There is an iPhone app for pretty much anything you can imagine, and this extends to the health and fitness industry. The way workouts and diets are structured can sometimes make it quite hard to record, monitor and regulate your exercise and results.
That might all sound quite daunting, but help is at hand – there are thousands of free apps out there that can enhance your workout, give you some ideas, help you keep track of your progress or perhaps just keep you amused on a boring train ride.
Click on the links to view my top 10 FREE i-Phone apps for your workouts:
The first app is for those who find it hard to resist fast food and sugary snacks. This comprehensive list of the calorific intake of these foods should be enough to shock most people into resisting the temptation to buy two dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
An awesome app for adding some variation to your ab and lower back workouts. Pages of exercises and ideas with easy to follow pics to help you lose that flab. Includes floor exercises, machine exercises and swiss and medicine ball exercises (see left).
Calorie Counter & Diet Tracker
Their HUGE database of the calorific value of different foods helps you keep track of how many calories you’ve consumed… and as we all (should) know, calories consumed < calories burnt = weight loss, making this an invaluable and useful app. Another similar and useful app is Dailyburn.
I love Tabata training, and have written a whole post on it here. The only thing that can make it a bit difficult is the timing of the short circuits, which must be kept at smooth and regular intervals to get the full benefit. In comes the Tabata Timer, a simple yet highly effective app for timing those super high-intensity mini-circuits.
The BMI scale has it’s flaws (see right) but it’s not a bad measure for your average person to see what category they fall into – underweight, normal, overweight or obese. This app tells you your BMI (Body Mass Index, or height/weight ratio) and tracks your progress on a chart which is a good way to gauge improvement.
Many people find running on a treadmill boring, uninspiring and repetitive. One benefit though is that treadmill runs are specific and measured with distance covered, height climbed (if incline is on) and calories burnt all recorded and measured. However, with iMapMyRun you can record a whole host of other information that 10 years ago had to be pretty much guessed. You do, of course, have to take your iPhone with you on your run, but many people already do this to listen to music. If you record a long run AND listen to music I’m not sure the battery life would be sufficient though!
Interval circuits and routines are a great way to kick-start your metabolism and increase the intensities of your workouts. I also love the time saving element when compared to plodding along at a steady pace for hours. This great app allows you to structure your intervals, is very customizable and even allows you to listen to music at the same time.
This app may be a little patronizing for your seasoned athlete, but these 1000 tips make a good little read and can be quite useful for someone who’s just getting into their health and fitness with some general tips and pointers.
This one is actually only available for the iPad, but as a free app with over 700 different exercises it’s definitely worth a mention for anyone who wants to spice up their workouts or who feels stuck for new ideas.
Kettlebells (see left) are an awesome piece of versatile equipment that are fun to use and strengthen the whole body, especially the core. Kettlebells are available in a few studios in Bangkok, including Total Body Training near Thong Lor, and I’ll write a piece on them soon. They’re also great for a home workout as they’re cheap and can be used in a small space. I’ve found this app great for timing my kettlebell exercises.
This is 11, but as one of them is an iPad app I’ll reward you with a few more. This app from Nike is billed as “giving you your own personal trainer”. I wouldn’t quite say that, but it has a whole host of instructional videos, 15, 30, 45 and 60 minute workouts and a reward system for your progress goals. It’s the kind of app that you’d normally be paying for so worth downloading. The only downside is that all the instructions feature females so it’s arguably more suitable for and targeted to the women market.
We’ve given you a load of great specific apps, so here’s another great all round app that has over 450 exercises with real photos – another great idea refresher to really challenge yourself and confuse your body into adapting!
We’re really spoiling you here with a 12th app that’s absolutely free. This app is designed to bring you from coach-dwelling sloth to 5k runner in 8 weeks with it’s beginners introduction to running. 5k is a great goal for someone who isn’t very active, or it can make a great mini-goal for someone who is building up to a 10k run or a half-marathon.
So that wraps up our 10 free apps for the iPhone that is actually 12 – please let us know if you have any other good free apps.
Have fun training!
Bangkok Personal Trainer, Health, Fitness, Diet, Bootcamp, Football and Sport 