I’m a Certified Personal Trainer and These Are My Favorite Health and Fitness Apps.
I’ve tested a lot of health and fitness apps over the years – some to write about, some because I was curious, and some because they were actually good for me. Here’s my Fitness App Hall of Fame: the fitness apps I use the most and the ones I think are most useful for everyone. All these apps are available on both iOS and Android.
Best Food Tracking Apps: Cronometer and Macrofactor
I’ve included two apps here because one (Macro Factor) only works if you pay for a subscription. I’m a happy subscriber, but for those looking for a free option, I wholeheartedly recommend Cronometer.
Cronometer is a nutrition tracker that, unlike some more popular apps (coughMFPcough), just gets the job done and doesn’t get in your way. Don’t want to see your calorie goal on your home screen? You can hide it. Want to scan barcodes on food packages? This is a free feature. (Of course, there is a premium tier that gives you even more features, but it doesn’t cover any of the essentials.)
By the way: be sure to either follow my link or check the spelling if you enter the name in the app store. There is at least one other application with a confusingly similar name.
MacroFactor is a nutrition tracker, but it also does a clever thing that’s incredibly valuable but underappreciated in the fitness world: it notices how many calories you’ve eaten lately and whether your weight has changed. Based on this, it estimates your total daily calorie burn without you having to log any exercise or worry about how accurate your wearable’s readings are. If you eat 2,300 calories and your weight is stable, you know that your body burns 2,300 calories per day.
MacroFactor costs $11.99 per month, or about $71.99 per year. I’ve learned a lot from tracking my calorie burn with MacroFactor and highly recommend it if you’re comfortable with calorie tracking and are interested in gaining weight, losing weight, or eating better for your workouts.
Best app to track your runs: Strava
If you have a wearable device that you like, the right app will likely be the best for tracking your daily workouts. (This could be Garmin Connect if you have a Garmin watch, Fitbit if you have a Fitbit or Pixel watch, and so on.) But Strava collects data from any wearable device (or no data at all—you can enter your runs manually ) and shows you maps and stats, and lets you see what your friends have been up to.
This recommendation comes with a caveat: if you want to maintain your privacy, especially if you run in places where there are few other runners, you should be aware of Strava’s privacy concerns and lock your settings if you don’t. I’m not happy with the default settings. Despite all these caveats, Strava is still my top running app . There’s a premium tier with additional mapping tools for planning running routes and additional analysis tools to see how far and how fast you’ve run. It costs $11.99 per month or $79.99 per year.
The best app to help you avoid boredom while running: Nike Run Club
There are many ways to find workouts to follow, including workouts from a wearable device like Garmin , or subscribing to a service like Apple Fitness+ or Peloton . But what stands out in this category is that it’s simple, free, and well-designed. This is the venerable Nike Run Club , which doesn’t even require you to wear a watch. You simply start your run from your phone and are soon accompanied by Coach Bennett or one of the other friendly voices. I love this app and would happily recommend it to anyone who gets bored with running.
Best App for Tracking Strength Training: Hevy
My caveat to this recommendation is that I don’t use a strength training app regularly. I receive workouts from my real trainer through the workout app my gym uses and track all the important data in a paper workout log . But I’ve experimented with enough strength training apps to know what’s out there, and I definitely have a favorite: It’s Hevy.
When I tested the Pixel Watch 3’s fitness tracking capabilities , I found the Hevy Watch app to be much better than any of the watch’s built-in strength training features. It won’t track your heart rate, which is good . But it gives you an interface on your wrist to track the exercises you’re doing, and the watch app updates the phone app and vice versa. Hevy also works with iPhone and Apple Watch, and of course you can only use it on your phone.
Hevy allows you to plan your daily routine. If you want, he can calculate your rest time. It will track your progress and show you how you are getting stronger over time. There’s even a desktop version that lets you view your workouts on your computer screen for more detailed planning.
Best App for Monitoring Injuries and Health Issues: Bearable
Everyone hurts sometimes, as the REM philosophers once told us. Sometimes we get injured while training and sometimes we get pain out of nowhere and we have to work on it while training. In some cases, especially with back pain , our well-being can depend on a variety of things in our daily life. It’s possible that your back pain gets worse on days when you exercise, for example, and gets worse on days when you’re under a lot of stress at work.
Keeping track of these factors in your head can be difficult, but I find Bearable to be helpful. You can decide what you’d like to track every day—like how stressed you are and whether you’ve done physical therapy exercises—and rate how much that back pain (or anything else) bothers you. Patterns emerge quickly. When I used it, I was very pleased to see that my pain wasn’t always so bad and that there were actually things I could control that helped me feel better. It’s not limited to injuries—you can use it to track chronic health issues or even mental health.