You’ve heard it all before. Too much phone use can have some nasty effects on your health. Compromised postures. Strained sleep schedules. Let’s not even mention the mental health aspect of phone addiction. Yet despite the negatives, we can’t live without our devices. So what’s an athlete to do to turn those digital woes toward a more positive outcome?
Use your screen time for the sake of your health, not in spite of it.
As tech and fitness continue to mesh with one another, there seems to be an abundance of training and wellness apps on the market, each with its own niche focus to help you better your strength, stamina, flexibility, diet, mindfulness and more. Today’s athletes are also more equipped than ever to get a quality workout in without trudging to the gym or studio, making it the perfect time to pair that treadmill, indoor bike trainer or full-on garage gym with a worthy digital training partner.
If you are looking for a new fitness app to marry to your budding interest in health and wellness, there are a few key factors to look for. After all, app stores can be flooded with both good and bad services, so understanding these features can help narrow down your search for that perfect home screen addition.
What to Look for in a Fitness App
Workout Variety
Hopefully, when you download a fitness app, you’re expecting to use it for an extended period of time. But across that journey, your workouts can begin to run stale if you’re repeating the same sessions day in and day out. Choosing a fitness app that includes a number of classes, modules and exercises can help defend against that mental burnout, keeping every routine fresh and interesting. Plus, adding some variety to your training regimen can allow your muscles to rest and recover properly, preventing any overuse that may lead to fatigue or injury.
Personalization and Tracking
Fitness apps can also be worthwhile tools to monitor your progress through a training program. However, everybody’s body is different, and there’s no cookie-cutter workout regimen that can deliver the same results across multiple body types and experience levels. To better accommodate your fitness needs, look for apps that call for you to put in personal information like your height, weight, goals and more. This can create a more personalized workout experience that measures your progress across your individual milestones. Some apps can also offer recommended sessions and exercises based on your previous experience with training.
Compatibility
Fitness trackers, heart rate monitors, running watches and other wearable devices are other great accessories for training purposes. These tools can track multiple metrics during use, unlocking a better understanding of your performance and capabilities in different disciplines. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, then, to sign up for a fitness app that isn’t capable of integrating this tracked data. Be sure your app of choice can connect with your go-to wearable prior to download. Thankfully, though, there’s a lot of synergy between the top devices and apps, so this shouldn’t be too big of an issue.
Challenges and Incentives
This factor speaks to the competitor in all of us. After all, you’re more inclined to push your actions further if there’s a potential reward at the end. If you need that extra dose of motivation, try and find an app that offers routine challenges or incentives for reaching set milestones. A good example of this would be the leaderboard you’ll see during live classes like Peloton or other gamified platforms. Trying to reach that top spot is instinctual (and fun) which can eliminate any dread or disdain for your particular training session.
Clear Instructions
Let’s make no mistake about it — there’s a heightened risk for injury when working out, especially when it comes to strength training. You’re putting excess load across your muscles and frame, which is why the correct form is an absolute must when working out, regardless of your chosen discipline. Be sure that your fitness app provides ample instruction so that you can train safely and confidently. This information can be featured in multiple formats, from step-by-step guides to full-fledged form correction through your smartphone’s camera. Whichever you land on, just make sure you can easily follow along so you don’t end up straining yourself and put your progress on the sideline.
A Solid Community
Fitness doesn’t need to be an isolated exercise (get it?). There are plenty of athletes out there who share a common goal, which can help bring a social aspect to your daily workouts. If you enjoy the camaraderie and interaction with people sharing similar interests, look for fitness apps that have a strong community presence. This can be in the form of regular attendees of a live class offering, a faithful following online offering tips and tricks for navigating the app itself or just positive interactions offering motivation and support throughout your journey.
How We Tested
As fitness enthusiasts ourselves, we’re no strangers to the abundance of offerings when it comes to fitness apps. We utilize many of the platforms featured below to help keep our varied workouts and nutritional goals on track, all for the sake of creating a more enjoyable, worthwhile training experience. We’ve made note of various perks that come with each app, as well as some things to keep in mind before blindly subscribing to their services.
Now, make sure you’re at a full charge as we swipe through our favorite fitness apps to power up your workout goals.
Editor's note: A lot of these apps offer a limited free version (or brief free trials), which can be great for test runs with each respective service. For the best results, however, you almost invariably need to upgrade to some sort of paid membership, so that's what we focused on with the pricing info. The prices shown indicate monthly subscription rates for better clarity, where appropriate.
Centr
The best ad for Centr may be the physique of its creator, Chris Hemsworth, a.k.a Thor. The God of Thunder has definitely cosigned a platform that’s worthy of your attention, providing personalized meal plans, training regimens and mind-body routines to keep you on a steady path toward success. Our tester notes, "Centr is perfect for those who need someone else to take the wheel on a holistic fitness and wellness plan, whether you’re just getting started or already have a regimen. I definitely recommend it if you’re looking to begin a fun, versatile and reliable program that’s easy to implement into your daily life."
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Future Personal Training
Hiring a personal trainer can be an excellent way to give your workouts premium personalized attention, but in-person sessions can be costly, and you oftentimes need to meet with them and assimilate to a schedule that works for both parties. With the Future app, your personal trainer is directly on your phone, ready to provide you with detailed training plans geared directly toward your goals. We also appreciate the constant line of communication present with your assigned coach, allowing you to learn more about your prescribed workouts with little friction. The only downside is that you need an iOS-supported device to unlock this premium training experience, as the app is not available for Android users.
Nike Training Club
What’s a more cost effective app than one that’s entirely free? With tons of on-demand workouts, training programs, health tips and more, we really enjoy the plethora of support the Nike Training Club app brings to our fitness regimens. Navigating the platform can seem overwhelming at first with all of that information, but once we grew accustomed to the layout, finding our daily sessions was very intuitive. There’s also a ‘Save’ feature that allows you to bookmark your favorite workouts for future use, which is a convenient touch. You will have to download the workouts to your phone prior to the session, though, so be sure your device has enough storage space to accommodate these impressive, effective sessions.
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Sworkit
Sworkit’s customized programs allow you to fit a solid, targeted workout into whatever time you have, whether that’s a trainer-recommended 40 minutes or 4 minutes between episodes of your favorite streaming series. Simply choose the kind of routine you want and how many minutes you have, and it outputs a video-guided, precision-timed, sports scientist-approved workout that’ll help you trim fat, improve endurance and more. We like the variety of workouts present, which often require little to no equipment making this app plenty suitable for fitness novices, but those wanting to really hone in on strength training may find these circuits less of a challenge. The sessions are better for toning and endurance.
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Couch to 5k
Running may seem like a simple fitness routine to follow, but for those brand new to the discipline, it can be difficult to understand the intricacies of catering a workout for ideal distances and paces. The Couch to 5k app helped us eliminate any headaches or an overwhelming sense of challenge, providing a gradual progression over the 9-week program. Additionally, the app features fun and motivating coaches to keep spirits high throughout your training progression, and there’s a large community already present on the platform willing to provide tips and moral support. Will every runner benefit from this gradual take on cardio? No, but for those that are fresh and green when it comes to working out, this can be a great first chapter.
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Peloton
The Peloton app alone grants you access to loads of awesome live and on-demand strength, running, cycling, yoga and HIIT workouts, whether you own one of the brand’s premium pieces of fitness equipment or not. Charismatic instructors guide you through each circuit, and we love the fact that each workout is synced with some of today’s most popular music tracks. Live and on-demand classes are aplenty, and they’re readily available for at-home training. Plus, we like to monitor our progress across the leaderboard, but if you want to do the same, expect to pay a little more. The leaderboard visual is only available to those with all-access memberships, which jumps the price from $12.99 monthly to $44 per month.
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Les Mills+
If you’ve ever partaken in an in-person Les Mills workout, you know each session is filled with energy and heart-pumping potential. Well, this app lets you bring that spark to your at-home workouts, providing hundreds of on-demand sessions through just a few clicks. We love the enthusiasm each Les Mills instructor brings to their respective circuit, and the workouts are designed to keep cadence with music, giving you an audible cue as to what your pacing should be. We have found, though, that the app can feel clunky at times, especially when searching through the platform’s program library. It’s not clear just what you’re searching for, leading to a little confusion which might be disheartening for athletes not used to the Les Mills lingo.
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Strava
Strava has built an extensive roster of dedicated enthusiasts over the years, which is a big testament to the platform’s effectiveness and performance in supporting your running, cycling and other fitness goals. Our tester really appreciated the intuitive user interface and says Strava is “the ideal blend of social media and fitness tracking. The app allows you to not only track your own fitness journey but get a look in on the activities of friends and pros across the world.” The app is also capable of tracking key metrics that can satisfy any data hound, but these statistics are sadly only available to those with paid memberships.
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Zwift
Want to bring that arcade aesthetic to your daily ride? Zwift allows you to explore multiple worlds and routes while also interacting with a global community. You can also customize your avatar with your own apparel, hairstyle and more (which we, admittedly, took way too much time in doing so). Character creation aside, we also found the workouts to be engaging as you rack up arcade-style rewards through your rides. There are even virtual races you can partake in, which can give your training that enticing sense of competition.
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Strong
Logging strength workouts can be a bit of pain, especially since there aren’t many apps that cater to this training discipline. Instead of finding programs online and then transferring them via pen and paper to a logbook, Strong allows you to build out your workouts by searching for specific exercises and then catering the set rep range, weight and number of sets to your training needs. We also appreciate the clear, concise instructions that outline how to do each exercise, and the included visuals provide a great picture of which muscles can be targeted with specific movements. While not conducive to beginner lifters getting used to the gym, if you want to ditch the notebook and carry less gear throughout your sets, get to the app store and download this worthwhile app today.
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Glo
Need a bit of a reprieve from high-intensity strength workouts or grueling running and cycling sessions? Give yoga a shot, and thankfully, there’s an app for that, too, in Glo. With a user-friendly platform and an abundance of live and on-demand practices, we often lean on this impressive app for mixing up our regimens while also boosting our meditation routines. If you want a little more structure, Glo also offers pre-planned paths that guide you through curated programs. Just be wary about closing the app mid-session — we found that your spot isn’t saved when you exit the platform, meaning you’ll need to remember your timestamp if you want to get right back into your flow without any headaches.
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Headspace
Fitness isn’t just about your muscles and cardiovascular abilities. There are plenty of mental workouts you can partake in to sharpen your mind, and for our needs, we’ve found that Headspace delivers the most effective guidance and instruction when it comes to digital apps. We appreciate the different clusters of programs and sessions that can help guide you through varying targets including grief, stress, depression, creativity and more. Plus, you’re able to choose how long your practice lasts, anywhere from 3–20 minutes making finding the time for a quick reprieve more approachable. While there is some repetitiveness at times, we definitely approve this simple yet effective app for daily mental training and support.
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MyFitnessPal
To keep your workouts running as efficiently as possible, you need to make sure you’re giving your body enough fuel and dietary support. We’ve used MyFitnessPal for years and really enjoy the plethora of available foods and recipes across the app’s library. This takes a lot of the guesswork out of tracking your daily consumption. MyFitnessPal can also track your exercise sessions for a more detailed depiction of your daily calories, but we’ve noticed a handful of inaccuracies when it comes to this modality. For best results, we recommend saving this app for dietary needs and instead relying on one of the other platforms in this roundup to track your workouts.
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Apple Fitness+
Apple Fitness+ boasts 11 different types of workouts, real-time metrics and new 5- to 45-minute routines every week. Our tester appreciated the variety of fun, challenging sessions across the platform, and we really admire how easy it is to find a circuit that fits into our busy schedule. Naturally, though, this platform is exclusive to Apple users, so you’ll need to have an iOS-supported device to take advantage of this app. Plus, some workouts require larger equipment like a treadmill or rowing machine, which means you’ll need to ensure you have the right home gym equipment to get the most out of all the available training.
