Monday, March 31, 2014

Top 4 Workout Apps!

Health & Fitness week is over, but with today's guest post you could consider it to be a little continuation of last week!  In today's guest post Catie of the blog Books, Beauty & Bars shares her top 4 workout apps with us!

I've talked about getting cute workout clothes to motivate you to get your ass to the gym, but another thing that motivates me is using fun apps to get through a long gym sesh.



If you're working out to lose weight, this app has everything you need.  First, you let them know your current weight and the weight you would like to be in any given (realistic) amount of time. Then, they give you an allotted amount of calories for each day.  Throughout the day, you can log all the food you eat and any exercise you do. The app will automatically allot you extra calories by calculating how many you burned during the physical activity, which is awesome.  This way, you aren't constantly wondering if you worked out enough for the day.
 
Another great feature of this app is the food logging.  Not all food you eat has nutrition labels on it (restaurant food, fruit, etc.), but you can search almost anything on the app and they'll have it.  They even go so far as to give the option for how much of the food you ate.  You can literally log the 1/4 of the candy bar that you ate, and they can tell you exactly how many calories it was.  My Fitness Pal also keeps track of past food that you've entered, so if you eat the same sandwich every single day all you have to do is click on the pre-logged entry for that sandwich every day at lunch and you're done.
Lastly, click on "Progress" in the app's sidebar and you can log your weight every day.  They give you a visual line graph of your weight loss so far, which is insanely motivating.  Definitely recommend this for anyone who truly wants to lose weight and has the right amount of discipline!

If you're dying to do one of those fun 5Ks like The Color Run, but don't even think you could jog from your couch to your refrigerator right now, download this app.  Running is a tough habit to get into, and sometimes being on a treadmill is the last thing you want to do.  With this app, you slowly work your way up to a non-stop 5K within 9 weeks by switching between walking, jogging, and running at different intervals.  Who knows, you might end up loving it and slowly make your way up to half or full marathons!



I've written about this app before, but I've included it because it's still one of my all-time faves.  If you're like me and can't understand how people actually get stuff done on the mats at the gym, you need this app.  I used to lay there, catch my breath after cardio, do maybe like 7 crunches, and then get distracted by my phone or that super attractive guy doing push ups a few feet away from me.  Now, all I need to do is turn on Sworkit and I have endless mat exercises to do.  
The app generates random workouts in either strength training or stretching/yoga and switches to a different exercise or stretch after a certain amount of time that you designate.  The app is also designed to give you the occasional break and has alerts when it's time to switch arms, legs, etc. in certain workouts.  
This is perfect for someone who can't seem to find a good mat routine and seems lost in a sea of robots doing contortionist moves next to them... or maybe that's just my gym. Regardless, this will definitely help you minimize your time at the mats and maximize your results. 


Daily Workouts is simply an app that generates different daily workouts for you to do at home.  But, the maker of the Daily Workouts App also created separate apps that allow you to focus on specific body workouts.
 
These are fairly similar to Sworkit, but instead allow you to focus on a certain problem area of your body.  If your yoga pants fall down because your flat butt can't fill them out (like me...), download the Daily Butt Workout and fix that ish! If doing the skinny arm pose in photos can't even make your biceps look hot, download the Daily Arm workout and you'll have Jennifer Aniston arms in no time.  I think you get where I'm going with this...
 
Download one for a specific workout, or download them all! They're a great way to tone and shape the parts of your body that get forgotten, and a good source to find new moves for those areas.
What are some of your favorite fitness apps?
 


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