These days, an iPhone is my walkman of choice and, with all the fitness apps available, I don't have to listen to my own music or make up my own workouts.
Today, I'm highlighting a few apps I've tried recently:
Lolo Burn - I love running apps and Lolo burn offers interval workouts in a unique way. Not only do they include music that changes to match your running pace, but you can actually change the pace at any time during the workout if things move too fast or slow. There's a coach who offers a few motivational pep talks throughout the workout and the screen shows the intervals as well as your speed, calories burned and incline (if you choose the treadmill option). There are lots of workout options for both walkers and runners and the music is pretty decent. It's a little pricey at $4.99, but worth checking out if you like interval training.
Authentic Yoga - This yoga app, which features Deepak Chopra, is great for quick yoga workouts if you're on the road or if you work at home, like I do, and can easily bust out a few yoga moves in the comfort of your home office. The app includes instructional videos of the poses and the workouts themselves show pictures of each pose with audio instructions. It's not exactly like following a video, but it's simple to use and, at $1.99, reasonably priced.
Tap & Track Calorie, Weight & Exercise Tracker ($3.99) - I haven't tried this one, but a client recommended it to me, raving about huge nutritional database and how easy it is to keep track of food and calories. She loves that it works offline and that she can track her daily intake, calorie needs, exercise, BMI and weight and she can also add her own foods and recipes.
What about you? Come across any good fitness apps lately? Leave a comment and tell us about it.
Love the running interval app, I just recently posted a beginners guide to interval running and will definitely be adding that app in their somewhere, thanks!
I tried out Lolo Burn. They change the music to match my running pace. The music is decent, but more of it would be nice. I really like the intervals and the fact that I can change the difficulty of the workout, if it is too hard. I like it overall.
Also I don’t think $5 is “pricey.” If it is a quality game or app, why not pay for it?
I’ve been very happy with “my Net Diary” for my iphone
Another app to try is Calorie Pacer for the iPhone. It’s a fun little calorie counter app that’s pretty cheap.
What about other smartphone apps? iPhone is not the only one out there!
I use repacer software at optomistic.com. You can take any track and repace it to your beat. Then you can string together a bunch of tracks however long you like. I can’t workout without it. Then no matter what machine I am using, I can really get into it without worrying I am keeping up the intensity. It’s great!
CSM – synchstep is an iphone application that matches ALL of your music to your pace, not just the few that lolo burn gives you.
if you want your music to match your pace automatically all the time, try synchstep.
http://synchstep.com
– greg
I used to collect “exercise” programs for my windows PC, but somehow The Committee That Fixes Software Prices decided that PC software should cost about $29.95 – so I stuck to the freeware ones.
I hated all the proprietary databases that came with these apps, which stored the exercise data in obtuse file formats – you could not EXPORT the data as .csv or xml or plain text so you couldn’t chart your stats over the YEARS.
Then there were other exercise-gadget-freak devices like the Garmin Forerunner… but read the reviews, they lose contact with the mothership in the sky and stop logging that GPS data.
Along came the smartphone, and at least now limited-functionality software can be had for $4.99 or less, which would seem to be “fairer” or at least support impulse buying. But still, how do you get the data OUT – you drop your EVO or iPhone or Blackberry in a toilet, and there goes all your data.
I think http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/ is the best free web exercise route-tracker I’ve ever found.
In the end, I decided a paper logbook and pen (not quite a ‘hipster PDA’) was best because it was only worth $4.99 and nobody wanted to steal it, and it can survive a fall from a second story staircase and it still works just fine. Plus it doesn’t need batteries nad it’s therefore eco-friendly.
Plus, good old paper lets you input the data into Excel/Openoffice and draw charts and make tables to your heart’s content.