Exercise has always been a part of my life and tends to always make it into my year goals . It started with my mom and dad always committing to exercising when we were young. Throughout primary school and into high school, physical education class continued reinforcing the importance. Then I continued on with it throughout college. I will admit, there were season of inactivity and it was never helpful! I feel like I have been in one of those seasons recently actually. So this is a post is a good reminder how I can exercise on the road!
I wrote an article featured on SaganMorrow titled Get Fit with These 3 Fitness Apps. In the post, I highlighted 3 apps I have used and loved.
Unfortunately, the website I wrote for recently rebranded and the article is no longer available via her website.
But you can still read the article below:
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What type of exercise do you like? Or if you don’t like to exercise, which of these seem to be the most appealing: running, pilates, strengthening, or something else entirely? I generally feel the best after I go for a run, but I don’t always want to run; cue the excuses of bad weather, being tired, and.. to be completely honest.. my personal lack of motivation (but let’s not talk about that one!).
So if you are anything like me, your love for exercise ebbs and flows. When I was living and traveling overseas, I was forced me to be creative in how to do my exercising. My biggest question was “What else can I do to adapt and spice up my routine?”
I found that choosing a workout video, an online cardio class, or pilates routine helped keep things interesting but the internet is not always dependable when you are traveling. But since living in the states for the last few years, there have been 3 helpful tools that I have found to kept me going:
- Mapmyrun (app)
There are many exercise tracking apps, but I have enjoyed mapmyrun the most. It is great for running, walking, biking, or pretty much anything else you can do outside. This app uses your phone’s GPS to track your routes and record the details about your run. You can even adjust the settings to have it notify you when you complete miles and tell you your pace. This keeps me informed on my progress so I know if I need run faster or slow down to meet my goal… and we all know it’s telling me to slow down, right? The app will also send you weekly and monthly reports of the workouts you have logged. This log of my runs really keeps me motivated and makes me want to achieve more goals. Speaking of which, I should probably get going on using it more… this winter wasn’t great for my outdoor running habit.
- Daily Burn (website and app)
This online community has exploded in popularity; maybe due to their cheesy commercials. For $14/month or so you can have access to online workout videos that you can complete at random, pick a program, or – my favorite – join up with their 365 workout. The 365 workout is live every morning at 9 am; but don’t worry, you have 24 hours to catch it later if you miss it. There are new routines every day like cardio, kickboxing, yoga, and pilates! The downside is that some of the intense workouts require extra equipment like a medicine ball… who owns one of those anyways? I easily get board of doing the same video routine over and over, so for me this is a huge bonus.
- The Balanced Life (website)
If you like the yoga/pilates side of exercise more, than this one is for you. Yoga has never really been my friend, but maybe one day I will learn to love it. But pilates is a different story. I can at least accomplish it with a little more ease. The Balanced Life, led by Robin, just did a 30 day challenge and it was amazing to see how sore a 10 minute session of pilates made me! Robin has pilates videos for beginners and quite a few public workout series. If you really love it, like my sister does, you can join The Sisterhood for a monthly fee which gets you into a private support group with accountability. It also can send you a new workout link which are waiting in your email inbox every morning when you wake up.
So if you are looking for something new, I’d try one of these out. They have really helped me keep my exercise routine for getting boring.
Have tried any of the 3 options I mentioned? If so, what do you think?
What other apps or websites do you use to help with your exercise routine spicy?
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I would love to hear what apps you use for exercising!
