Get out of that workout rut and drop your excuses for not working out while on vacation or because you can’t swing a gym membership. These five fitness apps—several of them free—will help you jumpstart your workout routine and provide body-toning exercise routines you can do from anywhere. With these creative shape-up options, it’s easy to get off the couch and into your cross trainers.
MORE: The Best Apps to Track Weight Loss
1C25K
If you’ve ever wanted to walk or run a 5k but had no clue where to start, then this is the app for you. C25K stands for “Couch to 5k” and gives runners a three-times-a-week regimen that combines walking and running and your own audio coach to guide you to your goal. Whether you’re a beginning exerciser or someone who fell off the workout wagon, C25K will get you ready for a 5k race in just eight weeks. This free app is compatible with Nike+ and lets you listen to your own playlists.
2FitnessBuilder Plus
The same-old, same-old workout is a thing of the past with FitnessBuilder, an app with more than 800 workouts and 6,000 exercise images and videos, along with audio and video coaching. With FitnessBuilder’s huge library of exercises, you can create your own personalized workout. The app also tracks your progress, lets you schedule sweat sessions and makes it possible to ask an exercise physiologist your pressing workout questions. After a free one-month trial, the app is $7 a month.
3Gorilla Workout
You can’t get much for a dollar these days, but this app gives you a lot for a mere 99 cents. Gorilla Workout has over 175 equipment-free fitness routines that target your muscles from head to toe while combining cardio and strength training. There are video demonstrations of each move, along with written descriptions. With four different levels, you can be a couch potato or an advanced exerciser and still reap body-buffing rewards. For an additional 99 cents, you can add on their special workouts like “gorilla bootcamp,” “killer core,” and “100 pushups,” to really kick things up a notch.
4Pocket Yoga
Get into your favorite pretzel poses no matter where you are with Pocket Yoga, which offers 27 yoga sessions from the school of Gaia Flow Yoga. You can choose from three different practices, three levels of difficulty and three durations. For each pose, you get audio and visual instruction and can listen to their music or your own. This $3 app also logs your yoga workouts so you can follow your progress. With the preview screen, you can quickly peruse a yoga session before you do it.
5Touchfit GSP
This app, created by mixed marital arts World Champion Georges St-Pierre and his trainer Patrick Beauchamp, combines elements from gymnastics, bodyweight exercises and high-intensity interval training to create a personalized workout. First, you do a test workout, which you rate, and based on those ratings, Touchfit GSP adapts the workouts to your ability. The $4 app tracks your performance, and as you advance, so do the mostly equipment-free exercises to up the ante.
