If you are exercising at home, you’re most likely looking for easy and manageable ways to stay fit and healthy. Why not try complementing your cardio exercise routines with the help of some great (and inspiring) fitness apps.
All you need is a Smart phone or Tablet with some internet connection and you’re on your way to a cheap and easy solution. Not only will it allow you to mix up your exercise routine but will also help you stay on track with your health and fitness goals.
We’ve complied a mixture of 15 great health and fitness apps to check out and get you started!
1. Swap It Don’t Stop It – Australian Government
$ Free
If you are about to eat something or do a type of physical exercise this clever app provides healthier alternatives you to ‘swap’ with. You can also treat it like a diary to track your progress, create shopping lists, plan physical activities and set up alerts reminding you of your plans.
2. Food Switch – Bupa Australia
$ Free
Make healthier choices on your grocery shop with the Food Switch app. It’s super easy to use too, you just scan the barcode of a product and it give you the nutritional values as well other healthier alternatives. You can use it for an overall healthier food switch, a Salt Switch or Gluten Switch. The app is Australian made so the brands and products it suggests should all be available in your local supermarket.
3. Calorie Counter and Diet Tracker – MyFitness Pal
$ Free
With this great app you can keep count of your fitness and exercise in a quick and convenient way, as well as entering your goals and reporting your progress. Add food as you eat or scan the barcode (over 2 million food in the database or you can enter in your own details such as recipes you eat often). It also tracks your exercising and has over 350 exercises in the database with calories amounts, but again you can always add your own. You can also add friends to keep track together.
4. 7 Minute Workout Challenge – Fitness Guide Inc
$1.99
Focusing on high intensity training, this app contains circuits of just 12 exercises that are to be performed for 30 seconds with 10 second rest intervals. It guides you through a combination of video, audio and text. There is also the ability to track your activity and monitor your progress. One of the features is to unlock different “rewards”, which is a great way to keep the exercises fun and motivate you to reach new goals.
5. Food Labels with Nutritional Values – My App Builder
$ Free
This app includes a database of over 7,000 foods with their nutritional labels. It features everything from the McDonald’s menu, to potato chips, cookies, chocolates, granola bars, salad dressing, etc. It’s a great way of keeping track of what you are eating and sticking to a healthy diet.
6. Superfood HD – Silver Beech Studios
$0.99
You would have to be living under a rock if you haven’t come across the chatter about superfoods lately, like most people though you probably have no idea what any of those foods are or why they are super? This app explains everything about these wonder foods, providing information about how to prepare, use and store the foods. It features over 300 recipes that use these ingredients as well as simple eating tips for a healthier lifestyle.
7. MetricMe – Workout, Fitness & Exercise Tracker – Anthony Dubis
$ Free
Basically a one-stop app to track your exercises and progress. MetricMe includes analytics, graphs and goal setting to help you keep track of your fitness results. You can create a routine or group for a huge range of exercises and fitness activities. Plus you can keep track of your body measurements, weight and body fat percentage, as well as assess your mood, energy level and sleep quality. You can even export the results to a spreadsheet CSV file.
8. Strong Runner – Running Exercises and Workout Trainings – Benefiical App
$ Free
A great app for all levels of runners. It includes warm up exercise videos, core exercises, lower body exercises and stretching exercises which are great to complement your running cardio training. The app also provides information on common running injuries as well as training plans.
9. Daily Workouts FREE – Daily Workout Apps
$ Free
This is a free version that includes 50 exercises, randomly created for you every time. There are options of workout lengths (10, 15, 20, 25, 30) and focus areas on your body. It’s really easy to understand with videos and images for each exercise plus an onscreen timer and estimated calories burned. You may want to use this app and then down the track purchased the related paid versions to mix up your routine.
10. Daily Fitness Quotes – Steven Boynes
$ Free
We could all do with some motivating and help to stay on track with a fitness routine. What a great idea to receive a daily quote to help keep you inspired and motivated. You can also set alerts for specific days you are training and add in your own background image to give it a personalised touch.
11. Interval Timer – Timing for HIIT Trainng and Workouts – Deltaworks
$ Free
This app will make it easy to test out those HIIT workouts and follow the times properly. It can be used for any number of exercises and allows you to format your own high interval time, low interval time, set times, rest times, number of sets, countdown time and has a pausing function. It will work through a locked phone and play music in the background.
12. Fitness Builder – PumpOne
$ Free
With over 6,000 images and videos of exercises, the Fitness Builder app has been created from a team of exercise physiologist, physical therapy and orthopaedics. There is over 800 combinations of exercises, a workout builder to create your own, tracking exercises and stats, weight tracking BMI, schedules for workouts and fitness plans, 5 fitness timers, as well as information on fitness, health and nutritional news.
13. iHome+Sleep- iHome
$ Free
Even the greatest exercise program will fail if it’s not accompanied with a good nights sleep every night. This app provides a calcuator for your sleep cycles, an alarm clock with a variety of noises and sounds to doze off to and wake up to. It also gives you a sleep log and statistics of your sleeping patterns to keep track of.
14. Digifit Cardio Multi-Sport Heart Rate Monitor – iTMP Technology
$ Free
This app is a multi-sport heart rate monitor so you can keep track of your exercising when doing any of these cardio activities: Spin, Bike, Run, Walk or Hike. It combines a heart rate monitor with a GPS and tracks your distance, time, pace speed and splits. It also provides a map and your end results in a chart with statistics.
15. Select Stretch Trainer – Cerebral Gold
$ Free
A great app for helping you stretch both before and after a workout. It includes 98 upper and lower body stretches for 16 different muscles. It’s really easy to follow and understand with its clear images and instructions. You can select individual muscles to target specific areas. You can also build your own stretching routine to save for later.
