Technology’s a wonderful thing these days – there are a number of free phone apps available that can help monitor your health and fitness and motivate you; regardless of whether you’re at home or on the go. The appeal of these not only comes from the ability to take them wherever you go, but also that a number of these applications can provide information and help targeted to your own needs.
The sports, fitness and wellness mobile app market is booming and downloads of these apps are expected to grow to nearly 1 billion by 2016, so expect to see a whole lot more of these apps in the future – the trick will be to weed out the useful ones!
Here are our favourite ones:
- Nike Training Club (NTC)
Packed with a ton of workout sessions and different exercises, NTC is like your own pocket personal trainer. You select the workout you want to do based on whether your goal is to slim up, tone up, build strength or focus on specific areas, then select whether you’re a beginner, intermediate or advanced. You’ll get a selection of workouts to choose from which will help you achieve your goals and the app will then take you through that workout. You can play your own music in the background and you even ‘earn’ new workouts and bonus bits through training regularly! - My Net Diary and also My Fitness Pal
If you’re into tracking your energy in vs. energy out, these apps make it easier for you to count the calories in your food and see what gets burned off when you exercise. Calorie counting can be extremely tedious, so anything that means you don’t have to manually add things up can make life a whole lot easier! - Gymboss
This nifty wee app helps you with interval training – say for example you want to do a training session with 50 seconds of work time followed by 10 seconds rest for 12 rounds. That’s what this helps you with. You can even play your own music in the background so you don’t just have to listen to the buzzer (we like the triple boxing bell!) by itself. If you ordered the hardware version from America it would cost you a wee bit, so this is a great way to go if you are on a low budget and want to burn calories faster during your workouts. - 5K Runner
If you’ve ever wanted to start running but have never quite managed to get around to it, this is the app for you (and with all the summer running events coming up, now’s a good time to get into it and begin training!). It basically takes you from zero running experience through to eventually running a full 5 kilometres over a period of time. Great for beginners and those of you who are picking up running again after some time off.
Photo / FreeDigitalPhotos.net – Ambro
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