Get Ready for Summer with iPhone Fitness
April 23, 2012
Is it just us, or is Spring springing a bit earlier than usual this year? With all of the sunshine and cool breezes waiting outside, thoughts turn to summer and that means one potentially terrifying thing: getting in shape. This year, take that terror in stride by harnessing some clever tech that is sure to increase your gain-to-pain ratio. Just lace up your tennis shoes, pull out your iPhone, and join us for a run-down of our favorite fitness apps.
Lose It! (Free) – Before you start thinking about workout routines, Lose It! is here to help you monitor, log, and track your caloric intake so that you know where you stand. Just tell it what you eat or scan the barcodes of the foods you’re consuming and watch it build you a profile based on your diet. Then start setting goals and sticking to them, thanks to a social networking aspect which enables you to compare, compete, and find support from your friends.
MyFitnessPal (Free) – Another major player in the calorie counting app scene, MyFitnessPal offers many of the same functions as Lose It! but with an interface of its own. Because this app also links in to its own social network, the calorie counter you choose may depend on which your friends prefer. Since they’re free, why not download them both and see who is more active on which app?
Fooducate (Free) – Dig deeper into the pros and cons of your dietary decisions with Fooducate. Also equipped with a barcode scanner, Fooducate will follow you down the aisles at the supermarket and let you know what preservatives, fats, sugars and other additives are lurking within your (formerly) favorite foods. Thanks to the familiar school-style grading system (A+ to F), studying up on what you’re about to eat just got easy.
iMapMyRun (Free) – If you’re feeling healthy and ready to hit the road running, iMapMyRun will follow you every step of the way. This app tracks your route, mapping it out live and saving it for review later. It will also keep an eye on distance, elevation, speed and calories burned, so you can analyze your effort and step it up the next time you set out on another trip. It will even integrate with a number of heart-rate monitoring attachments for your iPhone, if you just can’t get enough data. Prefer the thrill of two wheels? There’s an app for cyclists, too: iMapMyRide (also free).
JEFIT (free) – If it’s muscle building that’s on your mind, you’ll probably be seeing a lot more of the gym in the near future. With JEFIT, you can focus all your energy on making big gains and leave the workout planning and progress tracking to your phone. Just pick some exercises from the app’s extensive library of workouts, mark down your reps and weights, and let the app track your progress and automatically mark down your personal records. You can even snap quick photos for comparison over time, along with the custom charts and graphs that JetFit will generate for you.
Zombies, Run! ($7.99) – If talk of fitness alone is enough to make you tired, don’t give up on getting in shape just yet. Make an adventure out of exercising with Zombies, Run!, a creative iPhone game that integrates athletics into the experience. You’ve survived an undead apocalypse, but you won’t last long just standing around. Get your headphones on and take a guided audio tour of the end times as daywalkers nip at your heels all across town. With over 30 missions to survive and a unique system of achievement-based rewards, you’ll be picking up the pace in no time; or you’ll lose the part of your brain that cares about weekends at the beach, anyway.
Alexei Bochenek is a lifelong tech nerd & film buff based in Los Angeles. When he’s not playing with his phone, it’s because the movie has started. Shhhhh!
