Can’t Afford A Trainer? These Are The Best Workout Apps
There are 27 full yoga classes, complete with soothing voiceover instructions that tell you exactly when to breathe and move, along with calming music. You can preview the list of poses that you’ll be doing during a workout, which might be helpful if you tend to have trouble following along. You can also choose a “setting” for your yoga practice, and it’ll show the cartoon avatar on a mountain or in the desert.
Following along with virtual trainers in workout videos can be sort of hard. In a 2015 study, exercise scientists from the University of Florida determined that Sworkit (which stands for “simply work it”) was the closest aligned to the American College of Sports Medicine’s training guidelines. In other words, the workout advice is very legit compared to the 30 other apps on the market that were studied. You can mix and match your own “playlist” of body weight exercises to build a workout with exercises you love, so you don’t have to endure the ones you hate (hi, burpees).
This app is like taking a daily vitamin for your butt. As the name suggests, every day you can choose a 5- or 10-minute butt workout with 10 different exercises. There’s a video to go with each move and detailed written instructions that include exactly where you should feel the exercise in your body.
Quit your ClassPass membership — this app lets you stream a wide variety of fitness classes, ranging from morning yoga routines to fast-paced 10-minute HIIT workouts to personal training sessions that will build up your gym technique. If you’re interested in a mix of fitness styles, this free app won’t bore you with its wide range of fitness classes.
Have you always wanted to run from Canada to California or the length of the Great Wall in China? There’s an app for that. My Virtual Mission lets you plan Sims-style fitness missions across the globe, tracking your mileage and pace as you run wherever your imagination takes you. Plan solo missions running, cycling, and swimming, or invite friends to create a group challenge and compare stats on the leadership board. You can send digital postcards of landmarks and sites you’ve virtually visited to keep up motivation and also raise funds for charity via mission sponsorships.
