Hate Working Out Alone? These Fitness Apps Might Help
Committing to a fitness plan is like trying to keep up with a caffeinated squirrel on roller skates — a bit challenging, to say the least. There's a reason it's the most popular New Year's resolution for many people, year in and year out. But for most of us, the only consistent thing about our fitness journey is how frequently we quit on it. It's pretty easy to work out (pun intended) one major reason for this lack of consistency: you're going at it alone. Maintaining a fitness regimen is difficult, so you're more likely to give up when you have no one to hold you accountable or cheer you on.
MIT researchers have revealed that exercise is "socially contagious" — which means you're more likely to go out for a run, for example, if you have a lot of runner peers. But if, for various reasons, you can't or don't want to have a workout buddy, there's a world of fitness apps that can fill that gap. They'll help you connect with other people serious about fitness, join interactive group workouts, and share in some healthy competition that'll fuel your drive. To help you get started, here are our top five picks for social fitness apps.
Strava
If you're big on outdoor sports, Strava is a useful social fitness app. It covers a range of activities, including foot sports like running, walking, and hiking, as well as water, winter, and cycle sports. You, as well as other users, can record an activity via the app or by connecting a fitness device (e.g., a smartwatch) and then share your route and record (known as "Segments") with other members of the Strava community. Strava introduces an element of healthy competition by inviting those members to top your personal best, and everyone strives to clinch the envied title of the "King" of that Segment.
There's a community feed where you can find and follow top athletes to keep yourself motivated and to which you can add workout updates and braggy photos of your gains. You can also join group challenges for different sports or discover and join clubs where you'll access discussions and resources that'll help your fitness journey.
An in-app messaging tool helps you connect and plan events with other members nearby, so you might even make a real-life workout buddy or several. Strava is available for download on the App Store and the Google Play Store. The app is free to use, but features like progress analytics, Segment Leaderboards, and advanced routes are exclusive to the paid plan, which will set you back $11.99 a month or $79.99 a year. There's a 30-day free trial if you'd prefer a test run before you shell out the money for a premium plan.
Nike Run Club
As its name implies, the Nike Run Club is a social fitness app exclusively designed for runners. Nike has a broader app called the Nike Training Club, but it doesn't have as many social features as the NRC does. The Run Club provides guided assistance and resources for training for marathons or other running events, but it's just as useful for users who just want to keep up a fitness habit.
You'll find programs created by pro athletes, some complemented by playlists, nutrition and wellness tips, and mindfulness practices to help you achieve holistic fitness. You can find and invite existing friends from your contacts list or join a club and make new ones. Take advantage of the Leaderboard to foster fierce competition between you and your friends — every day, all of you can see who's racking up the most miles. Each member gets a notification when another is on a run, so you can all know who's lagging and needs to catch up.
To compete with the broader NRC community, create a challenge of your own or join an existing one. You'll be placed on a global leaderboard for that challenge, and you can win titles and achievement tags if you hit the distance quota for that challenge. You'll also be able to see other runners' progress across the world.
Official Nike Run Clubs are available in a few cities; the app will list them. You can meet up with runners at these Clubs for special running events. The NRC app is free and accessible from your Apple Watch if you own one. Since we're on the topic, here are other Watch features to help you stay in shape. Also, if you enjoy biking, these Watch biking apps could elevate your experience.
Squaddy
If you have a large group of friends who are all looking to share workouts and keep one another accountable, Squaddy might be perfect for you. You can create "Squads," which are groups to which you can add members, and then you can share training sessions, routines, and guides, post recipes, and chat with everyone. A Squad can take up to 200,000 members, so your circle is as wide as you let it get. You can have different Squads for different workout types and invite members via a custom link.
As your circle expands, Squaddy lets you assign and promote group admins or remove members if you wish. Having this admin control means you can carefully curate the community you're building. You can also create interactive leaderboards to encourage competition and organize online or physical events with the group calendar. Everyone's workout history and records are visible on their profiles, so you can keep up with your friends and them with you.
Squaddy supports different workout types, from weight and cardio to Zumba and yoga, and doubles as a personal fitness diary — you can keep a log of your different workout programs and take inspiration from others' diaries. One standout feature is its built-in one-rep max calculator, which helps you work out the maximum weight you can lift for each rep in every exercise.
The app doesn't offer readymade training plans or instructors, so it might not be the best option if you're new to fitness or haven't built a routine yet. Squaddy is a freemium offering: you can get by with the free plan, but the pro version ($2.99/month) unlocks advanced features, including adding circuits, complexes, super sets, and more.
Stridekick
You'll find Stridekick useful if your main workout objective is hitting a daily step target. The intuitive app works great as a daily activity tracker, but its biggest appeal is its support for cross-platform challenges. You can keep up and compete with friends and families no matter what fitness trackers they have. Whether it's a Fitbit, a Garmin, Withings, or an Apple Watch, all you need to do is connect your wearable, and the app will import and sync your activity data. If you don't have a fitness tracker, you can just link your iPhone's Health app, and all your fitness data will be moved over.
Stridekick allows you to create or join challenges to hit a set step target per day, and you can chat and share updates with other group members once you're in. You can also earn badges for your milestones or personal records. One of the app's top features is the option to manually add other activities, from swimming and taekwondo to weightlifting, and the time spent will be converted into an estimated number of steps and added to the day's total. Stridekick is totally free to use.
MyFitnessPal
There are no hard and fast routes to your weight goals, but MyFitnessPal has a ton of helpful tools that can make the journey easier. The app lets you track and modify your daily calorie intake and provides guidelines and exercise plans to help you stay in shape.
How it works is pretty simple. First, you fill out your profile with your age, sex, height, and weight loss/gain goals. MyFitnessPal will use all this info to calculate and recommend a daily calorie goal based on medical guidelines. Then, moving forward, you'll have to input details of all your meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack) so the app logs the calories for each meal against the daily target.
There are a few different ways to do this: you can search for food by its name, use your phone's camera to scan and identify the contents of your plate or scan the barcode on the food's packet (for premium accounts only). The app will automatically track your step count, but you have to manually add all other exercises for it to estimate the calories you've burnt and subtract that from your daily calorie goal.
You can add friends from your contacts list or with their MyFitnessPal username, find calorie companions in the app's robust community, and join challenges to compete against other members. MyFitnessPal is compatible with wearables and many third-party apps and services, including Strava. The app is a freemium offering — the free version does a great job, but you can upgrade to the paid plan at $19.99 a month if you don't want the ads (plus you get a few other negligible perks thrown in).