Apps have entered the fitness space like a swarm of locusts gobbling up all the attention they can. The world of Apps is a ferociously competitive one where only the novel, extremely useful or silly survive. They can be life savers, as we find ourselves lost on a small dirt track in the hills of Italy, or time suckers, as we spend hundreds of mindless minutes each week enjoying some addictively fun game.
The insanely popular game Pokémon GO has been downloaded an estimated 500 million times since July! This global love of apps can certainly be used to our advantage.
I’m a huge fan of technology that makes us more productive, knowledgeable and disciplined and am very excited to share five apps right now that can immediately crank up your fitness flow!
Five Fabulous Fitness Helpers
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Seven
If you’re in dire straits and only have a few minutes to work out, this little app can give you the motivation you need. As you exercise along with the animated man or woman featured, you complete twelve bodyweight exercises in just over seven minutes. You work for thirty seconds and rest for ten seconds between exercises.
You are given a free full body workout to start and then have to keep using the app consistently to unlock other levels. Seven is great for beginners that would like to ease their way back into exercise, or for time strapped fitness enthusiasts that have only minutes to spare. There is no internet connection needed so you can bring it anywhere!
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My Fitness Pal
My Fitness Pal is a very popular app that allows you to keep track of how many calories you consume each day. With hundreds of foods already built into the app, you simply click the foods you ate and My Fitness Pal counts the calories in that food.
Although I’m not a fan of counting calories, I do believe that this is a great educational tool for people. It allows you to understand how many calories are in your favourite foods and challenges you to think about what you put in your mouth.
It counteracts mindless eating and also gives you a daily threshold of how many calories is best for you to consume, based on your goals, gender and activity levels.
After a few hours using this app, you definitely start to think about how to fuel your body in a different way. Highly recommended for people who are confused about what type of foods are beneficial to be their most energetic self, and to understand their daily caloric limits. At its most basic level, My Fitness Pal is also a go to resource to check out how many calories are in certain foods you normally eat.
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Seconds
I love this app! I first came across it as I searched for a decent timer to help me during my HIIT video workouts. It needed to be reliable, highly functional and easy to see while working out.
When I first began filming my workouts, I often had to repeat a workout after the timer malfunctioned half way through. That was seriously frustrating to have to compose myself, try to look fresh again and start over!
The Seconds timer gives you lots of options such as a HIIT, circuit, tabata or custom timer. Simply put in the amount of time you need to work and rest, choose how many intervals you want, and go!
Visually, the interface is nice and big and the beeps are clear and accurate. Both are crucial for an uninterrupted workout.
The one annoying thing about this app is that you have to enter all the information each time you use it, as the free version does not allow you to save your previously used timers.
You can upgrade to the pro version for €4.99 but I find that the slight inconvenience of entering the information again is easy enough to handle, as long as you’re not using it daily.
This app is perfect if you want to invent a quick training circuit to do at home or in your hotel room, and is excellent for cardio and HIIT sessions. Again, no internet connection is needed which is an added bonus.
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Google Calendar
You may be thinking that I’ve lost my mind including a boring scheduling app in my fab five, but hear me out! Google Calendar is an organizational tool that helps you plan your days, weeks and months in advance. Whenever you have something important happening that day, the app sends you a notification on your phone letting you know about the upcoming event.
What I love about this is that you can tailor the messages you send yourself and also plan out all your workouts in advance. This avoids that moment when you need to think about what to do in the gym that evening. You end up talking yourself out of going because you’re too tired to come up with an exciting session.
Taking fifteen minutes on a Sunday to plan your week of workouts (gym sessions, HIIT workouts, runs in the park etc.) and adding them to Google Calendar will see your execution rate soar! But the best part for me is the customisation.
Instead of writing “Gym Session at 5pm” and put it in for Thursday, how about writing “Super Gym Session so I feel amazing meeting friends later!”.
The power and motivation you gain from having a personalized message you wrote to yourself pop up on your screen is huge. Get creative and give it a try!
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YouTube
This is a behemoth of an app! The amount of resources you can find here to help you with your life is mind blowing. YouTube is such an ally to have on your fitness journey. It’s an ocean of variety, it’s completely free and it’s always on your phone.
This 24-hour access means you are never short of workout ideas. Whether you like yoga, boxing, Pilates or high intensity interval training, there is a workout for you. Be careful not to get sucked down an information hole when using it however. Avoid opening it up to put on a cardio workout and getting lost in the endless videos that pop up.
Be disciplined in your search, choose one and get moving. My advice is to have a few go-to channels for your needs and stick to those. Use YouTube to steer clear of workout boredom and get some fitness information from your trusted sources. Check out the Properly Built YouTube channel for a library 12 minute HIIT workouts,whenever you need to jazz your training up!
Apps can be an amazing source of learning, convenience and motivation, or can be complete time wasters. Used well, they can push you to become better and be a wonderful partner, as you go down your fitness path.
Remember that none of these work if you don’t work! Be wary of downloading them and feeling that you have achieved something.
The achievement begins when you start acting and doing. The installing and choosing of the right apps is only the prep work. Be sure to make them count by putting your head down and doing the only thing that will get you results…consistent sweaty movement! Get them, use them and smile as your performance ticks upward.
What one app would you suggest to help get better results? I’ll be the first to download any recommendations!