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6 Best Fitness Apps That I Personally Use

by - NASM CPT  ·  45 Comments

If you’re like me, your smartphone and apps have become a big part of your life and keeping it organized. Apps on my iPhone help me keep track of appointments, make grocery lists, and yes, help me to stay in shape. Here are 6 of my personal favorite fitness apps – tried and true:

Don’t forget to check out our favorite fitness device, the BodyMedia Armband that will count your burned calories accurately!

Nike Training Club

I work out at home, and once or twice a week, I use this wonderful, easy app on my iPhone to work out. I’ll go ahead and give the disclaimer that it features women, but guys can easily do these workouts too. You have the choices of levels from beginner to advanced, and you can also choose the type of workout you want to do (Get Lean, Get Toned, Get Strong). Each section then has several 30-45 minute workouts featuring little to no equipment, and they are GOOD, really tough workouts. My favorite is the bonus section that features workouts led by different female athletes, including my favorite, Hope Solo. NTC app also has these awesome features:

  • countdown for both your workout and the current interval
  • video and photo tutorials of each exercise
  • the ability to play music from your library
  • earn rewards by logging workout minutes
  • share your workouts on Facebook and Twitter
  • sync with your smartphone calendar to remind you to work out

Cost – FREE

LoseIt

LoseIt is a food and exercise journal, not just a calorie counting app. For those who want to lose fat, recording food intake is a valuable tool in opening your eyes to how much you’re actually eating (most people underestimate), and keeping an eye on your carb/fat/protein ratio is very helpful in improving metabolism. Here are my favorite features of LoseIt:

  • saves your recorded foods so you’re not always searching
  • barcode scanner so you can just scan the label of a food you’re eating to enter it
  • daily breakdown of the percentage of your calories coming from protein, fat, and carbohydrates
  • share foods and recipes with friends
  • recipes allows you to create a dish once without having to enter every ingredient every time
  • sharing on social media
  • “previous meals” feature allows you to add entire meals you’ve eaten recently with one touch (super helpful if you eat the same thing everyday)
  • set goals and shows progress charts

Cost – FREE

RunKeeper

If you run and own a smartphone, you are probably already familiar with RunKeeper or other GPS apps that track your runs. RunKeeper recently upgraded it’s free version to also include something that I think now makes it one of the best-intervals! Strap your phone on your arm, choose a playlist, choose a “coaching” setting (target pace, intervals, or fitness classes), and RunKeeper will give you voice prompts in your headphones. If your goal is to run a 10 minute mile, it will let you know every so often (you choose) how close you are to your target pace. If you’re using the interval setting, it will beep and let you know whether to go fast or slow. Once you’re done, you will have a nice breakdown of how fast you went, hills you climbed, even a breakdown of how fast you took each mile. Other features:

  • add friends and view their running activities for motivation and support
  • set goals (lose weight, finish a race, longest distance, total distance)
  • save your coaching settings for easy starts
  • save your route so you know where you’re going next time
  • enter activity manually if you’re running at the gym, etc
  • save all of your activities so you can see how much you’re improving
  • tap your screen during a run to hear a voice prompt of how far you’ve run, how fast your pace is, how long you’ve been running, etc.
  • the Elite version ($4.99/month or $19.99 a year) lets your friends and family connect with you while you run

Cost – FREE

You Are Your Own Gym

I stumbled across the book of the same name by Mark Lauren awhile back, and it changed my life. Mark has written what he calls “the Bible of bodyweight exercises”, and I was thrilled when he created an app to accompany the book. The app is full of bodyweight exercises along with detailed explanations of how to perform each, and also includes timers with different workout methods (intervals, super sets, ladders, etc) that will count down for you and tell you exactly what to do. I love this app for travel because every exercise can be done pretty much anywhere. Best features:

  • create your own workouts or follow along with the 10 week plan already included
  • save your workouts so you have a history and can view your progress
  • complete database of bodyweight exercises, and instructions on performing them
  • variations included from beginner to difficult
  • breaks exercises down into push, pull, legs, core, and whole body
  • share your workouts on social media
  • available for iPad in large form so you can see better from a distance
  • all exercises can be done anywhere
  • record your reps in the app

Cost – $1.99

Seconds

Seconds is an interval timer that I use for almost all of my HIIT workouts. The free version is good enough for me. I have choices of several different interval methods for my workouts as well as the ability to set them up however I want. I like Seconds because it’s really simple and user-friendly, it gives audio prompts, and you can use it on your iPad, so it’s visible from across the room.

  • choose between HIIT, circuit training, rounds, compound, and empty timers. The possibilities are endless.
  • specify your number of sets, and the seconds , background color, and even change your music for each interval. I like to set my “work” intervals to green and rest intervals to red so I know at a glance what I’m doing.
  • option to add in a warmup and cooldown
  • choose your audio options…do you want beeps to alert you? boxing ring? countdown? an alert when you’re almost done? Vibrations in case your phone is on your armband?
  • in some sections, you can even specify your exercise… for example, change “exercise 1” to “burpees” and know exactly what you’re doing

Cost – FREE or $4.99 for pro version (allows you to save and share your timers)

Coach Calorie App

What, you didn’t realize that Coach Calorie had an app? Get the best information on health and fitness on the web daily right to your mobile phone. From your smartphone, go to the mobile version of coachcalorie.com, and a banner will pop up at the bottom asking if you’d like to install this site as an app. Click it and the icon will download to your phone. Now you have an easy way to check back in with us each day, and you’ll be armed with your daily education towards a healthy lifestyle.

Cost- FREE

What apps do you love for health and fitness?

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45 Comments

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  2. Thanks for this post! I use the Nike Training Club app and love it. What I like most about these apps is that they’re still handy while travelling!

  3. I use lose it, and I love it! I wish it had a few more options for exercises, but I adjust to what I think fits.

    • I’m a fan of LoseIt too April. Takes a little while to get your foods set up, but once you do, it’s smooth sailing going forward.

    • April, I just use google to figure out the calories burned for the work I do, go with the lowest estimate I find (better to underestimate, right? 🙂 ) and create my own exercise in LoseIt. I know so many people that love LoseIt for so many different reasons! Glad you like it too.

  4. For Android there is a free app called CalcScan for people on weight watchers diets. You use your smartphone to scan a food barcode and it will tell you how many weight watchers points it is. Very handy in the grocery store!

  5. Those are some awesome apps!

    My Fitness Pal is another really helpful app for keeping a food diary.

    With a bit of tweaking you can set it up so you can see protein, carbs, fat and fiber as well as calories each day.

    You can also scan the barcode of anything that you eat that comes from a packet (that seems like a really cool feature until you realise that most things you should be eating dont come from a packet…. 🙂

    • I think they might be iphone only right now 🙁 Hopefully they’ll come out with more versions soon!

  7. I recommend Fitocracy.com… Great, fun, competitive app/website that gives great motivation to keeping a healthy way of living.

  8. I’m a huge fan of Lose It, I’ve been using it for years now. For exercise I use Fitocracy; it can be used to track any kind of exercise and has simple performance metrics plus some fun social stuff built in.

  11. wow, the seconds app is awesome, just downloaded it, i was just using the manual timer on my phone, this is much better, although a bit expensive for the paid version!

    lose it is a decent app too, but i like myfitnesspal for counting calories, its free and has way more foods.

    • I’ve had no trouble with Seconds Free version, haven’t felt the need to upgrade. LoseIt vs. MyFitnessPal seems to be the new Pepsi vs. Coke 🙂

  12. Are these Iphone only? I am doing a search on my Droid and none of these come up…not even the coach calorie app!! Ugh….

  13. Thank you for the great apps. I also really love the Everyday Health Calorie app and My Diet Coach both are free and really helped me lose thirty pounds, because they were great motivators!

  14. MY FAVORITE apps are the coach calorie apps, Myfitness pal (keeps track of my diet and it has a scanner to scan labels so you don’t have to put in the info) and I LOVE LOVE Fitacrosy as well for my fitness part and I love sparkspeople for new recipes and ideas for new food menus

  15. I have a smartphone on order…as soon as I get it I am get these apps. thanks. The gym I belong to had a lifestyle fitness challenge for 10 weeks. I lost 5 lbs, 2 inches ooo both waist and hips and 2% body fat. But I platoed so these should get me jumpstarted…thanks

  16. I use these: Myfitnesspal to track diet, mynetdiary to track diet & nutrition, fooducate: a must for the grocery store, Jefit Pro for the gym, Gymrat for the gym, runtastic pro, fitbit, Runkeeper, Endomondo Pro, Fit Calculator, MiCoach (love this for running), FitnessBuilder (to design workouts for clients), MapMyRun, HIIT Interval Timer.

  18. I used endomondo for my walking activities, and it always says that 2miles in 34min I burned 230cal. Impossible coz all other apps counted 122-128cal. Inaccurate application 🙁

  19. I’m not sure why but the Nike Training Club app is not available in the App store. I get a no results for Nike Training Club when I search. I’ve even tried searching on just Nike or Nike Training. Any ideas?

  21. is there any other way to get the Coach Calorie app….I never saw it flash on my android

    • Excellent. I patiently await its release. 🙂 I’ve just referred my mum to your site. She has recently been diagnosed with type II diabetes and is really struggling with her excuses and victim attitude, along with breaking bad sugar habits.

  23. “endomondo pro” is the cats meow! I love my fitbit and “fitbit” app too. “coach calorie” app of course 😉 “Myfitnesspal” for tracking, and “daily workouts” for a quick routine if I have nothing else planned

  24. What is that fat caliper app in the picture? It wasn’t mentioned in the article but it looks cool.

  25. Hi! how do you feel about Cardio Trainer? I’ve been using that one and I like it a lot.

  27. What about that “Fat Caliper” app that is pictured? I literally just added an actual set of calipers to my “shopping cart” on another site, so I would love to hear about that app. Thanks!

  29. I do strength training 3 times a week and HIIT/Tabata the other 3 days. I got the nike app, and was wondering if I would do these workouts on my strenth training days, or my HIIT days?