Here’s the review of 3 cool fitness and health apps for the iPhone.
Nike+ GPS
Despite stiff competition from the excellent free app miCoach and all manner of others designed to get you off the couch and onto the pavement, Nike+ was there first – and it shows. No other app can quite deliver the goods when it comes to helping you to squeeze the most out of your running regime.
Good things happen the moment you open the app. When you want to quickly start a run, just tap in the number of miles you want to do and off you go – there’s no other setting up required. Once you’ve started racking up runs, you can register with a Nike+ account and start tracking them on the website.
During the run, you can play music within the app to give your mind something to focus on. You can also set it up to remind you at specific intervals how many miles you’ve covered and what sort of pace you’re running at. At the end of each run, the app automatically syncs your run wirelessly, so it’s ready for you to crunch the numbers when you get home.
One of Nike+’s best features is its ability to look at where your run has taken you on a map and how you performed along the way, with green areas of the run being faster and red areas meaning that you need to pick up the pace a little more at this point.
Brilliant as this app is, we still recommend supplementing it with the miCoach app, not least for its ability to tell you when your trainers are in need of replacement. That’s something every runner should take into consideration, helping to avoid injury to the feet, ankles and knees in particular.
Men’s Health Workout
If you’re thinking about getting into the world of weight training, look no further than the Men’s Health Workouts app. Men’s Health has an enviable reputation in the field of fitness, racking up years of providing readers with intense workouts to accomplish the perfect muscle physique.
The app contains hundreds of different exercises, each of which targets a different area of the body. As any good fitness expert will tell you, variety is the key to a good workout, and there’s plenty here. Weight training can be a seriously tough discipline to go alone, so the app also comes with a selection of pre-built workouts to follow. All you do is choose a goal, such as getting a beach-ready body or focusing on getting rid of that beer belly. Oh, and the actual weight-lifting, of course!
After each exercise, you can quickly log how many reps you’ve completed with what weight, so you can keep a track of your workouts.
iTreadmill
If you want to go running but don’t fancy venturing outside, iTreadmill is the solution, it doesn’t rely on GPS to track your walks or runs; instead it uses pedometer step-detection, so you can use it on a treadmill indoors.
iTreadmill isn’t a one-trick pony, however. If you do want to run outdoors but like the feeling of being paced as you would on a treadmill, you can set a target speed on the app. This will keep you running at a level that is comfortable for you. iTreadmill can also tell you how many calories you’ve burned, how far you’ve travelled and more, and you can even set up a playlist so that you’ve got some songs to accompany you on your run.
Each run can then be saved and looked at later to see which stats need improving, iPhone owners can save battery, too, as iTreadmill automatically turns off the display when the screen is covered in your bag or pocket.