5 iPhone Apps For Staying Fit and Healthy This Summer

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This is a guest post from John, who’s a big fitness fanatic. His favourite activities are mma, running and swimming and he particularly loves his doughboy pools (which are swimming pools if you’re unsure!) – If you’d like to contribute a guest post, see here

Summer 2010 is set to be one of the most sport-orientated in recent memory, with national excitement levels rising for the FIFA World Cup in South Africa (not to mention Wimbledon and scores of other sporting events). As well as that, a lot of people are looking to shape up for the summer, hoping to hit the beach in with their bodies in reasonable shape.
With that in mind, I thought now was about the right time to write a quick guide to the best health and fitness apps available for the iPhone:

1. iFitness (Cost: £1.49)
iFitness was on of the first real fitness applications released on the iPhone and is still one of the most popular. The app allows you to customise your workout, adding new goals and routines whenever you want. You can choose which are of the body you’re looking to improve and the application will suggest workouts that will work on that area; allowing you to fully customise and focus your workouts.
There are also pre-made workouts if you’re not looking to make your own, and most of these pre-loaded routines are designed to either be general (all-body) workouts, or can be focused on a specific muscle group or area of the body.

2. RunKeeper Pro (Cost: £5.99 or a free trial)
RunKeeper Pro utilises the iPhone’s GPS capabilities to track your runs (or it can be used to track bike rides). You can then see how far you’ve travelled, your time, average mph, etc. as well as your route – this can then be uploaded and shared with friends via social networking sites.
The application also features voice prompts (pro only) as well as allowing you to create and select a specific iPod playlist for your runs.

3. BBC Good Food (Cost: £2.39)
There’s no point doing all that exercise if you’re then going to go home and eat all the wrong kinds of food. So with that in mind here’s the next app on the list, the BBC Good Food guide which features 120 healthy dishes overall, including healthy versions of everything from brownies to curry. The recipes are all extremely easy to follow and all come with an instructional video, which is a really nice and helpful little touch; a great application for those looking to eat more healthily this summer.

4. Pump One Fitness Builder (Cost: £5.99)
This application is similar in its approach to iFitness, it’s just a little more user friendly (and expensive). Fitness Builder has a well designed, fluid user interface and offers 500 workouts designed to work specific muscle groups. It also boasts a feature that allows you to record your workouts, should you want to check you’re performing them correctly, or just to show off to your friends once you’re ripped.

5. Weightbot
If you’re working out more for that summer body than to get fit for sport, then you may well be tracking your weight. There are a few weight tracking applications currently available on the App Store but one of the better ones I’ve come across is the Weightbot, which calculates and tracks your BMI (body mass index) on a day-to-day basis. It also allows you to set goals, which you can then track your progress against. A nice application with a great user interface, recommended for those looking to keep track of their weight loss (or gain).