The right fitness app can give you the boost you need to get through your workouts, but the wrong one can leave you frustrated. Below are a list of options you should locate in an exercise and fitness app.
1. Variety in Workout:
An access to hundreds of streaming exercise will give a varied choice in workout and help overcome monotonous training. Boredom can undermine your best intentions and lead to drop out. When physical activity becomes ho-hum, it’s easy to find excuses for not doing it. When you do the same type of exercise exclusively, your body builds certain specific strengths. By switching your activity mode, you broaden your physical abilities. Doing a different activity stresses the body in a new and novel way. That’s why, after trying a new physical movement, you sometimes feel sore in places where you had forgotten you had muscles. A 2005 study published by researchers at The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the University of Pittsburgh found that dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, occurred less frequently in people aged 65 or older who participated in more physical activities, from gardening to jogging to golfing. (Of course, if you’re planning on becoming much more physically active than you are now, you’ll want to check with your health care professional first.)
2. Customized Fitness Plan:
The hardest part of a workout is just getting to the gym. What more could one need than a personal trainer without the hassle of researching workouts or booking expensive trainers. Most of these apps features 200-700 exercises (strength, plyometric, callisthenic, yoga), and unique workouts, custom-tailored to ones goals. At a minimal cost of $ 2.99, the Gain iPhone app recommends exact exercises, sets, reps, and rests, so tracking is easy. For those who are using the app for multiple workouts per week, Gain’s app will create a different workout every time to keep things fresh.
3. Voice Feedback on distance, pace or speed:
With the introduction of its $1.99 Nike+ GPS app. (iPhone or iPod Touch) users have access to measuring pace, distance, and route specifics. Nike emphasizes fun and motivation, so you may have access to inspirational messages from famous Nike athletes or get voice feedback on your pace. Voice feedback can serve as a great motivational tool.
4. Music Support:
Music is an integral part of workouts and pre-game routines for most athletes and gym-goers. Choosing the right pump-up songs can dramatically improve the quality of your training. In a study, Atkinson and colleagues investigated average speed, power, heart rate and RPE for 16 physically active 25-year-old males during timed trials on a cycle ergometer (Atkinson, Wilson & Eubank 2004). “Dance” music (142 beats per minute [bpm]) was used in a 10-kilometer (10K) trial, and the results were compared with those from a 10K control trial that used no music. Average speed, power and heart rate were significantly higher in the group who had music accompaniment than in the control group. Encouraging women to listen to self-selected music during challenging exercise is an application that fitness professionals have employed for years to get positive results. Runkeeper (iPhone, iPod Touch, Android) lets you manage your music without leaving the app.
5. Diet Tracker:
Look out for an app that allows you to add foods and build your own recipes. Tap & Track (compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, iPad) offers tons of features for people who want to track everything from food calories to exercise. They offer an extensive food database with 300,000 food items and 700 restaurants, while the workout database has over 180 exercises. It sets diet plans and weight loss goals. Tracks calories eaten and burned. Tracks carbs, protein, fat, fiber, sodium,sugar and more.
There is a growing supply of health and fitness tracking apps and gadgets on the market, including the Nike+ FuelBand, Fitbit and Jawbone UP, but Julia Hu, CEO and co-founder of the Mountain View, California-based company Lark said her product provides real-time advice and does not focus on tracking metrics like calories burned or distance traveled. The app called Larklife gathers data via a wristband and provides personalized advice which is displayed on the smartphone app. It can deduct if the wearer is not getting enough sleep and how sedentary they are, according to its creators. The wristband will be sold in Apple stores and online in the United States in December for $149.99.