The Best Health and Fitness Apps to Use at Home

With all of us on lockdown and the gyms all closed, many of us are struggling to stay fit and get in a decent workout. Luckily though, there’s lots of fantastic apps out there which are fantastic for health and fitness. We’ve taken a closer look at them all to help you decide which ones are worth giving a try during the next 30 days. Many of them offer free trials too, so if the first one you try out doesn’t suit you, then we can guarantee that there’s at least one on this list that does.

This app is used by a couple of us here at Lumity and it’s fantastic when you’re on a diet, or just watching what you eat. You can log all your meals and it works out the calories you’re consuming, the paid option also works out your macro and micronutrients and breaks that down into the different vitamins and minerals you’ve had. Warns you when you’ve eaten too much fat or are not balancing your meals properly. Another great feature is that it helps you track weight loss and projects how much you’re likely to lose if you keep up a similar eating pattern for the next four weeks. It also links up with your phone and works out how many calories you’ve burned through exercise, which is a handy feature if you’re feeling hungry, because you can eat back your exercise calories. There’s also a very active community which is helpful if you’re looking for a little accountability while watching your weight.

A great app for working out at home during lockdown, with personalised workouts with trainers that you can do at home, complete with warmups and warm downs. It’s fantastic for keeping motivated as you can set a 30-day goal, whether that’s focusing on your glutes or your abs, or a full-body tone up and it eases you into the workouts, before gently upping the number of reps. What we love is that seeing as lockdown is going to last at least a month, it will give each of us a goal to work towards with a fighting chance of coming out the other side looking toned and feeling more confident!

This is a clever app that was developed in Duke’s Behavioural Economics Lab and is based on serious science and will help you to build and track healthy routines. The idea is that users can build lasting behavioural changes into their lives and help improve their health and mental wellbeing through repeating healthy habits.  Based around the concept of daily journeys, each journey allows you to set up a routine via a series of small steps. The first routine is all about the morning and setting yourself up for the day, for example, drink a glass of water when you wake up, then after that you could meditate for ten minutes. It slowly adds more habits to your day and builds on them until you have created a complete routine. You can add your own habits into each routine and set an alarm to remind you to do something. If you’re having trouble forgetting to take your Lumity then it’s the perfect app for you. You can set your morning routine to start at 7am, your afternoon routine to start at 2.30pm and your evening routine to start at 7pm, or whatever suits you.

With 8fit, you’ll get exercise workouts, including Tabata, boxing, and yoga, as well as high-intensity interval training (HIIT), core, resistance band workouts, and Pilates. But you’ll also get customised meal plans which are designed to suit your needs, so if you’re vegan, paleo or pescatarian, they’ve got 800 nutritionist-approved recipes that are easy to cook and delicious too. But they also encourage users to take care of their health by making gradual habit changes, for example trying a sleep meditation for a good night’s rest. It seems to be a combination of several fitness and nutrition apps at once and it’s less about losing weight and more about learning how to eat nutritious meals that keep the weight off long-term. It’s worth a try during lockdown, if only for the Tabata workouts - which are super effective and addictive too.

You have probably seen the TV adverts for this app which allows users to do studio cycling workouts from home. The Peloton exercise bike that you can purchase enables you to get involved in home workout classes whilst measuring your metrics and subsequent tracking on the leaderboard. But it’s not just cycling classes, they also do meditation and yoga classes that are just about as good as any streamed workout class can get. The app lets you stream a class on your phone, Amazon Fire TV, Kindle, Apple Watch, or Android TV, making it easy to follow classes where you need to be able to see what the instructor is doing in technique-based workouts like yoga or strength training. Is it packed with classes including indoor running, outdoor running, strength, Tabata, meditation, bootcamp style training, and even walking classes. You get a free trial too, so it’s well worth trying for yourself before the £12.99 per month subscription kicks in. 

Want to work out anywhere, anytime, with no equipment needed? then Seven app might be the one for you. Seven’s strength lies in the fact that their workouts are based on scientific studies so they can provide the maximum amount of benefit in the shortest time possible. Each routine is just seven minutes long and one of the strengths is that if you do seven minutes each day, eventually, fitting in a daily workout will become a habit. You can also challenge your friends, switch it up with workouts led by army instructors or cheerleaders, and with over 200 routines that you can pick according to your fitness level, it’s bound to be a hit with your family too. Seven have also just launched a new Live Session feature which allows all users to participate in a worldwide workout in real time every hour!

Tone It Up is a fitness empire that was founded by Karena and Katrina, who appeared on the Bravo channel TV show Toned Up in 2014. You may also know them from YouTube. Their app boasts a wide variety of strength, cardio, and yoga workouts, some are equipment free while others need you to grab dumbbells, a yoga mat, and a kettlebell before starting. Some workouts also use resistance bands, an exercise ball, or sliding discs — but you don’t have to have all this equipment to try the workouts as some rely on body strength only. Most of the live studio workouts are about 25 minutes long and are available every half hour throughout the day. So, it's easy to find one that works for you. They also have dozens of on-demand 8-minute-long videos, which you can string together to create a full 20- to 30-minute workout.

This clever and free app is a worthy replacement for any alarm clock. Instead of an alarm, you set Yoga Wake Up to go off and a yoga instructor’s voice gently wakes you up and gently eases you into a series of light stretching movements, followed by a morning meditation and guiding you to set your intention for the day.

If you want to work out like a pro, then try Centr. Created by Hollywood action man and star of the movie Thor Chris Hemsworth, this app focuses on the three pillars of fitness, namely workouts, nutrition and peace of mind – so sleep, relaxation and meditation. Featuring workouts from professionals from the worlds of bodybuilding and wellness, including former boxer Michael Olajide Jr and Pilates guru Sylvia Roberts, they encourage you to work out every day and focus on post workout meals with recipes which include liberal amounts of eggs, chicken, broccoli and kale. If you usually spend a lot of time at your local gym pumping iron with a trainer, this might well be the perfect lockdown fitness companion for you.

Freeletics is widely agreed to be as close to a real-life personal trainer as they come, and their video workouts are guaranteed to get results because they’re so intense. Recognised as the #1 fitness app in Europe, there are an almost infinite number of workout variations that target all major muscle groups in the body. The sessions last 10-30 minutes and require no equipment. There are also leader boards for points, workouts, and running - perfect for anyone who is motivated by competition and getting their name on a winner’s chart – plus a personal dashboard so you can track your progress. Another great feature of the app is the personalised AI fitness and mindset coaching for everyone. We like it, but if you sign up for a trial, be careful that iTunes doesn’t auto-renew your subscription for a year if you no longer want it.