The Best Health & Fitness Apps

With so many of us working out at home these days, health and fitness apps are becoming ore and more popular. Plus, with technology where it is, there isn’t much you can’t do from the touch of a button on your smart phone. However, as there are so many apps now available, it can be hard to know which apps to choose when it comes to your health and fitness journey.

To make life a little easier for you, here are the top 10 health and fitness apps we think will help you on your journey and why we think so…

The top 10 health and fitness apps

1. My Fitness Pal
2. Headspace
3. Map My Walk
4. Map My Ride
5. Map My Run
6. OS Maps
7. Hevy
8. Find My iPhone
9. Couch To 5K
10. Interval Timer

My Fitness Pal

Unless you’ve been living under a bush, there’s every reason to think this is one you’ve probably heard of already. By far the most popular fitness app available. Depending on how much information you want to record, there is both a free and paid for version of this app. If you have the free version, you can pretty much only use it to track your calories and weight. There are also free recipes you can try out, and add to your food diary if you give them a go.

However, the premium version (£7.99 per month) allows you to track your calories in a much deeper way. There are also plans you can follow such as – high protein, core plus, calories goals, total body power…etc.

So, if you’re wanting to know more about your nutrition, calorie tracking and how this breaks down, then definitely give My Fitness Pal a try!

Headspace

Headspace is more for your mental health than your physical health. It helps you to learn how to manage feelings and thoughts through mindfulness. There are articles on the app to help you manage stress, deal with loneliness and how to stop negative thoughts. Mental health is just as important as physical health. As you would go to the gym to look after your body. You should use something like headspace to look after your mind.

You can trial it for free for 7 days. After that it’s £9.99 per month.

Map My – Walk/Run/Ride

These are all apps run by Under Armour and work in a pretty similar way. The only difference is that each one focuses more on the exercise you plan to do – walk, run, ride. The Map My apps allow you to track and analyse your progress. The app tracks your exercise via GPS allowing you to get on with your exercise without having to think about tracking anything, as it does this for you. It will show you the route you took each time, the time it took, any elevations along the way and estimated calories burned.

You can also join in on challenges and meet others through the social aspect of the app. The best bit is that the app is totally free to use.

OS Maps

One for the walker and bike riders mainly. If you love to go adventuring to new places on your bike or to go for walks in the countryside, then this app is perfect. There are ready made routes available, and you can make your own routes as well, no matter where you live. You can also test run your routes from your home to see if it’s a route you want to try. Plus, all national trust parks and pathways are also mapped so you can go adventuring through so areas of outstanding natural beauty. The basic app is free but the paid version is £23.99 a year.

Hevy

This app is a great one for those who lift weights, whether at the gym or at home. You can plan out your workouts in advance and track them along the way. You can easily analyse how you’re progressing in your workouts week by week. It also has a social aspect where you can meet other likeminded people. There is a huge list of exercises (including videos) in their database to give you ideas of how to mix up your sessions. The basic app is free and the paid version is £2.99 per month or £69.99 for the lifetime subscription.

Find My iPhone

This might sound like an odd one to have on the best fitness apps list seeing as it isn’t anything to do with health or fitness. This is on our list more as a safety app than anything else. You can You can allow another person – friend, partner…etc, to have access to your location. You have the app running in the background when you go out by yourself for a run or whatever it is you’re doing. This way when you’re out on your own, there is someone else who can see where you are incase something does happen to you.

Yes, this isn’t something that anyone should have to do, but you just never know these days who might have the wrong intentions if they see you on your own.

Couch To 5K

The couch to 5k app is great if you’re looking to get in to running, or looking to get a bit fitter. What’s great about this app is that it’s completely free AND you get to pick a trainer on the app to help you through your training. Week by week it pushes you a little harder and a little further on your runs. There are 9 weeks in total with 3 runs per week. The first week is – run for 60 seconds, walk for 90 seconds – repeating 7 times. By the time you get to week 9 it’s – a full 30 minute run. You start the app and start your run, throughout the run you’ll get positive tips and words of encouragement from your trainer. Plus a bell to let you know when you’re half way through your run.

Interval Timer

The interval timer is great if you do circuit style exercises. You can pick how many sets you want to do. The work time you want per set and the rest time between each set. It’s also a totally free app. It is very basic but if what you want is a simple timer, then it’s perfect!