If you are aiming to be more physically fit, increase your daily steps or aiming to burn more calories, there are various fitness apps to achieve your fitness goals. After searching through various fitness apps, a list consisting of the best has been made on the basis of their usability, user ratings, design, capacity and their update frequency.
Exercise has many advantages that have never been fully explored. It is free of cost, really easy to start, has few or no side effects when done properly and does not require a prescription. If exercise were a drug, it would prove to be the most gainful medicine ever.
Exercising daily brings many benefits along with it, such as it helps you maintain a healthy weight, makes your heart stronger, brings an improvement in your lung function and cuts down your risk of coronary heart disease drastically. In addition, physical activity also lowers the risk of depression, diabetes, cognitive decline and cancer.
As per the guidelines by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for physical activity, it is recommended that for considerable health benefits from exercise, you should partake in a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity every week, although indulging in at least 60 minutes of aerobic workout can also do you good.
Physical activity comes in various forms, such as high-intensity running and cycling or doing yoga stretches leisurely. Medical News Today has listed down the top 10 fitness app to help users achieve their physical activity goals with a little ease.
Fitness Apps: RunKeeper
Android: Free
iPhone: Free
The Fitness Apps RunKeeper keeps a track of your walks, runs and any other physical activity. From people taking a casual stroll to the 5k runner and those working towards taking part in the marathon, this GPS-based app shows an impressive community strength of 50 million users and is apt for everyone. To make your workout interesting, you can save, discover and build new routes with the help of GPS.
RunKeeper can help you in achieving your goals, whether it is to train for a race, to lose a few kilograms or to reach a particular pace target. The My Plan dashboard provides training plans that can be customised according to your needs, on the basis of your answers to a series of questions. You can also select from a range of ready-made schedules.
You can stay motivated and challenge yourself to reach your fitness goals, win rewards for the workouts you carry out and share your achievements with your friends using this Fitness Apps. You are able to create your own challenges too and invite friends to join you and encourage you on the way to achieve your goal in this Fitness Apps.
The Fitness Apps Strava
Android: Free
iPhone: Free
Fitness apps Strava aims to connect athletes throughout the world by providing a motivational experience without junk posts and ads that are seen on other social networks. You may join Strava for the Fitness Apps tracking ability but it’s inspiring and competitive community will make you stay. It is one of the top pick for social training purposes.
Strava’s community consists of millions of active adventurers, runners, cyclists and pros that keep a record of their activities. Strava has activity tracking that makes key statistics available such as pace, distance, elevation gained and calories burned as a result of the exercise. Also displayed is an interactive map pertaining to your activity.
You can also make a comparison of your performance with other those of other users and connect with the Strava community using this fitness apps. You can share the high points of your activity, stories and even publish photos of the top moments from your ride or run. You will be motivated and encouraged through the comments. In order to also indulge in a bit of friendly competition in your workout, you can aim for the best time on the leader board of the apps.
The Fitness Apps Yoga Studio
Android: $4.99
iPhone: $4.99
Yoga Studio is the most suggested yoga and fitness apps and for a valid reason. There are more than 70 standard and pre-programmed yoga and meditation classes with stages varying from beginner to advanced and lasting for a time period of 15 to 60 minutes. This Fitness Apps ensures there is something for everyone.
You can customize your class as per your need and can select on which aspect you want to focus on such as strength, flexibility, relaxation, balance or a mixture of all four. The explanation provides clear and easy to understand instructions on how to do a pose and how to transition from one to another flawlessly.
With instructions at every step for more than 280 poses, along with their benefits, variations, modifications and care to be taken for each of the poses, it provides you with an instant yoga library easily accessible from your pocket. You can also practice yoga regularly and fit it in your busy schedule by syncing classes with your phone’s calendar.
The Fitness Apps Sworkit
Android: Free
iPhone: Free
American College of Sports Medicine has rated Sworkit as the number 1 workout app for quality of instructional exercise standards and it is simple and customizable. Sworkit has brought more than 40 million workouts to people belonging to all levels of fitness. You can select your goals and aims to make sure you utilise every second after entering in your personal data into the fitness apps. The workout dashboard shows various exercises meant for cardio, stretching, strength and yoga demonstrated by your coach. You can view individual exercises by making use of the custom dashboard to assemble your own personalized workout.
You can select workout plans on the basis of your fitness goal such as to become leaner, fitter or strongerin this fitness apps. Each of these categories consists of workouts that are free of cost for seven days and are available at beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. Once you upgrade to Premium, you get full access to workouts that are guided, intervals that you can set for high-intensity interval training (HIIT) and Tabata and endless custom workouts.
The Fitness Apps J&J Official 7 Minute Workout
Android: Free
iPhone: Free
A workout method based on science, the J&J Official 7 Minute Workout is designed by Chris Jordan, director of exercise physiology at the Johnson & Johnson Human Performance Institute. The fitness apps is based around research on HIIT and circuit training that demonstrates that small spans of hard exercise with short recovery time can develop aerobic fitness rapidly.
The setup is quick and you can indulge into a 7-minute workout, or 9.07 minutes with a warm-up. You can swipe between workout views with ease with the help of the slick interface which displays time, video or music that can be selected from your own music library in your phone. Based on your likes and dislikes you can give thumbs up or thumbs down for exercises in this fitness apps.
To learn how to perform every one of the 72 exercises securely and efficiently, there are video tutorials available which you can browse through. You can keep a track of your progress in the performance dashboard which indicates the days, amount of cycles completed, and work done. You can also share a snapshot of yourself with your friends while you are training to help keep you driven or perhaps to indulge in a little healthy competition.
The Fitness Apps Couch to 5K
Android: $2.99
iPhone: $2.99
Couch to 5K enables you to transform from a couch potato to running 5K in a small span of just 9 weeks by following their fun and easy training strategy. This app is ideal for beginners to motivate them to devote about 20 to 30 minutes to exercising, thrice per week to make them be 5K ready.
This tool, which helps in race training, allows you to keep a log of your workouts and share your development on Facebook. Your distance and pace growth can be observed in the graphs section, and workouts can be entered yourself if you have worked out on a treadmill.
You can chose from four interactive and inspiring virtual coaches that have audio cues as well to direct you throughout each workout and help you stay on track. You can also sync your phone’s playlists with this fitness apps so that you can listen to your choice of music while exercising.
Fitness Apps JEFIT: Workout Tracker Gym Log
Android: Free
iPhone: Free
This fitness apps is very helpful for gym-goers as it’s easy to log weight and track repetitions on each machine with just one click. JEFIT allows you to keep a track of your workout routines and your respite time, and log and chart all of your body measurements as you improve.
If you are a beginner at the gym, JEFIT makes available more than 60 routines for its users, specially designed by the JEFIT team themselves. In addition, there also 2,000 plans which are created by the community that you can uses to get started. An exercise dashboard shows a surplus of 1,300 exercises for cardio machines and equipment for weightlifting and also provides visual instructions on each step on how to perform the complete exercise along with useful tips.
JEFIT’s workout community is pretty active and you can connect with millions of other users or can add friends to keep yourself motivated. You can also share the progress you have made in your training with the community and compare the statistics.
Fitness Apps Zombies, Run!
Android: Free
iPhone: Free
Zombies, Run! is an engrossing running game and an audio adventure. After installation, a story is presented to you with details such as after a zombie epidemic you have to run and make it to the last remaining outpost meant for humanity’s survival. You aim on the way is to collect supplies, rescue survivors and secure and defend their homes.
You can save hundreds of lives and also discover the actuality of the zombie apocalypse by running in a park, walking on trails or even by jogging on a treadmill. Your mission and music channels will be conveyed to you through your headphones and you need to speed up if the zombies are after you.
The first four missions are free of cost and each week a new mission can be unlocked. Upgrading to Pro helps unlock unrestricted access to more than 260 missions and interval training plans. If you are looking for an adrenaline rush and an adventure, this fitness apps is just for you.
Fitness Apps Charity Miles
Android: Free
iPhone: Free
If you want to make a real difference with your training, Charity Miles is the best fitness apps to use. You can help charities benefit from you being physically active, simply like going out to get coffee, taking your dog for a walk, riding your bike in your neighbourhood or shovelling some snow. Users have helped raise more than $2 million for charity with this app.
You can choose from more than 40 charities to show your support, on initial setup. Once you begin you activity, you get sponsored by a particular brand to finish your task. The dashboard displays your activity, duration, distance and the entire amount earned by the community for the charity that you chose. You will be motivated to put in extra efforts as all physical activity eventually contributes to charity. On the plus side, you will improve your fitness levels and overall health.
Fitness Apps CARROT Fit
iPhone: $3.99
CARROT Fit is an enjoyable way to get fit with your strict coach which is computer-generated. CARROT has just one goal of transform your unfit body into a perfectly physically fit one and stops at nothing to make you achieve this goal. CARROT fitness apps uses bribery, inspiration, threats and ridicules to get you moving.
This fitness app is based on the same principle as the J&J Official 7 Minute Workout which is the 7-minute science-based method. The difference is that these 7-minutes involve sweat and pop culture, consisting of activities such as Celebrity Face Punches, Dragon Mating Dances and Mt. Doom Climbs. The routine is intense and you can take part in 30 seconds of hardcore and punishing exercise, followed by rest time of 10 seconds.
CARROT also tracks the number of steps you have taken and the amount of weight you have lost. It also displays your workout sessions on a calendar. CARROT will then evaluate your progress and if it is not satisfied with it, the feedback she gives is pretty harsh. However, if CARROT finds your progress impressive, she will present you with app upgrades as rewards. It is available in Google Playstore.
