Tag: Fitness »

It's a plight suffered by many. I want to be fitter. I want to be able to run a 5k without feeling like I'm going to die. Heck, I want to be able to run any distance without feeling like I'm going to collapse into a wheezy heap. I'm not overweight, I don't smoke, drink or anything else particularly negative. I am lazy, though. Given the choice between hitting the gym or playing a video game, I'll take the latter every time. I suspect I'm not alone there. However, this is starting to change, courtesy of my iPhone and the wealth of apps I can pick up to encourage me to achieve my goals.

Last year, I discovered the Fitocracy website. It turned exercise into experience points, it offered me awards and challenges to work towards. It immediately boosted my motivation levels. Relatively soon afterwards, the iOS app for Fitocracy was released.

It's great. I can enter all my activities while I'm in the gym. Reps take a second to enter and I can watch the points flow in. It's not perfect, though. Given my weak cardio exercises, the points aren't massive. Longer runs or cycles are needed, and that takes time and effort. I needed an extra carrot to tempt me along.

I dabbled with MiCoach, a great gadget that connects to your trainers tracking my every move.

It's a useful app and gadget. Tracking how I was performing was great and I could also use my stats to progress in MiCoach Soccer. I needed more newbie focused guidance, though.

Two of my all round favorites are Two Hundred Situps and Get Running, the apps that I recommend to anyone vaguely interested in pursuing such things. They do a great job of keeping me exercising while not exhausting me, reminding me not to push myself too far.

As a zombie loving gamer though, I have a huge soft spot for Zombies, Run! 5k Training. It's quite new compared to the competition, but it's great. It offers a similar set plan to Get Running but with a zombie themed storyline to follow. It's the little things like that which make me keen to 'play' the next section and actually look forward to the next treadmill session.

The best part? I have a direct route planned for once I, hopefully, complete the 5k, in the form of Zombies, Run!

For those days where I'm not on the treadmill but I want to keep track of my progress, I stick to Striiv. Offering me a steady trickle of trophies and rewards for walking a lot, it gives me a nice sense of satisfaction, even if I'm just walking around the grocery store. Even better, it's free and helps me resist the temptation to pick up a more expensive solution such as a Nike+ FuelBand.

While I might still need the motivation to get out of bed on a cold, wintery morning in the name of getting fit, such apps encourage me to do it. Sure, I should have the willpower alone but no one's perfect! Fitocracy, in particular, has changed my outlook immensely. Turning potentially tedious work into a game is guaranteed to help matters.

Tempted? Go sign up and feel free to follow me on there to see my progress. I'm slightly behind at the moment, as no app can yet keep you 100% healthy at all times!

Michael The Boxer is an expert boxing fitness coach. He is also the proprietor of the world's only Boxing Gym & Barbershop. This app can't help you with a haircut, but it can help you get in shape.

As someone desperate to get fit, I've been an avid user of the Fitocracy website since its beta launch. I've also been keen to gleefully discuss it with anyone willing to listen and been eager for an iOS app. So, the announcement that it's been launched for all to use, and alongside an iOS app is pretty exciting stuff.

Fitocracy turns getting fit into a game of levelling up and watching the experience points shoot up. It's an ideal gamification model for those who need a gentle kick to get them to pursue their goals.

Besides simply offering users points and level ups for completing numerous fitness based tasks, there are achievements to gain and quests to complete. With a huge support network of other users, it's pretty satisfying to compare progress with others and race friends to the next level up.

Everything about Fitocracy is free with both website and app linking together nicely. Give it a try and watch how you get excited to see what routines invoke the biggest gains.

Good weather season is here and, along with that, the urge to look good and get in shape for it. One such way is through new workout app Pushing Weight.

Pushing Weight is designed for beginners to intermediate levels and dispenses with teaching users how to do relevant moves, instead focusing on providing a means to log and plan workouts.

Essentially, it means that the user can track and visualize their workout patterns, working out what works best for them. Training frequently rewards the user with a streak for each session they complete, represented by charge bars that fill up. It's a neat touch that helps users check at a glance what they need to work on to keep those bars full.

For those in need of an easy way of tracking their workout routines, Pushing Weight is an ideal and easy to use solution.

It's out now, priced at $2.99.

Anyone can start a diet, but sticking to it is a different story. Between watching what one eats, doing scheduled weigh ins and generally making sure that they are staying on track, a diet can be a hard thing to maintain. To make getting in shape a little easier, as well as prove that the internet can be used for more than just lazy web browsing, Body Chef has released Diet and Weight Loss Buddies.

The app calls itself "the world's first social network app for people who want to lose weight and feel great." Through the app, users can put in their personal diet information and schedule reminders to make sure they stay on the wagon. They can also look up new diets and strategies online by connecting with fellow dieters around the world. It has everything dieters need: information, encouragement, and support from others.

Diet and Weight Loss Buddies is available now on the App Store for free. It can help make up for that lost time spent sitting down, playing with an iPhone.

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RunKeeper.com, the site that allows you to track various goals in your fitness training, has released nine new apps to help track fitness data. New apps include Clever Run, Coachya, Cycle Log, Fleetly, Nexercise, Pedometer Ultimate, Scosche MyTREK, Vitogo, and Weighty.

For the sake of clarity, some of these ‘apps’ are simply added to the RunKeeper service (e.g. Clever Run. Though some are standalone, iPhone apps, like Cycle Log and, of course, the official RunKeeper app.

The new apps have ranging functions from a coaching app for both the coaches and their athletes, like Coachya, to turning fitness into a game, like Fleetly and Nexercise. Many of the apps track some sort of activity. CleverRun tracks running-related items, Cycle Log is a comprehensive cycling tracker and companion, Pedometer Ultimate is self-explanatory, Scosche myTREK keeps an eye on the user’s pulse, and Weighty keeps track of weight and fat percentage. Vitogo is a personal trainer app that creates a workout program tailored to the user.

RunKeeper and its apps could be beneficial to a fitness-related New Year’s resolution. Go to RunKeeper.com to sign up for the service and click the “Apps” link to see the 45+ apps including the most recent nine.

Was your New Year’s resolution to get back in shape? The iPad and iPhone can be great workout companions, especially with apps like iMuscle from 3D4Medical.com.

iMuscle is a workout aid that can be used to find exercises that coincide with specific muscles in the body. The muscles are displayed in a visually appealing 3-D view that the user can rotate 360 degrees. Users can create custom workouts and receive hints and tips for specific exercises. The exercises are even performed by a 3-D model.

iMuscle has added some features in its 2.4 update. Users can now share workouts between the iPhone and iPad apps. The overall experience of the app has been improved with larger buttons, the workout creation process made easier, the ability to edit an exercise within a workout, and more flexibility in moving between exercises within a workout.

iMuscle won Apple’s best iPad app in the Medical category in 2011 and was listed as one of TechCrunch’s top 20 apps of 2011. iMuscle is available as both an iPad and iPhone app.

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Abvio, an iPhone fitness app developer, demonstrated its version 7.0 update for Runmeter, Cyclemeter and Walkmeter last week in San Francisco at Macworld 2012. The new update overhauls the stopwatch display to be completely configurable to display data from more than 150 different data items, from total mileage to average heart rate for the previous split. Users will be able to customize and swipe through additional pages of information, including stats, graphs, maps, a music player, and more.

The update also adds a new history navigation feature that provides detailed reports. In addition, all workout information is saved directly to the device so users do not have to navigate to a sister website. The company also demonstrated new app support for the Wahoo Fitness Blue HR Heart Rate Strap (for iPhone 4S) in the Mobile Apps Showcase making it the first to adopt the technology.