Five Favorites: Fitness Apps

I love how there are so many great apps that can make your life easier, but I find a bunch of the fitness apps out there to be kinda clunky (and I'm not looking to pay big $$$ for them). But there definitely are some great ones out there. Here is a list of my top five fitness apps.

In no particular order:

1. Nike Training Club

"Sign up to Nike Training Club to get your own personal trainer, anytime, anywhere. Get lean, toned and strong with more than 100 custom-built workouts. Take your goal further with all-new NikeFuel and calorie data. 
Unlock exclusive extra workouts from Rihanna’s personal trainer Ary Nuñez and professional athletes like Hope Solo, Serena Williams and Paula Radcliffe." -iTunes Store 

Cost: Free

Pros: 

• Free circuit training workouts (with or without weights)
• Specialized workouts for toning, strengthening, and fat loss
• Pre-made workouts from professional athletes
• Pre-timed workouts with voice cuing
• Videos and how-to's for every move
• Syncs with your music library
• Built-in rewards system allows you to unlock badges and workouts/recipes the more you workout

Cons:

• Updates with new workouts fairly infrequently (but there are always awesome new features when it does update)
• In a perfect world, you could make your own circuit workouts with this app. But that's just wishful thinking

2. Blogilates App

"Finally you can carry YouTube Fitness Star Cassey Ho in your pocket...FOR FREE! Take her videos with you to the gym, cook fun and healthy Blogilates recipes in the kitchen, talk to other POPsters in the addicting forum, and follow the monthly workout calendar with ease! Plus only in the app will you be able to unlock this month's Secret Video." -iTunes Store

Cost: Free; $0.99 optional monthly subscription fee for monthly workout calendar and exclusive monthly video

Pros:

• Social media aspect- connect with Facebook and share comments, pictures, recipes, and more with this positive fitness community
• Free workout videos categorized by target areas or series
• Clean-eating recipes
• If you pay the .99 cent fee (or subscribe to the newsletter for free) it updates a calendar each month with the recommended videos to watch for the day to get a complete workout

Cons:

• This app has an active younger fan base, which sometimes gets a little too "teenage" for me in their discussions i.e. eating healthy in high school.

3. Yoga Studio App

"Introducing the ultimate yoga app: Play, create, customize and schedule easy-to-follow HD video yoga classes." -iTunes Store

Cost: $2.99 one-time payment

Pros:

• 45 pre-designed yoga classes available for download
• Accompanying video and voice over with changeable background music for all videos
• Library of over 200 yoga poses broken down to explain what each is and what its benefits are
• Ability to build your own yoga classes using the pose library
• Make-your-own yoga classes still have a video that will accompany them along with voice cuing and changeable background music
• Schedule classes with the app so it will appear on iCal and remind you

Cons:

• The pose library does not have every yoga pose ever (I can't completely blame them for that though)
• I wish I could make up my own yoga blocks for easier customization

4. RunKeeper

"Join the more than 25 million people who are using RunKeeper to turn their phone into a personal trainer in their pocket! Track your runs, walks, bike rides, hikes, and more using the GPS in your iPhone." -iTunes Store

Cost: Free

Pros:

• Easily track running, walking, cycling, and other activities with this app
• Give you a report of distance, splits, time and calorie estimate
• Set weekly goals (time or distance) to help motivate you
• Keeps everything tracked so you can look back through workouts
• Creates a map of the distance traveled
• Create voice over cues to tell you when you have traveled a certain distance or time

Cons:

• I don't think the GPS system is the most accurate when it comes to telling the distance traveled (I think it overshoots a lot)
• Can lose GPS signal sometimes

5. GymPact

"Make a Pact of how many days you'll work out. Set the Stakes of how much you'll pay if you don't. Check-in via GPS at the gym, count running, biking or walking with RunKeeper, or track your exercises anywhere by wearing or holding your phone while working out." -iTunes Store

Cost: Free

Pros:

• Money!
• Holds you accountable to workout even when you don't want to
• 3 Options to log a workout: Check in to your gym through GPS, sync with RunKeeper, or track your movements if you're workout out at home
• Set your own goals both how often you want to workout and how much you'll get charged if you miss
• Good reporting system in place if a workout is miscounted for some reason
• Customer service has gotten better about dealing with bug issues

Cons:

• This app used to be very buggy, like it wouldn't log your workout out sometimes but recently it has been much better about it
• If your gym is not in the database of gyms (which many are) you can add your gym to the database but the one time I tried to do that, I was unsuccessful
• You lose a lot more money if you don't workout than you do if you do workout.

Update: In 2014 GymPact changed it's name to Pact. You can now also create pacts for logging food and eating your fruits and veggies. I've yet to try the new version, so if you have, tell me what you think!