What are the best fitness apps?

Looking for the best free workout apps or a workout app for weight-loss? Maybe you're looking for something that will get you moving thats more engaging then just lifting weights. Fueled, a leader in mobile app development, has put together this list of our 8 favorite workout apps so you don't have to painstakingly comb the thousands of workout apps in the app store or google play store.

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Fitness Totals
Bringing awareness to your workout progress

There are two parts of any workout routine — tracking and actively doing the workout itself as well as storing, visualizing, and analyzing your progress. Fitness Totals specializes in the latter. It reads from the Apple Health app to help keep monitor all your crucial health stats from steps taken to calories burned.

A major new update also just dropped that includes new bar charts to improve comparisons over time. These new charts can be viewed in widget-form too. Right on your Home Screen you can see how far you’ve run each day (or any of the other supported metrics), giving you that motivation to push further.

Comparisons can be drawn over several increments including weekly, monthly, and yearly. Maintaining your momentum and continuing to improve can be quite hard, but seeing how you’re doing — and when you’re falling behind — can be the push you need. The app is also exceptionally well designed with gorgeous graphics and iconography. Aside from using this app, products like Ostarine uk can also be vital in your fitness gains.

Dawn Patrol
Workout tracking — but for surfers!

Why should runners, bikers, and strength trainers get all the great apps? Dawn Patrol is the hands-down best workout app for surfers with a ridiculously large set of features and wonderful graphics. This app is designed not only for iPhone, but for Apple Watch as well, which can run completely independently. No phone required.

With Dawn Patrol, users can check out the morning swell and see when will be peak surfing hours. Once you hit the waves, you can start a workout right from your Apple Watch. Using the watch’s GPS, you can see exactly how far you surfed and track how many waves you caught. You can see your average hang time visualize your ride on a map.

This all syncs not just with Apple Health, but the workout rings on your Apple Watch. So as you ride, your exercise ring is filled. Getting all three rings filled is almost a compulsion for many people — me included — so having a native app that can do so with as much ease as Apple’s own watered-down workout app is a godsend.

I love the ocean-blue accents and the Home Screen widgets that make this app so full- featured and useful. If only I surfed...

SmartGym
Your own personal AI workout companion

If you’ve ever wanted a personal trainer but never took the plunge, SmartGym is a fantastic place to start. This smart app for iPhone Apple Watch assembles custom workouts that are personalized to you based on your skill level, the muscles you want to target, the equipment you have, and how often you want to hit the gym.

Smart trainer has over 130 pre-built workouts and more than 620 pre-installed exercises that include images and animations. If doing a HIIT workout, there’s even voice guidance to help you along. Smart Trainer can monitor your progress and adjust your workout as your skill level and goals increase.

Since this is an Apple-first app, many Apple-centric features are baked in. Siri can be used to trigger the beginning of your workout. Smart Trainer is available natively on Apple Watch so you don’t need your iPhone to carry out a fitness session. All data and metrics syncs with Apple Health for backup and analyzing with other apps. For trainers, the app can use augmented reality to break down your student’s posture.

Strava
Run, ride, succeed

Unlike other excellent running apps, Strava is designed to not just help you out while running, but riding as well. Riding bikes specifically... it doesn’t support horses or other vehicles. But for riders and runners, Strava is almost universally beloved.

It’s sleek grey and orange UI is easy to traverse as you track all of your outdoor workouts. Pace, elevation, moving time, heart rate, calorie burn, distance, and more all are tracked via Strava. This is then analyzed to give you graphical insights into your performance. How you’ve increased your pace and distance as you’ve improved.

For those extra competitive, you can race the community with multiple virtual segments. See how you do compared to everyone else in your area, provided that extra motivation. If cycling, Strava can record your average speed during the ride as well as time and distance. It is even great to mount on your handlebars while riding.

One of my fave features of Strava is discovery of new places to explore. The app offers up a variety of popular paths in various cities that you can try out. It gives you the distance, duration, elevation, and map prior to setting off. One of my biggest issues running outside is getting a bit bored with the same route. This fixes that.

There are a whole lot of running apps on the App Store, but Strava easily rises to the top.

Wakeout!
Mini, fun workouts for your day

Intense physical workouts aren’t for everyone. They aren’t necessarily enjoyable, let alone convenient. Wakeout! — yes, the exclamation is part of the name. This app is packed full of literally thousands of mini workouts that you can tackle throughout the day, With Wakeout!, getting in a compressive workout each day is not only doable, it’s enjoyable.

This app seemed to catch on like crazy during 2020 as gyms closed and more people were focused on their health while relegated to their homes. This app lets you get those workouts done, without fancy equipment or costly memberships.

Your personal activity plan can be made up of all sorts of different exercises based on different criteria. You can filter by room such as bedroom, office, or living room or based on energy such as relaxing or high energy. Then a timer can be set to remind you to fit in that minute or so of activity however often you please. Make it every hour or make it every 30 minutes.

Wakeout! activities include such fun ones like punching your pillow, raising books, chair stretches, bunny hops, and more. There’s also the option to workout with a partner. So now that you’re working from with your significant other, you can both relax and do some two- person cushion squats.

Fitness Buddy
Log those workouts, lose weight, build muscle

I’ve tested so many different workout apps over the years, but the very first one I used for tracking my training at the gym was Fitness Buddy. This app is packed with more than 300 workouts designed for the home and gym and more than 2,400 professional exercises.

Since my original use of the app, it has come a long way. It is now upgraded with a huge swath of features and graphics that look both modern and clear. Workouts have easy instructions and you can track your progress as you do repetitive sets.

One cool feature is you can see a skeletal build of a human and you can tap the exact muscle you’d like to work. When you select the muscle you’d like to isolate, that app gives you all the workouts that will help. If you don’t see the workout you’re looking for — if that’s possible — you can add your own.

This app has a ton more functionality based around meal plans and pre-designed programs but in the end, I just find this to be one of the most robust strength training apps around.

MyFitnessPal
Track your food, workouts, and more

It’s been a long time since MyFitnessPal was originally released on the App Store and it has continued to be a reliable companion for your workouts. This app which was so popular as to be acquired by Under Armor a several years ago, is great for tracking your workouts as well as your food, weight, and other metrics.

This app is surprisingly robust and I used it to track both my workouts as well as my food for a very long time. Food tracking is fantastic with the ability to scan barcodes or look up items from a massive database. Workouts are similarly robust with a large repository of exercises to choose from. You can track your reps, weight, resistance, and can even customize the metrics you track for your own exercises.

Everything syncs back to Apple Health so you can analyze your progress from there are in other third-party apps. And speaking of third-party apps, there are direct integrations with many including Garmin, Fitbit, and others. For an all-in-one tracker with a free tier, MyFitnessPal is rock solid.

NikeTraining Club & Run Club
Nike’s magic goes digital

Nike has always had a tight relationship with Apple, going back to those little pucks you could fit in your shoes and sync with your iPod. Apple still releases special Nike editions of the Apple Watch bundled with limited edition bands and Nike’s app pre-installed.

There are two different exercise apps that Nike offers. Run Club is focused exclusively on running — as the name would suggest. It features stellar graphics, coaching and music timed for your run, and excellent progress tracking. Each run is shown on a map and is color-coded to your pacing in each area. You can challenge your friends and — in a spectacular bit of vertical integration — you can add your shoes to see how far you run in each pair.

Training Club covers everything else. Do some yoga, build strength, and much more with this app. There are in-depth tutorials and videos walking you through individual workouts as well as studio-style classes. All is tracked to your feed as well as Apple Health. Both apps are an amazing edition to any workout plan.

But enough about other people's apps.

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