you commit to the workouts laid out each day, you will see results. 

But it just doesn’t have that addictive or gamifying quality that other apps use to keep you motivated. Because of that, it’s no match for the other fitness apps it’s competing against, especially at that price point. 

In all fairness, Centr is relatively new. Perhaps it will get better as more content is added to the app.

But in the meantime, you can find far more effective options that come with a less-hefty month-to-month subscription fee. 

(Check out this list of my top favorite fitness apps that I feel are better options.)

What did you think of my Centr app review? Do you have any questions about it that I didn’t cover? Let me know in the comments!

Pros

• A variety of workout styles to choose from including mixed martial arts, yoga, HIRT, and HIIT. 
• Coached and self-guided workouts available according to your preference.
• Recipes weekly grocery lists 
• Daily meditations included

Cons

• Daily planner seems a bit random
• No way to measure progress or track calories burned or consumed
• Month-to-month subscription expensive compared to other apps on the market

Quick FAQ