The five best apps for online personal trainers and clients
Health and fitness apps are becoming ever more popular, and with that comes a very competitive market. Luckily for us, this means a whole lot of incredible apps for us to choose from and these apps just keep getting better and better.
As an Online Personal Trainer, I’ve used many health and fitness apps, both for myself and with my clients. I’ve also used a lot of Online Personal Training software that essentially attempts to provide everything you need in a single app/software. Through trial and error, I’ve found individual apps that are designed for one specific purpose are significantly better than a jack of all trades kind of apps.
To that end, we shouldn’t be looking for one fantastic health and fitness app, we should instead be looking for a group of apps, that as a collective, give us everything we need.
So in order for us to reach our health and fitness goals, there are a few things we need to do. We need to get active, we need to eat to support our health and fuel our body, we need to improve both physical and mental health, and last but not least we need to make this habitual.
The combined power of the following apps tick all of these boxes, some of these apps tick more than one box.
1 - MyFitnessPal
Out of all the apps on this list, MyFitnessPal is my favourite and it’s the one I use the most, both for myself and with my clients. It has an absolutely enormous food database, it has a barcode scanner and recipe importer. All this makes tracking food on MyFitnessPal super fast and easy. MyFitnessPal tracks your nutrients and counts calories, as well as offering food insights to help you make healthier choices. On top of all this, you can also log your steps and exercise.
2 - Pacer
Pacer is a really great app that I find myself using more and more, especially now that I spend my entire day sat at a desk. As we all become increasingly sedentary, it becomes more and more important to track how much we’re moving each day. A step tracker is a great way to ensure we are consistently maintaining our activity levels. Pacer helps you track all of your activities and has very insightful data.
3 - Productivity Habit Tracker
I haven’t been using this app long, but I love it! Habit tracking for a lot of people is the only thing they need to do, not everyone is ready to track every food they eat, some people just need to stick to a few simple habits to help them achieve great results, habits like drinking 2 litres of water per day, only eating until you’re 80% full, eating protein and veg with each meal, sleeping for 7 hours per night etc. Productivity Habit Tracker helps people maintain their set habits so that they become truly habitual. Productivity’s well-designed interface makes keeping track of your habits simple, you literally have the whole thing up and running in a couple of minutes. The app keeps track of your successes, so you’ll be able to measure your continuing improvement which will help you stay motivated.
4 - Map my run
Not that long ago I had to pay for a sickeningly expensive watch to inaccurately track my runs. Now, all I’ve got to do is download an app on my mobile. The one I recommend you download is Under Armour’s MapMyRun. It uses your phone’s GPS to track your routes, distance, times, calories burned, elevation, and more. If you’re not already sold, I’ll add that the app also gives feedback and stats after each km, it makes it easy to find new routes and you can even save and share your favourite routes.
5 - Calm
This app is an award-winning app that I’ve not used religiously myself, but I know many people who absolutely swear by it. The Calm App has calming exercises, breathing techniques, and even has a meditation for kids section. The new Sleep Stories section features a great mix of voice talent, such as Matthew McConaughey, that’s right, Matthew McConaughey reading you a bedtime story, it truly is a great time to be alive! Health and fitness is not just about looking good naked and it’s not purely about physical health, mental health is just as important!
