I’m usually pretty active with running, cycling and strength training generally featuring in my week. However, pregnancy changed things somewhat. I took it very easy for my first trimester—mostly because I felt nauseous unless I was eating toast.

By my second trimester the nausea had passed and I wanted to do more exercise, but didn’t know where to start. Without guidance from a qualified prenatal fitness expert, it’s hard to know what’s safe in pregnancy and what could potentially injure you (simply coughing while lying in the wrong position would send me into spasms of round ligament pain). I scoured the timetable at my gym but there were no pregnancy-specific fitness classes. I began weekly pregnancy yoga at my favorite yoga studio, started swimming once a week and occasionally doing some very gentle running. But most days I didn’t move much, and I still felt pretty sedentary.

So when I had the opportunity to test and review online fitness program The Bump Plan I was keen to give it a go. Offering a combination of Pilates-style strength training and cardio workouts, the subscription-based fitness platform caters to those trying to conceive, as well as those who are pregnant and postpartum. You can join at any point, even late in your pregnancy or after having your baby.

How Much Does The Bump Plan Cost?

Membership costs £35 per month, with a discount if you pay for six months (£180) or a year (£240) upfront. When you sign up you have the option to buy a £15 starter pack that includes a Pilates ball and resistance band—other than a mat, that’s all the equipment you need for the classes.

What Do You Get With The Bump Plan?

The Bump Plan gives you six workout videos to complete in a week, with the same videos to repeat weekly before you get a new set of videos (these currently change at weeks 12, 18, 24 and 30). Six workouts per week may sound like a lot, but they are all 20 to 30 minutes long, so I found them easy enough to slot into my day, and together they add up to the 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week recommended for pregnant women (and indeed all adults aged 19-64) by the UK government.

All the videos are created and led by Hollie Grant, an award-winning Pilates instructor and personal trainer, and were recorded while she was pregnant. In each of the videos, she is at more or less the same stage of pregnancy as the viewer. I found this immensely helpful—everything felt all the more achievable and encouraging thanks to a feeling of being in the same boat, plus Grant’s down-to-earth teaching style and her frank discussions of the physical challenges of pregnancy were very welcome.

Weeks 18-24 of the program gave me access to two 20-minute Pilates sessions, three cardio-Pilates sessions and a 10-minute stretching session. Each workout also contains a short pelvic floor exercise session at the end. I know how important it is to do pelvic floor exercises but (confession) I never actually do them unless I’m being told to, so having them scheduled into my workouts was ideal.

There’s also a weekly live class, led by Grant, that you can join as part of the program. It was nice to catch a glimpse of some of the other prenatal mamas following along, and it was also good to be able to connect with Grant before and after the class and ask any pressing questions. These workouts are recorded (minus the chit-chat) and become bonus workouts available alongside your weekly workouts.

The Bump Plan also offers more than just workouts. In the education hub section of the website, subscribers also get access to a library of articles by qualified health experts, as well as video interviews and recorded webinars on topics ranging from pelvic girdle pain and sciatica to hypnobirthing, cesarean sections, and baby and toddler first aid. I found it an informative and helpful place to explore and learn more about issues that are often little discussed—there’s even an expert interview that tackles “the post-birth poo”!

Members can also access weekly live clinics with experts including a women’s health physio and a lactation consultant, where you can ask questions.

What Are The Bump Plan Workouts Like?

By the time I began the program during my 19th week of pregnancy, I was doing a small amount of mostly low-impact exercise. Plus I was dealing with the demands of work and family life, with a six-year-old keeping me on my toes. But, I still felt like I was missing some form of more structured exercise that raised my heart rate, and I felt rather feeble and got tired easily. Usually I felt shattered in the evenings, even when I’d barely left the house.

When I began the workouts, I found them very manageable—they’re not too long and there’s an emphasis on keeping effort levels moderate and not getting too out of breath. The videos I followed had no dynamic movements: all cardio was low impact.

There were a lot of squats though—at my stage in the second trimester the program focuses on strengthening your legs and glutes to help with proper posture and support for your back, as well as preparing you for an active labor. I really felt it in my quads and hamstrings after the first couple of workouts. But when I returned to those same videos in the second week, my muscles coped fine and I had no soreness afterward. By the third week I was progressing as suggested by holding a light pair of dumbbells for many of the exercises.

The six workouts for the week felt well-planned, targeting different areas of the body in the safest possible way. There are lots of modifications on offer for those experiencing symptoms such as pelvic girdle pain, or ways to take it down a notch if you’re getting too out of breath.

I found the live workouts a particularly worthwhile addition. Having got to know Grant through the videos it was motivating to interact with her live and do some different exercises. In the live sessions I attended there were options for more dynamic movement if you wanted it.

I asked Grant why the live classes involved dynamic exercises, while the recorded classes do not. “Version one of the Bump Plan was filmed five years ago while I was pregnant with my daughter and back then the guidance was that you should avoid impact while pregnant,” says Grant. “But since then there has been so much research done and new guidance published. And awareness of the fact that actually impact is fine during pregnancy as long as your pelvic floor is comfortable with it, and you're comfortable with it. Baby is completely cushioned and safe.”

“I refilmed the Bump Plan while I was pregnant with my son [who is now one year old], and it's just about to go live in a few weeks,” says Grant. “You’ll get more workouts, they change more regularly and they’re more challenging. I do encourage you to jump and bounce around as long as it's comfortable for you. And there’s loads of information about pelvic floor strength. Things like pressure management in the core, all sorts of things like that. So if you want to be challenged, you can be.”

Is The Bump Plan Worth It?

Within a week of starting the plan I felt stronger and more energetic. I could go on a long walk without feeling heavy and exhausted by the end, and I could carry my bike up the steep front steps to my house with confidence. Three weeks into the plan (and halfway through my pregnancy) my glutes, legs, core, chest, arms and shoulders feel stronger, and even as my bump seems to expand by the day I feel better equipped for the movements and challenges of daily life. I’m getting fewer back twinges and I’d even say my mood is more stable.

I’ve found that having a schedule of six short workouts a week is really helping me stay more active. It’s a challenge to get them all done but because each one is only 20 or 30 minutes long, fitting one in nearly every day feels achievable, and I don’t beat myself up if I miss a couple of sessions here and there. The workouts themselves feel like they’re making a difference and yet they’re never too taxing.

The videos do get slightly repetitive after a while and I would prefer to have a wider range of videos to choose from or for the videos to change more often, and I’d like the option to include more dynamic moves in the workouts, but these changes are on their way, with the Bump Plan update planned for mid April 2024.

Grant herself is very available and responsive to subscribers, encouraging people to email with questions, or stay and chat at the end of live sessions. There’s also an active closed Facebook group where she’ll respond to comments. With her enthusiasm and openness, it’s like having your own cheering squat rooting for you.

I think it’s absolutely worth paying the monthly subscription, and I’m intending to keep following the program for the rest of my pregnancy and beyond—the postnatal program sounds excellent too, with different videos depending on whether you had a vaginal birth or C-section. Progression to the next phase is entirely dependent on when you feel ready.

There’s a week’s free trial to see if The Bump Plan is right for you before committing. But if you don’t fancy paying a monthly subscription and you’d rather devise your own workouts along the same lines, it’s worth reading Grant’s book, The Bump Plan, (£16.99 / $22.99) published in 2023. It equips you with the knowledge of what kind of exercise is safe and most beneficial at every stage of pregnancy and why, and has examples of suitable workouts.

As always when trying something new, especially when pregnant, it’s important to check with your healthcare professional to be sure that this kind of exercise is safe for you.

Sign up for a free trial of The Bump Plan on the website.

One of the biggest new features that has come to wearables over the past couple of years is heart rate variability (HRV) tracking, and using this to gauge the stress on your body and how ready it is to exercise.

The Oura ring was the first device I tested to really make this “readiness” measurement useful, tracking your HRV overnight and using it, along with other factors, to give a readiness score every morning so you can judge if you should do a hard workout. It’s also used across many of the best sports watches, especially high-end models from Garmin, with its training readiness score tying together lots of activity and recovery stats, including HRV.

However, getting an Oura ring or a Garmin that gives you this data is expensive, and they might not be giving you perfect data anyway, especially since Garmin watches have a habit of overestimating time asleep.

I’m currently in the middle of a marathon training block for the London Marathon, and I’ve been testing several methods of tracking my readiness at the same time—an Oura ring (3rd generation), the training readiness score from a Garmin Epix Pro watch, and the HRV4Training app (App Store and Google Play).

With the ring and the watch I wear them overnight and they give my readiness score in the morning, using an average of my HRV measured overnight set against my baseline, which takes several weeks to establish.

You also need to set a baseline with the HRV4Training app, but the measurements are done differently—you take it in the morning using the camera on your phone (you can also link a chest strap heart rate monitor if you prefer). You hold a finger over the camera and the flash is used to take a reading of your heart rate and HRV.

This morning HRV measurement needs to be consistent to get the most useful information from the app, with the advice being to take the measurement first thing, sitting up in bed. It takes a minute as standard, but you can set the measurement to take longer, which might make for a more accurate reading. Even a minute sometimes proved a bit tricky for me if woken up by my kids, but I was able to fit it in at the same time each morning.

Along with the measurement, the app asks you to fill out a short questionnaire regarding your recent training, any muscle soreness or mental fatigue, and whether you drank alcohol the night before. You can link apps such as Strava to the HRV4Training app to pull your training in automatically.

After you finish the questionnaire you are given your HRV score and advice on whether it is within your baseline, and whether you should proceed as planned with your training that day, or limit how hard you work.

It’s a simple app to use once you get the knack of positioning your finger on the camera correctly, and I have found the readings and advice to be comparable to the data from the Oura ring. I also like the questionnaire, which makes you aware of your alcohol intake in particular, and the fact the measurement is taken in the morning makes it feel directly applicable to my upcoming training that day.

The HRV4Training app is a lot cheaper than the best watches and wearables to give readiness info, and the fact you don’t have to wear a watch or even a ring overnight will appeal to some people. It costs $9.99/£9.99 as a one-off fee, though there is a pro version that gives you access to a web platform for more insights into your measurements.

If your January fitness kick has taken you to the treadmill in 2024, it might well be the case that you’re starting to get a little bored of indoor runs already. Unless you’re following a treadmill workout plan or have uncommonly high levels of motivation, indoor running can be hard to stick with without some kind of entertainment, and the best free running app for this is Zwift.

I am an obsessive runner who usually logs 50-70 miles a week. I do the majority of this outdoors, but if I do run on the treadmill I will always fire up Zwift to make the run more enjoyable.

What Is Zwift?

Zwift is a virtual training app where you control an avatar that runs through dramatic landscapes. Some of these landscapes are entirely fictional, like the island of Watopia, while others are based on real places, like Paris and London.

The app began catering to cyclists on turbo trainers and connected indoor bikes and it’s very popular. Cyclists have to pay a monthly subscription, but it’s free for runners. 

Download Zwift: App Store and Google Play

How Does It Work?

To control your avatar you need to either link your treadmill to Zwift, or use a footpod or running watch that can send your pace to Zwift so it knows how fast you are running.

In the past this used to be quite difficult. Most treadmills weren’t directly compatible with Zwift and footpods were expensive, and a bit fiddly to set up and calibrate for Zwift. Nowadays, however, most modern treadmills will link directly to Zwift and they have a tablet or phone holder.

You can check if the treadmill, footpod or running watch you’re using is compatible with Zwift on the app’s website, but I will say the list there is not comprehensive, especially on watches as some newer Garmins have the virtual training mode and aren’t listed.

Linking the treadmill directly to the app is the simplest option if available. If you’re using a watch or footpod you will need to calibrate the pace on it, which is easily done within Zwift via a guided process where you run at three different speeds. The pace readings will not be infallible, especially if using a watch, so you might find you’re running a bit slower or faster than your avatar, but it will still make the run more fun.

Getting Started

Once you’re set up on Zwift, I recommend exploring a few of the virtual worlds at first, then look at the guided workouts available in the app and the group runs. The group runs are divided up by pace so there is an option for runners of all levels, and joining them will mean you get to run with other people within the app. This will help with motivation, especially when tackling workouts on the treadmill. 

There are also full training plans for runners on Zwift that you can follow to build up to events like a 5K, 10K or half marathon. If you want to get a full introduction to the app, there’s a Zwift 101 plan that will ease you into your first workouts. I’ve also written a Zwift for runners guide which may be of help.

Finally, if you really want to push yourself, there are races you can join on Zwift, which are graded by ability to ensure you’re not lapping the field or getting left behind.

Find out more about these picks in my guide to the best treadmills.

There’s no disputing that the Apple Watch Ultra 2 is one of the best sports watches available, and the Apple Watch Series 9 is among the top fitness smartwatches. That’s partly down to Apple continuing to update the software on the watches to improve its sports features.

One of the major updates in watchOS 10 was Apple opening up the native Workout app to third parties, so it’s possible to sync structured workouts from other platforms to the Workout app to use with an Apple Watch.

When Apple announced the feature, one of the services Apple chose to illustrate the possibilities this change opened up was TrainingPeaks, and for good reason. TrainingPeaks is an advanced and incredibly popular training platform, used by tens of thousands of coaches to set plans for their clients, and many more athletes who use the workout builder and training analysis tools TrainingPeaks provides.

The TrainingPeaks integration with Apple Watch is now live, and I have been testing it out for a week ahead of its launch. I’m a keen runner who has worked with a coach for several years, but this is the first time I’ve used TrainingPeaks (although I have experienced its training analysis before because Suunto uses it in its watches, such as the Suunto Race).

At first, TrainingPeaks can feel a little overwhelming. The user interface isn’t the most elegant and not especially intuitive. Once you get your eye in, however, keen athletes will welcome the depth of features available.

If you manage your own training load you can create all your workouts on TrainingPeaks, fine-tuned to the last details, using targets based on things like your heart rate, power or threshold pace zones.

These workouts can now be set to automatically (or manually) sync over to the Apple Watch, where they appear in the Workout app as a structured workout. On the day you’ve planned to do the workout it will appear at the top of the app, and you can also see upcoming and past workouts from TrainingPeaks in the Workout app. Tap the workout to start and follow it exactly as if you were following a structured workout created in Apple’s app.

When I tested the integration I could send running and cycling workouts over, and in time you’ll be able to do this with any sports profile in the Workout app that allows structured workouts. Notably this doesn’t currently include swimming, so you won’t be able to send swimming workouts from TrainingPeaks.

The integration with TrainingPeaks means that it’s now much easier to use the Apple Watch with one of the most sophisticated training platforms out there and will help the Apple Watch Ultra 2 in particular continue to establish itself as a rival to top sports watches like the Garmin Fenix 7.

One area where Apple does not attempt to compete with sports brands directly is through training analysis, and so linking up the watch to TrainingPeaks, which does extensive training analysis, adds an important and useful feature to the watch.

You can also find coaches and training plans on the platform to guide your training, in which case the scheduled workouts will automatically fill your calendar and be sent to the Apple Watch to follow each day.

You will need a premium account on TrainingPeaks to get the most from the service, which costs $19.95 a month or $124.99 a year, but there is a 14-day free trial you can try first. If you have an Apple Watch and are a keen runner or triathlete, it’s definitely worth trying this out to see if the extra tools and analysis you get from TrainingPeaks will improve your sports tracking experience on the watch.

Many athletes already spend more time than they’d care to admit on Strava, the most popular sports tracking app in the world. It’s latest feature might mean it hogs even more of your time.

From today you will be able to directly message other users on Strava, as well as set up group chats. At launch you will be able to share routes, a welcome development since Strava is widely regarded as one of the best running route planners. You can also send reactions, such as GIFs, to others in the app. Photo messages are slated to arrive early next year.

Strava has always had a social element to it and the message feature will be useful for clubs and groups of runners who can now organize runs in the app more easily.

As a keen runner I have more WhatsApp groups than I care to count, and most are used to organize runs with different groups of running buddies. If just half of these groups migrate to Strava then it’s about to explode as a social media platform.

The messaging will also make it easier to connect with people you might only know through the app. Finally, you can privately contact the person who always runs the same local loop as you and ask if they want to buddy up for a run.

However, not everyone will want others to have the option of messaging them and it’s worth noting that if you have a public profile on Strava then the feature will automatically be turned on so people you are following can message you.

Thankfully, as befitting a GPS tracking app, Strava has included easy-to-use privacy features if you’d like to turn this off.

Allowing messages from people you follow is one of three options available in message settings on Strava. 

The other settings are only receiving messages from mutuals (you follow each other), or not allowing anyone to initiate messaging. If that last one sounds appealing you’ll need to dive into your settings on the app and select it, though if you have a private profile it should be selected already.

If you’ve ever cheered on family and friends at a small, local marathon, you may have found that it was easy to spot them from the sidelines. But anyone planning to join the spectators at the New York City Marathon will find that it’s a very different story. 

Not only is the New York City Marathon one of the city’s busiest public events of the year, it can be tricky to navigate if you’re not a local. The marathon runs through all five of the city’s boroughs (Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and the Bronx) and catching sight of your runner in more than one of them can seem like a tall order.

Fortunately, there’s an app for that. The TCS New York City Marathon app, to be exact. The app serves as a one-stop shop for runners and spectators alike, for runner tracking and race info. The New York City Marathon app usually tops the charts as the most downloaded sports app worldwide during the first weekend of November, and has had nearly three million downloads over the past 10 years.

“The TCS New York City Marathon course traverses vibrant, diverse neighborhoods filled with millions of roaring fans—it’s where the world comes to celebrate running,” says Suresh Muthuswami, chairman of TCS North America. “This year, technology enhancements will elevate the experience for everyone—whether they are conquering 26.2 miles of New York City streets, celebrating on the sidewalks, or tracking runners on the app.”

Spectators can even use the app to watch the broadcast and see the pro races unfold, which will also include app-exclusive live commentary from Olympians Des Linden and Galen Rupp and Paralympian Amanda McGrory, a feature that is new for 2023. Read on to learn about other key features of the New York City Marathon app.

Sky entered the home workout arena in  summer 2023 by joining the audio-guided fitness platform WithU to debut a fitness experience for your living room called Mvmnt. 

Made exclusively for Sky’s new smart camera, Sky Live, which is designed to sit on top of a TV, the app can track your reps and provide instant and personalized form-correction cues as you exercise. It’s like having an AI-powered personal trainer in your lounge. One that, thankfully, you can switch on and off. 

You need to have a Sky Glass TV for it to work: These start at £699 to buy outright or £14 a month for a 48-month contract. You also need a Sky TV package that starts at £24 a month, plus the Sky Live device (£290 outright or £6 a month over 48 months) and reliable broadband. 

I put Sky’s new Mvmnt platform to the test for a couple of months to see how it stacked up against the best workout apps. Here’s what I found. 

The Set-Up

As with Sky Glass, which streams off your Wi-Fi rather than via a satellite dish or antenna, the set-up for Sky Live is straightforward. The device, a compact 130g 12-megapixel RGB HDR-capable camera, sits on top of a TV and is kept in place by a magnetized base, while a single cable connects it to the TV’s HDMI and USB-C ports.

Its lens captures a 110˚ HFOV (horizontal field of view) and 93˚ VFOV (vertical field of view), meaning it should suit most living spaces, while a tilt adjuster can be used to optimize the angle further. To allay privacy concerns, you can turn the camera on or off with the tap of a button. A white light on its front indicates if you’re on screen or not. 

The camera can be used for video calling via Zoom, for hands-free games, such as Fruit Ninja, and you can even invite friends and family to watch and react to live and on-demand TV alongside you on-screen. 

Let’s focus on Sky Live’s fitness capabilities. The Mvmnt app comes installed with Sky Glass and can be navigated to with your Sky remote. On launch, the platform offers more than 130 workouts, grouped into strength, cardio, balance (yoga, Pilates and mobility) or meditation, and beginner, intermediate or advanced level classes.

There’s a practice area, split into lower body, upper body, total body and core-focused exercises, and Mvmnt comes with a mobile app to track progress and schedule workouts on the go too. There are also four “collections”, categorizing the classes for those with limited room, limited time or needing low-impact workouts—presumably to protect joints (or tenancy agreements!). Notably, there aren’t any programs or plans to provide structure and guidance on which classes to try and in which order. 

Instead, once I’d set up my profile I was prompted to try a short introductory workout with Mvmnt coach Rory Knight, one of WithU’s highly respected running coaches (and who’s previously contributed a running workout to Coach) to learn the ropes and be put through my paces. 

The Experience

Mvmnt is pitched as the home-workout platform of the future, one that delivers “smart workouts on smarter tech”, and it’s fair to say the AI-powered software is clever. 

Once I’d hit “start workout” in my first class, the Sky Live camera came to life and beamed my image on screen. A series of connected green dots then scattered over my body, pinpointing and tracking the movement of my ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, arms and head. 

After a short intro, Mvmnt’s body tracking tech used this information to assess my form through a series of squats, lunges and planks, under Knight’s seemingly watchful eye.

During each exercise three coaching cues appeared on screen beside my reflection, turning green when executed correctly, while also giving me a score out of 10 for each rep. The tech also tracked the number of reps I completed and after each block of moves I was given a score out of 30 that I can try to beat in subsequent rounds. 

It was intuitive and easy to follow and, like a real-life PT would, it pushed me not to be lazy mid-workout. “I notice you’re not squatting low enough and you’re also letting your knees cave in,” Knight admonished, astutely, during a rest period between sets. 

At the end of the class, I was shown my total points tally and told if I’d qualified for a bronze, silver or gold medal, while Knight had the last word. “We detected that your chest is collapsing when you squat,” he said. “Straighten your back and lift that chest up loud and proud.” 

Knight also recommended a practice class to brush up on my bodyweight squat form—short tutorials that help drill good technique. This last feature was a lovely touch, and especially good for beginners or those attempting new exercises for the first time. It’s a safe space to address weaknesses, improve form and minimize injury risk.

Mvmnt’s companion mobile app is another nice feature, which you can position in your eyeline when performing planks and push-ups so you don’t have to crane your neck to the TV to check your form.

Over the weeks, I dug deeper into the platform’s array of cardio, yoga, mobility and dumbbell strength classes, and got to know the app’s supportive coaches. Positive mental attitude’s Faisal Abdalla became a personal favorite. There was plenty of variety, and lots of 10- to 20-minute sessions that lend themselves to tight schedules or workout stacking. The coaching cues and real-time feedback also proved popular with my wife, who let out a “yay” when she turned all the lights green during a set of goblet squats. 

The only drawback I found is that you need to exercise directly in front of your TV for it to accurately track your movement. In my cramped living room, that meant furniture rearrangement before and after each workout. Technical issues that kept cropping up with Sky Live, requiring a reboot of the TV, also hampered the convenience factor.

The Verdict

Sky Live’s body tracking tech undoubtedly helps Mvmnt stand out in a competitive field. It’s not like group exercise classes, where you can go through the motions without truly pushing yourself. Or like a typical home workout, where you can tap out when the going gets tough. 

With Mvmnt there is no hiding place. If you drop your standards or slacken off, the all-seeing Sky Live camera will know. More reps, better form, higher scores. Apart from having a real-life trainer, it’s the closest thing to a one-to-one online PT session, delivered on demand, on your terms. As a consequence, however, the tech also lacks the buzz, the energy and the vibe of group exercise classes—a key ingredient in making them addictive. Mvmnt’s workouts feel sterile by comparison.

Mvmnt has a couple more missteps. The tech isn’t compatible with any wearables, so you can’t track your heart rate or get an accurate picture of calories burned. The app doesn’t offer training plans. Sure, there are 130+ workouts to choose from, but no structure to ensure progression. 

“We're launching HR tracking, programs and integrating with key wearables, such as Apple Watch, Fitbit, Garmin and more,” said Ellis Warren, the head of product at Mvmnt. “We have got so much in the pipeline for our members who enjoy wearing smartwatches and use connected devices to work out.”

Given Sky Glass is already enabled with fitness apps such as Fiit and Peloton, you wonder how long it will be before these rivals hijack the Sky Live tech to enhance their workouts. For now, however, Mvmnt’s closest comparison comes from Peloton’s proprietary hardware, Peloton Guide.

Guide uses a compact camera to count reps and provide visual feedback for strength workouts. From £225 (plus a monthly subscription of £24) it can also note the weights a user is lifting and track their heart rate during a class. The main point of difference versus Sky Live is that Peloton’s camera is compatible with any TV. 

If Sky and WithU can couple their personalized PT experience with the energy of group exercise, while layering on effective training plans, wearable integration and gamification, Mvmnt could dominate the home workout landscape. But only, of course, if you happen to own a Sky Glass TV. At present, Sky Glass is only available in the UK and Ireland, though a Sky Stream concept in the US, via Sky’s parent company Comcast, has been rumored. 

Buy from Sky | £6 a month for Sky Glass customers (Sky Glass TV from £14 a month + Sky TV package from £24 a month).

If you’ve ever been a spectator at a marathon and tried to follow a friend or family member, hoping to spot them at various points during the race, you’ll know it can be a tricky endeavor. It’s easy to miss your runner at a large, crowded race that doesn’t have tracking technology for runners.

Fortunately, the Chicago Marathon has runners and fans covered with the TCS Chicago Marathon App. TCS has produced the Chicago Marathon app since 2012 and also has regularly updated apps for the Boston, New York City and London marathons as well. In addition to being a useful tool for those who are in the city to watch the race, the Chicago Marathon app is also helpful for those tracking and supporting runners from afar.

Here’s everything you need to know about using the Chicago Marathon app to enhance your race experience.

If you’ve ever belonged to a gym, the chances are that you’ve enrolled in at least a few Les Mills classes. If you haven’t taken one, you'll almost certainly have heard their music blasting from a fitness studio.

Known for its for peppy instructors, upbeat music, and fast-paced workouts, Les Mills has been involved in group classes for years. The original program, BodyPump, is based around weight training, but you’ve likely also heard of BodyCombat (martial arts-inspired), BodyBalance (inspired by yoga and pilates), and BodyAttack (high-energy cardio workout).

The brand was founded in 1968 by four-time Olympian Les Mills, who set up a local gym in Auckland, New Zealand. His son and daughter-in-law, Philip and Jackie Mills, saw the opportunity to jump on the aerobics workout trend and introduce weights, creating the fast-paced group workouts that the brand is renowned for.

You can now access workouts from the convenience of home with a Les Mills+ subscription and equipment. But how does the app compare with the best workout apps? Is it worth the ongoing subscription fees? What about the substantial upfront investment required for Les Mills-branded workout gear? We tested the app and the SmartBar to find out.

Les Mills+ App And SmartBar: Price And Availability

There are two tiers of subscription—Base and Premium—and it’s cheaper to pay annually, rather than monthly, for both. With the Base membership you can access 16 fitness programs, including BodyAttack, BodyBalance, BodyCombat and Core, but not BodyPump. Users are limited to three workouts per program. Base users can stream from web and mobile, but not TV. A Base membership is $6.99 a month in the US and £6.49 a month in the UK for a rolling contract, or $59.99/£59.88 annually.

With the Premium membership you can access all programs and can choose from the entire library of more than 2,000 workouts. You can stream from web, mobile, and TV. A Premium membership is $14.99/£12.99 a month for a rolling contract or $119.99/£119.88 annually.

The SmartBar and weight set costs $479/£399. The bundle includes the bar, two 2.2lb/1kg weight plates, two 5.5lb/2.5kg weight plates, and two 11lb/5kg weight plates. Delivery is available anywhere in the continental US, the UK and Ireland. The SmartBar is designed to be used for BodyPump, Core and Grit workouts, though it is a great addition to any home gym and can be used for any freestyle home workout. 

If you want extra weight plates you can purchase them separately. Les Mills offers a step, bands, workout and yoga mats, and other accessories. For this review, I tested the SmartBar.

How I Tested The App And SmartBar

I tested the Les Mills+ app for eight weeks, using the SmartBar during various workouts. I streamed workouts on my laptop, phone and TV.

The Set-Up

The SmartBar comes in a slim-looking but heavy box and doesn’t require assembly. The design is sleek and minimalist, and it’s easy to get to grips with changing the weight plates. It’s an aluminum bar with a durable, scratch-proof ionized coating. The bar is 27mm in diameter, which Les Mills says reduces hand and forearm fatigue and aids muscle activation and good technique. 

Setting up the Les Mills+ app is quick and easy. I effortlessly connected it to my TV for streaming.

The App Experience

There’s an array of workouts to choose from on Les Mills+, including strength-training options such as BodyPump and Core, cardio workouts including BodyCombat and BodyStep, and flexibility sessions that feature the Les Mills Stretch.

After signing up, you receive an email that explains how to get started. There’s also a handbook with further information and technique videos. The BodyPump technique video walks you through the proper form for the squat, deadlift, dead row, clean and press, chest press, alternating backward stepping lunge and triceps push-up.

The homepage shows you how many days you’ve been active in a month, your average workout duration, recommended workouts and series you might like. You can scroll through new and popular workouts, inspiration and information, and curated edits of workouts such as mood boosters.

Under the Explore tab, you can access workouts by program, such as Strength, Cardio and Martial Arts, HIIT, Yoga and Flexibility, Dance, Cycle, and Low Impact. When you “favorite” a workout, you’ll see it in the My Workouts tab. You can also download workouts for offline use.

The Plans tab provides a pre-set series of workouts designed around different challenges and goals. These include Fast Fit, a four-week program for beginners, Wellness Reset, a six-week yoga and meditation program, and Optimal Mixes for each month, which include a balance of three cardio, strength and mindful workouts each week.

When you click on a workout, you see the duration, intensity and required equipment at a glance. The music tracks are listed, and you can scroll through comments from other users. You can also make your own workout or session notes.

The app is intuitive, well designed and responsive. The workout videos have high production values and professional-looking, engaging instructors. The experience is on a par with the rival Peloton app. There is also a Les Mills+ Facebook page, which has more than 180,000 members. If you’re looking to replicate the community spirit of a local gym this is worth joining.

I enjoyed all the workouts I tried on the app. BodyPump left me feeling sweaty and shaky (in the best possible way), the Core classes destroyed my abs, and BodyBalance offered a satisfying blend of yoga and Pilates. I didn’t try the Sh’Bam or Barre classes because I’m terrible at dancing and didn’t want to trip over my coffee table.

The SmartBar Experience

I primarily used the SmartBar for BodyPump. This is Les Mills’s original barbell workout, which features high reps using light to moderate weights, aiming to work all the major muscle groups in every session. Other workouts in the app that use the SmartBar include Grit, hybrid workouts and low-impact strength sessions.

The SmartBar has several features that make it enjoyable to use. It feels sturdy and well made. I had no trouble switching the weight plates or getting them to lock securely during use.

One of the best features of the SmartBar is the clip-free design. There aren’t any separate parts to secure the weight plates to the bar, which means less time grappling with getting fiddly clips on and off during workouts. Instead, the weight plates slide onto the plastic “gator” teeth and lock securely with a satisfying click. To release, you simply pull the red release lever back and slide the plates off. As Les Mills workouts are fast-paced with quick changes between movements, this helps to keep the flow without needing to pause and restart the video.

The rotating bar end is designed to aid muscle isolation and make the movement feel smooth. It also means that the weight feels consistently and evenly distributed during use.

The weight plates are square, so they stay put when you place the bar on the ground between sets. They can also be used as hand weights, and have a textured area to help with grip. The middle bar can be grasped to allow for dumbbell-style movements, while the outer edges have grips to allow them to be used in kettlebell-style movements. Even when my hands were sweaty, I was able to grip the weights and the bar with ease.

Are The Les Mills+ App And SmartBar Worth It?

I was impressed with the app, which I think is as good value as the Peloton app. An all-access monthly membership gives you a lot of content: The instructors are fantastic, the music is great, and it’s going to be hard to get bored thanks to the variety of workouts on offer. You may not be able to replicate the exact camaraderie of a group class at home, but you can get close.

I thoroughly enjoyed using the SmartBar and found the design features useful for keeping up with the fast pace of the workouts. However, at £399 for the bundle, it is a pretty serious investment. If you’re a Les Mills fan and you’re planning to reap the rewards for years to come, it’s likely to be worth it, but if you’re just getting started, you may want to consider an entry-level barbell set-up first.

Garmin or Apple Watch, Hoka or Asics, Strava or Nike Run Club: these are just some of running’s dividing lines and I’ve been on team Strava for more than five years. Even though I bought a Garmin Vivoactive 4 this year I still look over my stats in Strava rather than Garmin Connect—old habits die hard—so when my editor tasked me with switching from my faithful run tracker Strava to Nike Run Club, I considered quitting there and then.

You’ll find Strava and Nike Run Club in any list of the best running apps (including ours, of course). Both track and analyze your activity, help you set goals and follow the activities of friends and family.

But there are differences, as I discovered when I used Nike Run Club alongside Strava for a week. I tracked a 13-mile long run, a recovery run, a tempo run, an interval session and an easy 5K run on my Garmin and synced the data with both apps. Here are my honest impressions.

The Design Feels Clunky

While many love the design of the Nike Run Club app, to me it feels clunky. The bright colors and images are great, but they distracted me from what I was there to do: check my run. Compared with Strava, I felt my data was scattered and not as easy to read at a glance. 

Data Syncing Was Spotty

I used my running watch to collect data so I can’t accuse NRC of being inaccurate, but I regularly found that my kilometer pace was displayed on Strava but not on Nike Run Club. It was the same case with my cadence.

You Can Only Track Runs

For a tracking app called “run club”, I shouldn’t be surprised that you can only track runs, yet I am. Many runners cross-train to complement their running; without a sports watch how else are you to track that data? On top of my runs, I swim and strength train once a week, but neither appeared on Nike Run Club.

The Gear List Isn’t Complete 

One of my favorite features of Strava is being able to log which running gear I’ve used, particularly my shoes. This gives me an idea of how many miles I’ve logged in a particular shoe, so I know when I should think about replacing it. Nike Run Club does have the ability to add your shoes, but the preset list is far from exhaustive. I either use the Asics Novablast 3 or Hoka Clifton 8 running shoes, which are fairly popular running shoes but neither appears on the Nike Run Club app. Only the 2, 3 and 4 editions of the Hoka Clifton range are available (the line is up to 9 now), and the Novablast range doesn’t appear under Asics.

It Doesn’t Split Moving Time From Elapsed Time

Another top feature of Strava is the distinction between moving and elapsed time. As someone who regularly runs through a busy city, a lot of my runs are spent waiting at traffic lights or stuck behind walkers. This affects the accuracy of your run time. Strava provides your elapsed time (the duration of your run, start to finish) and your moving time (the periods it registers you as moving, not stationary). Nike Run Club provides only elapsed time,making it difficult to accurately analyze your run. 

Many people who might be interested in Peloton are put off by the price. But the connected fitness company has now announced Peloton App Free, which allows you to sample classes, track your workouts and enjoy all-new gym plans without sharing your card details. 

It’s one of three new additions to the Peloton app’s tiered membership options. The new membership options are:

1. Peloton App Free: This gives access to more than 50 classes across 12 of Peloton’s styles of training (called modalities), including some from its new gym-based workout series. Peloton also says this membership includes featured classes that will be continually refreshed.
   
2. Peloton App One: This option replaces the existing Peloton App membership and features thousands of classes across nine of Peloton’s 16 modalities, including strength sessions, meditation and walking, with new classes promised every day. Peloton is offering a 30-day free trial and when this runs out, it will cost you $12.99/£12.99 a month. Coach reviewer Sarah Lienard felt that this offered great value after testing it for a Peloton App review and included it in our list of the best workout apps.
   
3. Peloton App+: Here, you will have free rein of all content except for Lanebreak (game-based) and Scenic (virtual rides and runs) classes. You will also be able to use any of Peloton’s exercise machines—the rowing machine, bikes and treadmill—with your workouts. There is a 30-day free trial available, and after this it will cost $24/£24 a month.

As well as these new memberships, there are the Peloton Guide Membership ($24/£24 a month) and the Peloton All-Access Membership ($39/£39 a month). Along with the Lanebreak and Scenic offerings, the All-Access membership lets subscribers create up to 20 profiles to cater for a whole household.

Peloton Free App includes a sampling of Peloton’s new workouts designed for the gym—somewhat predictably dubbed “Peloton Gym”. These sessions are designed to cater for Peloton users’ growing interest in strength training, with Peloton revealing that half of streams are now not cycling-related.

The workouts require you to have easy access to a range of free weights and weights machines, and rather than Peloton’s usual follow-along format, Peloton Gym’s sessions lay the prescribed exercises out as a list, including descriptions and short video demonstrations for each of the moves. There is a timer on your screen and, as you work your way through the routine, you can mark a move as completed with a swipe.

 Who you choose to work out with can make a world of difference to your experience and your motivation to exercise. And who better to work out with than Davina McCall, one of the UK’s most popular TV presenters with a growing sideline in health and fitness?

Fitbit Premium is offering anyone with a subscription (or anyone who wants to take advantage of a 90-day trial) the chance to work out with McCall as part of her six-week Summer Sculpt Challenge, which aims to help you feel fit and healthy for summer.

The new videos began being released in mid-April and I tried them to help you decide if it’s worth your time.

What Is Davina McCall’s Fitbit Workout Program?

 The new program comes from Own Your Own Goals, McCall’s workout app. The plan asks you to perform three workouts a week, varying the type each time. In week one, the first class is lower and upper-body, class two is cardio and core, and class three is a full-body and flexibility session.

Most of the classes require some equipment such as an exercise mat or dumbbells. McCall uses both light and medium weight dumbbells, so an adjustable pair is best (and we have plenty of options in our round-up of the best dumbbells) if you’re working out at home. 

The classes are mostly around the 30-minute mark, and in the first two weeks none is longer than 34 minutes, including both a warm-up and warm-down. 

Here Are Three Things I Liked About The Summer Sculpt Challenge…

1. The Workouts Kept Me Motivated

 I’ve never been very good at home workouts, although I’ve tried a lot of workout videos. I struggle to find the motivation to keep going and if I think about how close I am to making a cup of tea, that’s usually the final nail in the coffin. However, the trainers in the Sculpt Challenge were more motivational than most. Perhaps it was having fitness icon McCall watching me as I sweated in my living room, but I didn’t feel the urge to stop and make a cuppa. The trainers are motivating and make the classes fun.

2. You Don’t Have To Look At Your Watch

 On the right-hand side of the video—either on your phone or your laptop, if you cast from your phone like I did—you will see the workout metrics your Fitbit is tracking. These include your heart rate, calories burned and Active Zone Minutes. 

3. The Workouts Scale To Your Level

 A bonus is that the workouts are accessible for all levels of fitness, with guided descriptions of movements from the trainers throughout the videos. The intensity of each exercise can be easily adapted too with heavier weights. 

…And Two Things I Didn’t

1. It’s Still Worth Manually Starting A Workout On Your Fitbit

Even though your stats are beamed onto the screen, the watch doesn’t start tracking an event you can review in the app afterward, so if you want a complete record of your effort, be sure to start it manually on your watch. On my Fitbit Versa 4 I chose the generic “workout” activity option.

2. It Was All Over Too Soon

 I felt the classes could have been longer. With the warm-up and warm-down accounting for around 10 minutes of the routine, you’re left with just around 20 minutes’ dedicated workout time. 

However, if you’re completely new to workout classes and routines such as these, the Summer Sculpt Challenge is a great way to add a new plan to your fitness regime. I followed the first two weeks alongside my normal marathon training programme and found it easy to add the extra training in, especially on days I couldn’t be bothered heading to the gym! 

How To Sign Up For Davina McCall’s Summer Sculpt Challenge

 The classes are available only as part of the Fitbit Premium subscription. This costs $9.99/£7.99 a month or $79.99/£79.99 a year if you pay up front. The Summer Sculpt Challenge isn’t the only workout plan available on the platform, however: You’ll find everything from yoga and Pilates to HIIT, targeted strength training and even dance training videos, while owners of some Fitbit trackers get extra metrics like a Daily Readiness Score.

Other Workout Apps And Home Workout Plans To Consider

 Of course, Fitbit Premium isn’t the only workout app and Coach has tried plenty. Our review of the Peloton App found it offered great value and plenty of variety. Chris Hemsworth’s Centr app is like having a personal trainer, meal planner and mindfulness coach—and is as intense as that sounds. Apple Fitness+ is great if you own an iPhone or Apple Watch. But, the best workout app, in our opinion, is Fiit, especially now it broadcasts dozens of free fitness classes every day.

Or, if you’re trying to reduce your screen time, follow this home workout plan or this home strength training plan instead.

I run almost every day and practice yoga two or three times a week. I’m also a fan of Jessica Skye, who leads yoga sessions on Apple Fitness+, and I’ve done many of her classes in the app—both while writing an Apple Fitness+ review and afterwards.

All of the above considered, the Yoga For Every Runner series of classes that launched on Fitness+ late in 2022 should be right up my alley. As it turns out, it isn’t, but I do think it’s a great place for any runner to start with yoga, especially if you’re currently deep into a marathon training program ahead of a spring event like the Boston Marathon or London Marathon.

The Yoga For Every Runner collection contains six 10-minute classes led by Skye and ultrarunning legend Scott Jurek, and it’s found in the Workout Programs section of the Apple Fitness+ app. 

Each class has a different focus, like your glutes or hips, and they are all designed to be accessible to runners, who often have tight muscles because of the demands of the sport—and runners are also notoriously bad at stretching.

The classes are engaging, with Skye providing handy bits of advice while Jurek chips in with largely unnecessary but often humorous comments, most of which are about how bad runners are at stretching. 

Although I’ve done yoga regularly for several years I am indeed still bad at it and have extremely tight hips, but the instructions are easy to follow with a focus on where you should feel a stretch rather than having to get deep into every position.

My main problem is that the classes are so short. Doing 10 minutes of yoga is great, but you lose a couple of those minutes to the intro and outro to each class, and end up with just a handful of effective stretches. Stacking the classes to do back to back seems like the answer, but it’s difficult because you then have to go through the intro each time rather than flowing through.

I understand that labeling the classes as for runners and involving Jurek might well bring more people new to yoga into the fold, but actually Skye’s regular yoga classes on Apple Fitness+ are a better option for anyone, including runners. All the poses are explained well there too, and pretty much any yoga session focused on the legs, hips and glutes is great for runners. Having done both Skye’s regular sessions and the dedicated series for runners, I’d go back to the regular ones.

However, if you are completely new to yoga and how it can help support the body during intense training periods, then the new series is a great place to start. You don’t need an Apple Watch to use the Fitness+ app these days either; as long as you have an iPhone or iPad you can download and use the app. If you’re new to Fitness+ you also get a month free (or three months if you just bought an Apple device), so during marathon training is the perfect time to try it in an attempt to ease your aching muscles. After the trial, Apple Fitness+ costs $9.99/£9.99 a month or $79.99/£79.99 annually.

Of course, Apple Fitness+ is not the only option for runners looking to add yoga or other flexibility work to their training. Fitness app Fiit also has some great (and longer) yoga for runners classes, as well as Pilates for runners which I have found works wonders for your core strength. Fiit also broadcasts a series of free workout classes every day, including mobility sessions. For a completely free on-demand option, I highly recommend this Ekhart Yoga yoga for runners video on YouTube, which I estimate I have done at least 300 times by this point. I’m not saying it’s the key reason behind my 2hr 28min marathon PR, but it certainly didn’t hurt.

Coach, of course, can provide options, too: this yoga for runners article contains five moves to help you recover after long runs, while this post-run yoga routine will stretch your aching muscles, and if you prefer follow-along videos we’ve curated the best YouTube videos for post-run stretches and yoga routines.

The fitness app Fiit has thrown open the doors of its virtual boutique gym, making all the group classes on its schedule free to all.

The classes available range from 10 to 60 minutes in duration and the schedule includes options suitable for people of all fitness levels. The classes cover a range of disciplines, including strength and yoga, as well as workouts designed to be done on a treadmill, exercise bike or rowing machine.

Group classes are scheduled around peak times: Monday to Friday that means four slots in the morning between 5.30am and 8am, three slots between 12.15pm and 1pm, and another four slots between 5.30pm and 8pm (all times GMT). On the weekend there’s a scheduled class on the hour between 8am and 11am.

Fiit selects which workouts go on the schedule, but unlimited subscribers are able to schedule a group class for themselves and their friends and make it public for all to join, so you may find there are more than 44 workouts to choose from.

If you have a cardio machine at home, this is a fantastic way to motivate yourself to jump on it more regularly, with no limit to the amount of people who can book themselves into each class on the schedule. While it’s not the same as training with other people in person, it’s the next best thing, and just the idea that others are tackling the same session as you at that moment may help provide the burst of energy you need to finish a tough workout.

Fiit members with a premium subscription have access to live leaderboards during the classes as a little extra incentive to push themselves, but otherwise free users get the same excellent experience that we loved when testing the app for our review of Fiit.

Yet more motivation to train comes through Fiit’s new Burn-to-earn feature, which encourages you to train each day by letting you spin for a random reward after a completed workout. If you’re a free user you can win discounts to use on a Fiit subscription or in the Fiit shop, while premium members can unlock discounts from Fiit’s partners or charity discounts.

A full Fiit membership costs $20/£20 a month, or $120/£120 for 12 months, and opens up every on-demand class in the app, plus the training plans and group classes, but there is the cheaper Only Plans membership, which costs $7.99/£7.99 a month and gives access to the on-demand training plans.

Garmin has rolled out its Clipboard coaching app across the world, having previously restricted access to the USA since its launch in 2020. The app allows coaches and athletes to connect and share detailed information about performance more easily.

The Clipboard app is free to use and available on both the App Store and Google Play. It will be a boon for athletes who work remotely with coaches, helping them receive feedback on their training, and for coaches to set them workouts to follow.

The service brings Garmin into line with other sports watch brands. Polar has offered this through its Polar Flow ecosystem for some time, and Coros provides it via Training Hub, which launched last year.

The third-party app TrainingPeaks is the most popular app for this kind of virtual coaching, and it is a more sophisticated option than Clipboard with many more metrics covered. However, TrainingPeaks is not free and the simplicity of Garmin Clipboard may appeal to runners in particular, especially because workouts will sync to compatible Garmin watches easily (though you can also set this up with TrainingPeaks, which works with a variety of platforms).

As well as being able to see all the stats from their athletes’ workouts on Clipboard, coaches can also use it to view the stress and sleep tracking collected by Garmin watches (as long as the athlete gives them access to this sensitive data). This will provide some extra insight and a more holistic view of the athlete, with dodgy sleep or high stress readings potential explanations for sub-par performances in workouts.

Both coaches and athletes can leave notes about individual workouts, and athletes can also log injuries and their recovery process. You can also see the weather forecast for upcoming workouts to let you get your wind- and rain-related excuses to your coach early.

Garmin Clipboard is a platform that’s primarily aimed at sports teams based at schools and colleges, but remote coaching became more popular during the COVID pandemic for obvious reasons – and Clipboard is another useful, free and relatively simple tool coaches can use to interact with their athletes.

If you’re not already familiar with Ultimate Performance, it’s a personal training company stacked with excellent PTs that have helped devise the fitness routines of thousands of people across the world, including celebrities like Top Gun: Maverick actor Glen Powell and Bridgerton’s Jonathan Bailey.

UP Fitness PTs have helped our readers on many occasions by providing expert commentary on advanced training techniques such as back-off sets and negative reps, and now UP has distilled its years of experience into two new apps that can help you transform your fitness regime. We can’t promise you’ll look like Jonathan Bailey after using the apps, but we also won’t rule out the possibility.

The two apps are called UP Transform and UP On Demand, and they work in tandem. UP Transform covers the nutritional side, creating an eating plan for you to follow and providing hundreds of recipes you can use to hit your targets. This healthy chicken fried-rice recipe UP Fitness shared with Coach is the type of meal to expect. The healthy eating app also tracks your calories and keeps you on track with weekly check-ins.

UP On Demand is the complementary workout app, covers the exercise side of your transformation, with 18-week progressive strength and conditioning programmes designed for men and women, and a huge library of on-demand workouts, including bodyweight sessions you can do anywhere without any equipment.

Along with workouts, UP On Demand also contains instructional videos to help you understand more about your training and nutrition, as well as guided meditation sessions.

You can get a 14-day free trial of UP Transform, after which it costs $9.99/£9.99 a month or $80.99/£79.99 a year. There is a seven-day trial of UP On Demand available, after which it costs $3.99/£2.99 a month or $39.99/£30 a year.

Download UP Transform on App Store and Google Play.

Download UP On Demand on App Store and Google Play.

Fiit is one of the most popular workout apps and with good reason: it offers a variety of engaging, interactive classes you can do anywhere you have a bit of space and a place to put your phone or tablet. The app started with strength and HIIT workouts, plus yoga and Pilates, but expanded into connected cardio machine workouts with air bike, treadmill and rowing classes in the past year.

The latest update on this front is more significant, however, because it means Fiit is muscling in on the likes of Peloton with connected exercise bike classes. You can follow Fiit’s new bike classes on any kind of exercise bike, but you can get a connected experience where performance data collected by the bike is shown on screen if you link the app up with a Keiser M3i spinning bike or the Concept2 BikeErg.

Concept2 is best known for making one of the leading rowing machines on the planet and its BikeErg is popular in CrossFit gyms. The workouts released by Fiit combine periods in the saddle with sections of dumbbell exercises off the bike, and this may offer a more home-friendly experience than the Fiit X Assault Fitness AssaultBike Pro offering, which our reviewer found great but a bit noisy for domestic use.

But it’s the sessions on the Keiser M3i bike that excite us. We tested this bike when reviewing the Digme At Home app, and it’s a robust, high-quality spinning bike. It might not have the built-in screen of a Peloton, but it rides just as well if not better, and the M3i is often found in gyms and studios. The five M3i sessions released today follow the format you’ll find in spinning classes, playing with resistance and interval duration in and out of the saddle. 

Those committed to recreating a group indoor cycling class at home will still get a better experience by investing in one of the best spin bikes from Peloton or Echelon, but if you want to include bike classes alongside a range of other sessions, Fiit is the best guided workout app we’ve tested.

It’s also cheaper than the likes of Peloton and Echelon. While Peloton’s app costs $44/£39 a month and Echelon’s $34.99/£29.99 a month, Fiit’s unlimited monthly membership is $19.99/£19.99 a month, or $119.99/£119.99 for 12 months if you pay up front. You’ll also need to have a bike to do the workouts on, but you can follow them on any bike at your gym or at home, even if you don’t have a Keiser M3i or Concept2 BikeErg for the connected experience. 

Apple launched its Fitness+ app in late 2020 and it immediately established itself as one of the best workout apps. Since then, Fitness+ has expanded with new types of classes and curated workout playlists designed to help you hit certain goals, and more classes are added every week.

The service is limited to Apple Watch owners for now (it will open up to iPhone owners sometime in autumn 2022) but that’s still a substantial chunk of people, and if you are on team Apple there are blindingly obvious benefits of using Fitness+ ahead of other apps. It’s cheaper than rivals like Fiit and Centr, and the integration between the watch and Fitness+ (as well as your iPhone, iPad and Apple TV if you own them too) is superb.

Apple Fitness+: Price And Availability

An Apple Fitness+ subscription costs $9.99/£9.99 a month or $79.99/£79.99 a year. There is a one-month free trial available to all, and you get three months free when you buy an Apple Watch. Fitness+ launched in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand, and in late 2021 it expanded to Austria, Brazil, Colombia, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Switzerland and the UAE. The service is currently accessible to Apple Watch owners, but is due to become available to iPhone users later this year.

How I Tested Apple Fitness+

When Apple Fitness+ launched I used it for several workouts a week to try a range of classes, including HIIT, core, yoga, bike and treadmill sessions. Since that initial period I have mostly used the app for yoga classes once or twice a week.

The Experience

The Apple Watch is the key to the service, and once you have a subscription you can even use Fitness+ on other people’s Apple devices. Workouts start, pause and end automatically on the watch when you’re operating the app on those other devices, and the stats recorded by the watch (like calories and heart rate) are displayed on screen, including the progress towards your activity rings goals.

The screen also displays a Burn Bar, which uses calories burned – adjusted for your weight – to rank you among people who have taken the class already. During the workout the Burn Bar ranking that appears is based on a rolling two-minute average of your calorie expenditure, whereas at the end it gives you an average of your overall effort that determines your placement.

What’s displayed on screen also reacts to what’s happening in the workout in a clever way that I’ve not seen on other fitness apps. When you go into an interval during a spinning workout, for example, a timer for that specific interval automatically appears. And when the trainer mentions your heart or activity rings the screen will display more detail on those, such as your maximum heart rate for the workout or total calories burned that day.

You can choose to remove these stats and just focus on the workout. There’s also the option to toggle the timer to show either time elapsed or time remaining.

The app breaks up the workouts into categories like HIIT, yoga, core, strength, dance and sessions to do on cardio machines. The latter includes treadmill, cycling and rowing sessions, which you can do on any brand’s machine, although you lose the connectivity you’ll find on something like a Peloton bike, where the bike links to the app to show detailed stats like power and cadence.

You can also find and choose classes by length (there are options lasting five, 10, 20, 30 and 45 minutes), by trainer or by music. Surprisingly, it’s a little basic compared with the experience on rival apps, and I’d like the option to filter strength workouts by body part, since the names of the classes don’t reveal much. They all follow the same format of X type of class with Y trainer – “rowing with Anja”, for example. This at least makes it easy to stick with your favourite trainer if that’s what you want.

The app puts the trainers front and centre. They seem an engaging bunch – some are a little much for my tastes, but they are all motivating and offer useful instructions. During the core and yoga classes, I picked up handy tips for moves I’ve been doing for a long time.

There are always at least a couple of other trainers taking part in each class, which improves the experience. I’ve always found that on-demand video classes with just an instructor fail to recreate the atmosphere of a studio. While Fitness+ still doesn’t match that atmosphere, it gets closer than most, thanks to giving the instructor others to interact with.

See related 

• Apple Watch Series 6 Review: Still The Best Smartwatch
• The Best Apple Watch Fitness Apps
• The Best Health And Fitness Apps

Because Fitness+ puts a lot of focus on beginners, it has a wealth of short workouts and a dedicated “workouts to get you started” section. This is great, but I’d like to see more longer options as well. Once you reach even an intermediate level of fitness, a 10-minute workout doesn’t do much for you. You can do several in a row, of course, but it’s not the same as one longer class – you’ll be doing warm-ups and warm-downs each time, breaking your rhythm.

The core and yoga sessions I tried were impressive, though, and the camera work in the yoga class was particularly effective and helped me follow the instructor’s poses. The spinning and treadmill workouts also came close to the experience you get from a connected bike or treadmill from Peloton or Echelon. You don’t get the detailed instructions about the exact resistance, power or cadence goals, but for the most part spinning is pretty simple – increase the resistance and push harder when told to, then relax.

Is Apple Fitness+ Worth It?

The price of entry to Fitness+ is an Apple Watch or iPhone. However, Fitness+ seriously enhances the experience and I’m sure it will persuade more people to buy one, especially since you get three months of Fitness+ free with a new watch.

While it may lack some of the polish of an app like Fiit, which has had longer to refine features like filtering and finding classes, Fitness+ is an undeniably excellent service with seamless connectivity to Apple devices. It’s especially good for fitness beginners, and will only get better with more classes – more arrive every week.

If you have an Apple Watch it’s well worth trying, and if you bought an Apple Watch primarily for fitness tracking, adding the Fitness+ service is certainly worthwhile, even if it’s just for occasional use alongside your normal exercise routine.

Buy from Apple | £9.99 a month (one-month free trial available)

Anyone who has run a marathon will know that things don’t always go to plan, especially trying to run at a steady, consistent pace.

That makes it tough for on-course spectators to know when the runners they want to support will be passing them. There’s a risk that they’ll miss them entirely, especially when dealing with the crowds at the London Marathon.

Fortunately, the London Marathon app, which is now available for the 2024 event, makes it easy to track where the runner, or runners, you’ve turned out to support are on the course. It can also help people watching from afar who want to see if a runner is in with a chance of reaching a time goal. The app predicts a runner’s finish time so you can be ready to watch them cross the finish line on BBC iPlayer, or using the red button.

Here’s everything you need to know to track a runner using the London Marathon app.

More Reasons To Download The London Marathon App

Runners should also ensure they download the app, because it provides all the key logistical information needed to get to the London Marathon Expo as well as the QR code you need to collect your bib at the Expo.

The app also suggests trains to take for individual arrival times on race day, although we also recommend checking our London Marathon travel guide nearer the time. The app is also the fastest way to check your official time after you’ve finished the race.

More Helpful Information

• The Best Places For Spectators To Watch The London Marathon
• The Runner’s Guide To The London Marathon Route

Unless you really know what you’re doing, it can be easy to waste time when working out.

You can solve this problem with a personal trainer, or do it yourself with one of our workouts or training plans. Splitting the difference between these approaches are workout apps, which offer a wide range of (mostly) paid-for content to help you get more out of your exercise. 

Competition between the best workout apps became particularly fierce when the pandemic caused an explosion of interest. This rapidly cooled, but it does mean there are a lot of effective and polished services to choose from, and they all offer free trials so you can try before you commit. Speaking of commitment, you can often bring the monthly fee down by paying up front for three months or a year.   

If your budget doesn’t stretch beyond zero, you’ll be pleased to know there are two free workout apps we rate highly and would deserve a place on this list even if they did require a monthly fee.

The Best Workout Apps

Our favourite home workout app has a slick feel to it, with a wide range of on-demand and live workouts that fit into three areas: strength, cardio and rebalance, the latter including things like stretching and yoga classes. The app is well laid out so it’s easy to find workouts that suit your goals and fitness level, and the instructors are uniformly excellent, providing clear advice and motivation without going overboard.

The app is constantly being updated with new types of workouts as well, and there are training plans and challenges if you’re looking for a long-term fitness routine rather than a one-off session. 

While there’s plenty for beginners, Fiit also serves a core group of subscribers who want ever tougher strength sessions. Case in point is the Boss Level workout, which Fiit calls the hardest home workout in the world.

The majority of classes don’t require any equipment, but if you’re working out to build muscle a pair of dumbbells are recommended and Fiit has close to 300 sessions using that free weight. If you buy a Fiit chest strap (£45), which counts your reps of certain exercises, your effort can be benchmarked against other users and you can compete on leaderboards in live classes.

Fiit has also launched a partnership with cardio machine manufacturer AssaultFitness for a series of connected workouts for its air bikes and self-powered treadmills. If you own either of these, or your gym has these models, a subscription is a no-brainer.

Read more in our Fiit app review

You don’t have to spend any money to get good guided workouts on your phone. The Nike+ Training Club apps offer more than 200 workouts free, covering a range of activities including mobility work and yoga alongside pure strength sessions. 

If you’re in need of extra motivation then you can tune in to a workout hosted by your favourite Nike ambassador, with training sessions inspired by the likes of Serena Williams and Rory McIlroy on the app. The app also recommends workouts each day based on your past sessions, and has full training plans tailored to a variety of goals.

We all start from different points and if the beginner sessions in other workout apps feel out of reach, EXi will be able to suggest an appropriate level of exercise. It’s designed for people who are sedentary, as well as those at risk of developing or already have a chronic disease, and aims to build up activity levels slowly and safely, as we discovered when we spoke to chartered physiotherapist Carron Manning, co-founder and clinical director of the app, about how to start exercising safely. 

That means it suggests only low- and medium-intensity exercise if, say, you tell the app you have cardiovascular disease. The app also adjusts your plan using your feedback on how hard a workout was, and can make use of GPS and heart rate data from a number of wearables and apps. If you own an Apple Watch it can also buzz to remind you to work in the right heart rate zone, so you don’t push too hard by accident.

This is the app that helps you live like Chris Hemsworth, with workouts from his trainers and recipes from his chef, along with guided meditation and mindfulness sessions. As you might expect, living like a Hemsworth is pretty full on, and it’s both the key strength and main weakness of Centr that it requires a lot of work from you. That includes several workouts a week, mindfulness sessions and a comprehensive meal plan with ingredient lists that are rarely cheap and often hard to find in smaller supermarkets.

There are plenty of bodyweight workouts, but Centr is best followed with access to a gym. Along with follow-along videos, there’s the option of self-guided workouts where you scroll through images and clips at your own pace making them a bit easier to follow in a gym. For a taster, try these sessions shared exclusively with Coach: a bodyweight workout from the Unleashed plan and MMA workout from Jorge Blanco, one of the Centr trainers and also a coach of fighters like Georges St-Pierre. Blanco is an indication of the quality of trainer the Hemsworth name attracts. 

If you can handle everything it throws at you, Centr is a fantastic all-round fitness app that will help you reshape your lifestyle to be healthier from every angle. You can try the app free for seven days and that’s well worth doing before committing to a longer paid contract.

Read more in our Centr app review

Peloton is best known for its range of connected cardio machines, like the Peloton Bike and Peloton Tread. However, the app also works as a standalone product and it offers good value for money, unlike the cardio machines since the recent price hike.

There are 11 types of class in the app and many don’t require any equipment at all, like the yoga and strength sessions. You can also use the cycling and running classes with any exercise bike or treadmill (you just won’t have your stats shown on screen), and there are also audio-only versions of the runs and walks so you can do them outside.

Along with individual classes, you can sign up for training programmes within the app to add more structure to your training, or pick and choose each and every time you log in. The app has enough variety that you’ll never have to do the same session twice.

Read more in our Peloton app review

There’s a significant barrier to entry with the Fitness+ app, which is that you need an Apple Watch to use it (at least until autumn when it becomes accessible to iPhone users). If you have the watch, however, it’s the best workout app you can get, with a wide variety of classes led by trainers who manage to motivate you without being annoying. You also get a three-month free trial when you buy an Apple Watch, so it’s certainly worth giving Fitness+ a whirl.

The app integrates seamlessly with the Apple Watch, so the stats measured by the watch are shown on screen during your workouts. The classes include sessions for cardio machines so you can use Fitness+ with a treadmill, bike or rower at your gym, using an iPhone or iPad as a display, and audio-only guided walks and runs to do outside.

Classes are added every week and the app will suggest new ones that should appeal to you based on your past workouts, and there are curated workout playlists that help you hit a certain goal.

Read more in our Apple Fitness+ review

You’ll find Les Mills group workouts in gyms all over the world. The Bodypump barbell class is an intense session with lots of reps done at pace – and it’s indicative of the Les Mills approach. Going straight into a Les Mills class can feel like being thrown in at the deep end so when we tried the app we found the introductory classes which walk you through the fundamental movements really valuable. Even with those primers, however, we had to keep reminding ourselves to prioritise form over keeping up with the instructors.

You don’t have to buy the (rather expensive) Les Mills barbell to make the most of this workout app though. There are plenty of high-energy cardio series, rounded out with meditation and yoga sessions, as well as the recent addition of spin classes. It’s great for bodyweight sessions, but if you want to graduate to working with weights other apps may be better. While you can use whatever you have to hand – we subbed in a kettlebell in place of one weight plate – the workouts are designed around Les Mills’ bespoke equipment so we had to adapt workouts on the fly, which is far from ideal.

The workouts are fun, though, with plenty to choose from, and there’s no doubt you’ll burn calories, improve your cardio fitness and build lean muscle if you take to it. We also liked that the service isn’t limited to smartphones or tablets, with a browser log-in and compatibility with a multitude of smart TVs and streaming devices.

This personal trainer app helps you to set up a six- to 12-week training plan to suit your personal goals, whether you’re looking to lose weight, build muscle or simply get fitter, and then supports you through the plan by providing advice on your nutrition and mindset coaching. 

The coaching is impressively adaptable within your training plan – the app can adjust your workout to suit the space and equipment you have available at any given time. As well as gym workouts and running sessions, there are always bodyweight workouts available for those who don’t have access to weights.

Undoubtedly you’ll get fitter if you follow the workouts, but we found the number of reps in a set to be exceptionally high. Sometimes it’s worth slogging your way through all those burpees, but at times it’s wiser to insert your own rest periods to make sure your form doesn’t suffer and you don’t strain your neck from all those forced sit-up reps. To see what we mean, give these Freeletics workouts a go.

This excellent app splits its bodyweight workouts into four categories – strength, cardio, yoga and stretching. Once you’ve selected from that quartet, you pick the part of the body you want to focus on or opt for a full-body workout, and set how long you want to exercise for, and Sworkit will then guide you through a variety of exercises in a circuit.

You can also follow a six-week training plan through the app, and once you become more experienced you can build your own workouts using the exercise library.

Guided workouts are a great way for most people to get started in the gym, but most require you to have your phone or tablet with you, which is not always convenient in a gym. Most of Aaptiv’s guided workouts, however, are audio coached so you don’t have to keep stopping to unlock your device to remind yourself what’s next. 

Aaptiv also covers all kinds of training: cardio sessions on indoor machines or outside, strength training, HIIT, meditation – they’re all there. The workouts are also set to music, and you can search for workouts by genre so you won’t get stuck with tunes you can’t bear to listen to. You can also search by workout type, trainer and intensity level, allowing you to get exactly what you want from your audio coaching.

This app will take all the thought out of your weights room routine. It tells you what exercises to do, with what weight, the sets and reps, and how long to rest between sets, and it also accounts for and tracks your progression over time to ensure you’re always challenging yourself. The workout plan involves three 45-minute workouts a week, and a nice motivational trick is the app’s prediction of the weight you’ll be lifting with each exercise after 12 weeks.

StrongLifts 5x5 is not as comprehensive in its approach as other fitness apps, instead focusing on nailing its niche – but it does a great job of that. The design is also easy to use, so you can log your workouts quickly and move on with your day.

A welcome attempt to bring some humour into the world of workouts. CARROT Fit talks you through seven-minute workouts that use conventional bodyweight exercises renamed as dragon mating dances, celebrity face punches or something equally silly. The app’s AI will also insult you – quite a lot. 

It’s not for everyone, and if you’re already in good shape the workouts won’t challenge you very much, but if you’ve had no success starting a fitness kick with more po-faced apps it’ll cost you less than a fiver to try something very different.

Peloton has established itself as a leader in the connected bike sector and, not surprisingly, it’s attempting to expand on that success by widening its appeal. It has launched a Peloton-branded heart rate band and a range of exercise apparel, and earlier this year it announced a Peloton rowing machine. Now it’s taken one of the best aspects of its connected products, the app, and made it available as a standalone product so users can get the benefits even without one of its (expensive) bits of home training hardware. 

So how does it stack up against the best workout apps? And can its specialist classes compete with the likes of the best yoga apps? We put it to the test to find out.  

Peloton App: Price And Availability

The Peloton app costs $12.99 a month in the US and £12.99 a month in the UK on a rolling contract, with a 30-day free trial so you can try before you buy. This will give you a good feel for the type, style and variation of the classes and whether it will fit into your routine.

Design And Set-Up

There are 11 types of classes to choose from, including strength, yoga and cycling. Many workouts, including yoga and cardio, don’t require any equipment, other than space to move and an exercise mat for cushioning or to prevent slipping. Some yoga workouts suggest yoga blocks or a yoga blanket, to make poses either more accessible or more challenging, but alternative options are provided if you don’t have these.

For some strength workouts you’ll need dumbbells – described as light, medium or heavy – so you can choose a weight that will suit you. Other strength options are bodyweight or core focused, so you won’t need additional equipment.

Cycling workouts require an exercise bike, but it doesn’t have to be a Peloton. The running and walking video categories are designed for treadmills, but if you don’t have these, the audio format of the outdoor category is designed to be followed on headphones while you exercise.

How I Tested It

I tested the app for a month, averaging four exercise sessions a week and taking part in a variety of classes including strength, yoga, meditation, cardio, stretching, cycling and outdoor.

As someone who struggles with consistency and can easily get bored if I don’t switch up my routine, I was particularly looking forward to trying Peloton’s range of workouts. Previously, I’ve reviewed Les Mills On Demand, Centr, P.Volve, Own Your Goals Davina, Fitness Blender and Echelon. I also have access to the David Lloyd @Home app as part of my gym membership, and regularly follow Yoga with Adriene on YouTube, so I was excited to see how the Peloton app would measure up in comparison.

The Experience

There’s a dizzying array of workouts to choose from. Helpfully, Peloton has split them into categories (strength, yoga, meditation, cardio, stretching, cycling, outdoor, running, walking, tread bootcamp, bike bootcamp) and programs, such as Beginner Strength (42 classes over six weeks) or Path to Inversion (12 classes over two weeks), which takes all the guesswork out of putting together your own plan.

You can see live and upcoming classes on the homepage, as well as recently added and featured on-demand options. Within each category, you can filter by length, instructor, class type, body activity, music, difficulty and language, so it’s easy to find a workout that fits your requirements and preferences.

Workout durations fall anywhere between five minutes and an hour, so you’ll find something no matter how busy you are. Features such as Schedule and Stack make it easy to plan ahead. The Stack tool allows you to create a queue for workouts, so you can tailor your session to include different components. For example, you could cue up a warm-up class, a main workout, and a stretch or meditation session, or choose several shorter workouts targeting different body parts (eg upper-body strength and legs) to customise to your goals.

If you’re like me and never want to do the same workout twice, the variety is a bonus. The app keeps track of which workouts you’ve completed, so you can avoid repetition if you get bored easily or quickly find your favourites if you’d prefer to master a particular workout.

The content is well-produced and the trainers are clear, engaging and motivating. There’s often little to no preamble before the workouts and there is also a button to skip even the briefest of intros if you’re short of time. I appreciated this when using the Stack feature to mix and match sessions, when lengthy interruptions would have been annoying.

The outdoor classes are audio-only and designed to be listened to on headphones while you exercise. Personally, I didn’t enjoy these as much because I like to blast the same music every time I run so I found the chatter distracting. However, I can see the motivational appeal of having a trainer put you through your paces if you struggle to structure your runs.

One thing to bear in mind: while you can preload classes to minimise buffering time, you can’t download classes for offline use, so you’ll still require an internet connection to use the app.

There’s a community feel to Peloton, with regular challenges that you can join. The main challenge is called The Annual and tracks the total minutes you spend on the app, rewarding you with a badge at the end of the year. Monthly challenges encourage you to work towards shorter goals, such as exercising 10 days in a calendar month, while Achievement badges are earned on your profile for milestones such as 10 strength workouts or three-week streaks.

Is The Peloton App Worth It?

Overall, I was impressed with the Peloton app. Compared with in-person classes or gym memberships, it’s great value at $12.99/£12.99 a month, and the 30-day free trial period means you can give it a go without parting with a penny.

The trainers are consistently clear and engaging, the workouts are varied and of a high quality, and features such as Stack and Schedule make it easy to plan ahead and get the most out of the app. Of course, you’ll still need to set aside the time for your sessions and drum up the motivation to get on the mat, on the bike or out of the door, but the app does make exercising as straightforward and appealing as possible. 

With prices of essentials going up, now’s a great time to look at your spending to see if you can make savings. If you've been paying double figures for an app to guide your exercise it may be one of the first things to go, But we’re happy to report that Fiit, one of the best workout apps, has today announced a more affordable subscription option. 

Fiit’s Only plan offers 25 training plans, collecting existing workouts to help you develop everything from your general fitness and strength to movement or breathing.

The cut-down membership is available for $7.99 a month in the US and £7.99 a month in the UK, compared with the rolling $20/£20 a month unlimited subscription or $119.99/£119.99 a year. An unlimited subscription unlocks more than 1,000 on-demand workouts, as well as live classes and associated features that allow you to compete on leaderboards with other class members. The competitive element stood out for us in our Fiit review but the structured nature of a training plan, and an end in sight, should help keep motivation high. 

The plan 14 Days Of Fiit is the ideal introduction because it’s a two-week plan that can be tailored to suit beginners. It incorporates three to four workouts a week (depending on the experience level you select) which will be 20 or 40 minutes long and include a mix of three “studios” Fiit offers – cardio, strength and rebalance.

For more experienced exercisers who are just looking to build muscle, there are three push-pull plans to work through, as well as a six-week rep-focused Real Strength plan. Most of Fiit’s strength workouts use dumbbells, so if you’ve had a pair gathering dust since you made a panicked pandemic purchase, this is a good opportunity to finally get your money’s worth. Alternatively, buy some from the Fiit Shop or follow our recommendations of the best dumbbells.

There are also treadmill and assault bike plans included, although they’re better suited to those with a gym membership – we can’t imagine many people have one of those lying about the house.

If you’re new to Fiit, you can also start a seven-day trial to see if it’s for you before spending the money. 

Strava has long been one of the best fitness apps, and a major reason for that is the way it uses the data it gets from its users.

By combining the routes of all the activities people log on the platform, Strava creates a heatmap highlighting the most popular stretches for people to run and cycle. And it’s done on a scale no other app can match – more than seven billion activities have been uploaded to Strava since 2009.

Strava uses this information to automatically create popular routes that its users can then follow when in an unfamiliar place. It makes for an incredibly effective running route planner and one of the main reasons we think having a Strava subscription is worthwhile.

This routing application is now being improved for off-road runners and cyclists. In an update to the app that launches today (Wednesday 8th June), the new Trail Routes is the stand-out feature. 

Four new activity modes are being added to Strava – Trail Run, Gravel Ride, Mountain Bike, and e-Mountain Bike – and the new routes will cater to them. Strava says the update is in response to a rise in the popularity of off-road activities in the app.

“We have been seeing off-the-charts growth of trail sports over the past several years, outpacing even the growth of road running and riding,” says Michael Horvath, CEO and co-founder of Strava. 

You’ll be able to adjust your route preference to take into account distance and elevation, and once you have a route planned you’ll get extra info like a difficulty rating and how long it might take to complete it, all based on historical data from people who have tackled the route. You’ll even be able to tell how crowded the route might be based on past user data – ideal for those who like to hit the trails to get away from the world.

The routes will be available only to Strava subscribers, who will also be able to download them so you can access them when your exploring takes you beyond the realms of cellular coverage.

Another new feature in the update is the ability to use a 3D map for your activity uploads. Again, this is available only to Strava subscribers, but the maps will show in everyone’s feed once you upload it, so you can show off the towering climbs and steep descents of your runs and rides in style.

If you’ve yet to venture off the paved path, our guide to how to start trail running will get you ready to go off-road. 

Wahoo has announced the acquisition of the virtual training app RGT cycling, which will be rebranded as Wahoo RGT and bundled with Wahoo’s SYSTM training app under one subscription, Wahoo X. 

You may better know Wahoo as the manufacturer of some of the best turbo trainers, best exercise bikes, best heart rate monitors, best bike computers… you get the idea.

The move means that Wahoo can offer its subscribers both platforms in what will make an attractive alternative to virtual training giant Zwift. The Wahoo X subscription costs $14.99 a month (around £12) or $129 a year (around £102). Zwift costs $14.99 or £12.99 a month.

Wahoo RGT users are able to ride on realistic-looking virtual roads, with routes like the Mont Ventoux climb and the World Championship course in Leuven, as well as uploading their own routes to be created via the Magic Roads feature. 

The Magic Roads feature means you can practice the route of your next race, or upload your favourite training ride so you can tackle it indoors when the weather outside is inclement. The app also offers social rides and races.

Realism is a distinguishing feature of Wahoo RGT compared with Zwift, which offers a more “gamified” experience in its colourful virtual worlds. Wahoo RGT focuses on producing a realistic experience, in both the roads you ride on and the physics of cycling – so you don’t fly around hairpin turns without having to slow down and you have to ride around other cyclists to overtake, rather than passing straight through them.

Wahoo’s existing SYSTM app offers a more holistic approach to your cycling and multisport training, backing up personalised cycling workouts with yoga, strength sessions and mental training (the latter a 10-week program covering elite strategies like positive self-talk). The SYSTM app also includes The Sufferfest training platform, which Wahoo acquired in 2019.

Current Wahoo SYSTEM or RGT Cycling users will be moved to a Wahoo X subscription with no extra charge. The Wahoo SYSTM and Wahoo RGT apps are available for iOS, Android, macOS and Windows. Those keen to test out the platform can try it through a 14-day free trial, and you can learn more about the Wahoo X subscription on the Wahoo website.

• Familiarize yourself with indoor cycling using our beginners guide to turbo training.
• Find out why the latest version of the pioneering turbo trainer still leads the way with our Wahoo Kickr V5 review.
• Read our Wahoo Kickr Bike review to discover why we called it the stationary bike with the most realistic indoor ride.

Fiit, one of the very best workout apps, has continued its move into connected cardio with the release of 26 treadmill sessions to its app. 

If you complete the workouts using an Assault Fitness AssaultRunner self-powered treadmill you can sync the app to record your average speed and calories burned on the tread. Add in a Fiit chest strap for heart rate readings and rep counting, and your efforts will be added to a leaderboard for certain workouts.

The workouts are either 25 or 40 minutes in length and, like the connected air bike workouts that launched earlier this year, are divided into three categories: sprint, metcon and endure. As well as time on the treadmill, mat work with weights features in every workout.

We visited Fiit’s east London studios to try a pre-release session and, as we’ve come to expect, the class was no joke. While there’s plenty in the app for the novice or those who prefer a more sedate workout, Fiit has been enlarging its offering to functional fitness devotees who want to be pushed – hence the Boss Level workouts which debuted last year.

After a warm-up, the first section cycled through intervals of varying lengths, always working at 70% pace on the treadmill. The second section moved off the treadmill and into an EMOM format, alternating between a sequence of goblet squats, snatches and mountain climbers one minute, and American dumbbell swings and high jump double taps the next. 

The session finished with a 10-minute competition phase, in which the chest strap counted reps of a sumo deadlift high pull and devil’s press, bookended by max cal efforts on the treadmill. Yes, we were utterly ruined afterwards, but it’s great to be pushed out of your comfort zone once in a while and we’ve learned the hard way to focus on recovery after a Fiit session.

Speaking of recovery, the Tread section launches with recovery sessions and adds standalone five- to 10-minute challenges when you fancy taking a pop at climbing the leaderboard.

It’s a valuable addition to the app and will be useful to any gym-goer or treadmill owner. The inclusion of strength work in every session offers something notably different from running in Zwift’s virtual worlds, as well as Peloton and Echelon’s programming which offer treadmill and strength classes, but not a mix of both. Fiit says it will add treadmill-only sessions soon, too.

If you want to try the workouts as Fiit intended, you can buy an AssaultRunner Pro from FIIT in the UK and direct from AssaultFitness in the US – it costs a pretty penny, though (£3,499.99/$2,999).

Join FIIT | £20 a month, £120 a year, 14-day free trial available

• To learn more about the digital service, read our review of the Fiit app.
• If you’re considering adding a treadmill to your home set-up, browse our pick of the best treadmills.
• Need a cardio session you can use today? You’ll find one with our suggestions for treadmill workouts. 
• To make running in the gym part of your routine, give this treadmill workout plan a go.

Not so long ago, indoor cycling on a turbo trainer was the preserve of masochists. There were gains to be made and maintained over winter, but the trade-off was staring at the wall of a spare bedroom or garage for hours on end. No doubt about it, training on a turbo trainer used to take a certain level of commitment.

That was until the public release of Zwift in 2015. The virtual training platform is a collection of worlds that you can explore by bike (or foot if using Zwift Run) ridden by an avatar. The pedalling you do on your turbo trainer IRL powers the legs of the virtual you and, depending on your turbo trainer set-up, the resistance you come up against will change with your avatar’s surroundings, requiring real-world efforts to get up and over virtual mountains.

Throw in workouts, training plans, group rides and races, and it’s easy to see why Zwift has transformed turbo training, providing an immersive and enjoyable experience that is (whisper it) sometimes more fun than actually going out on your bike.

The gamification and social aspects also makes it an engaging way for people who aren’t road bike enthusiasts to get fit, as a Coach writer discovered when they reviewed Zwift. This guide is designed to help those people, with a run-down of the equipment you need and how to get started, and an overview of how you can spend your time in Zwift.  

What You Need To Zwift

There are a few things you’ll need before you can get Zwifting: a turbo trainer and a speed sensor (or a smart turbo trainer which contains a speed sensor), a bike, and a smart device to use the Zwift app on.

To do this on a budget, all you need to get started on your Zwift journey is an entry-level wheel-on turbo trainer (like the Halfords turbo, £69), a bike, a smartphone, and a basic sensor for your rear wheel (Wahoo’s RPM Speed Sensor is one of the cheapest at £29.99).

However, we think it’s well worth buying a direct drive turbo trainer, which takes the place of your rear wheel on your bike, to get an extra level of immersion in the virtual world. The majority of newer models are compatible with most road, hybrid or mountain bikes, so you shouldn’t need to shell out for a new bike, either. While they are a significant investment – we’re talking at least £500 – they tend to hold their value quite well, in case you decide to sell it at a later date.

Bike and turbo sorted, it’s time to pair it with the Zwift app. It can be downloaded on most mainstream operating systems (iOS, Android, PC, Mac and Apple TV), although we’d recommend using a screen no smaller than a laptop so you can see the various widgets and information clearly.

From here, the variety of accessories is broad. Our top three would be a turbo trainer mat to dampen the noise and catch sweat, a heart rate monitor to add an essential data field to your workouts, and a fan because cycling indoors gets surprisingly hot, which can have a surprisingly large negative impact on your workout.

How To Start Cycling In Zwift

Open the Zwift app and create an account or log in, then pair your turbo trainer or speed sensor with Zwift and any other sensors (heart rate, cadence, controllable resistance) you plan on using.

You’ll then arrive at the Zwift dashboard. At the top, you’ll see you have a choice of routes and “worlds” (there are nine on constant rotation, but the home world of Watopia will always be available). At this point, you can choose to complete a free ride or workout, or sign up for a training plan. You can also join another Zwifter (handy if you want to train virtually with a friend) or sign up for an event (on which more below).

After clicking the big orange “Ride” button, you’re transported to your chosen world and left to your own devices. To end your session, simply stop pedalling, click the “Menu” pop-up in the bottom left corner and navigate your way from there.

How To Join Group Rides And Races

Once you’ve got to grips with riding on Zwift, you might find you want to recreate some of the social aspects of cycling in group rides. The global user base of Zwift means that official Zwift-organised and community-led group rides take place round the clock. 

The best way to find and join one is by using the Zwift Companion app (available on iOS and Android). You can filter rides by type (whether that’s a group ride, workout, race, fondo or time trial) and ability (A rides are for the strongest riders, while D rides are suitable for those just getting started). Once you sign up for one, your avatar will automatically be taken to a virtual start pen before it sets off.

A virtual race is an experience like no other and will test your fitness to the max. It’s an engaging and exciting way to train, providing the competitive carrot that can sometimes be lacking from a bog-standard workout.

How Much Does It Cost To Use Zwift?

A Zwift membership costs £12.99 per month and gives you access to all the worlds, training plans, races and group rides. A seven-day free trial is available for those new to the training platform. If you don’t sign up, you can still cycle 25km a month on the platform without paying.

Towards the end of the last lockdown I finally reached peak belly. Months of being cooped up inside, treating myself to Deliveroo lunches, daily pasta dinners and a beer or four meant that the sofa creaked dangerously every time I sat down.

Something had to be done. The problem was, I’d never had much success with diets. I’d tried several times ever since the weight began to stay on, but no weight loss ever stuck. I got bored of monotonous meals or the fiddly calorie maths that made every plate a chore. Mostly, I could never bring myself to just eat less.

So when Coach asked me to try the WW app, I didn’t really think it would work because I am a bad dieter. However, I’m happy to say WW worked for me. It really did. In four months I’ve lost more weight than I managed in 20 years. It is, as they say, the bomb.

A 10kg bomb in fact. Ten kilos sort of sounds like a lot. It feels like a lot when I look at my missing belly, but I hadn’t really realised how much it really is until my mum bought a 3.5kg salmon for dinner. It was a mighty fish, far too big to fit in the oven. It fed 10 of us, easily. Later, as I ate my moderate helping, accompanied by a towering portion of salad, I reflected that, until recently, I had been walking around with three of these monster fish strapped to my torso.

So why did it work so well? I’ve got three big reasons.

The biggest is that the WW app is easy to use. When you sign up, you answer 20 questions about what you like to eat, how much weight you want to lose, and your age and height. I was put on one of three ready-made plans, but from 2022 each person’s plan is unique.

My plan said that I could eat as many veggies and as much fruit as I liked, and had to fit everything else into a daily points budget. Logging meals was easy, especially as I quickly realised that if I ate only salad I didn’t even need to log anything. The interface was quick and intuitive, and the app worked really well.

The second reason is that diet worked even better. I didn’t feel hungry because, nudged by what I could eat without a cost, I had completely changed my eating habits. I’d dropped sandwiches, pasta and rice completely. Sauerkraut, fresh veg and lentils were on the plate instead. With the help of the app, I did this almost without thinking about it and four months on, I’m still eating differently from before.

The final reason why I’ve found the diet so easy to keep up is the points system itself. It is wonderfully easy to understand. I was allowed 40 points a day. Some foods are horribly expensive: a pint of beer, for example, is seven points. Some foods are gloriously cheap: a BACON RASHER is only one point. Rather than counting calories, having this simple standard made it easy to see what habits needed to change and how much is healthy to eat in a day. My appetite has shrunk to match my portion sizes.

See related 

• 13 Expert Weight-Loss Tips
• Lose Weight With This Four-Week Meal Plan For Men
• Lose Weight With This Four-Week Meal Plan For Women
• The Best Weight-Loss Apps

As well as dieting help, the WW app offers many other features. These range from the slightly annoying (the adverts for WW products) to the useful (being encouraged to weigh in once a week rather than daily). There’s lots more besides: recipes, exercise videos, support groups, and advice from coaches and other people using WW.

These weren’t for me. Partly this is because I try to limit the time I spend on my phone, and partly because I was doing so well on the diet solo I didn’t feel I needed that extra push.

I could see how useful that support could be. A few months ago, another friend, noticing my success with WW, decided to join up himself. We have been texting each other recipes, and a dash of healthy competition has made the experience more enjoyable. If you look for it, you can find that kind of comradeship in the app too.

One thing I haven’t mentioned is price. There are options for every budget, including various levels of support. You may or may not find that extra help useful – but I found that the core weight loss app was enough for me. If you sign up for a six-month contract, the first three months are free, bringing the cost to just over £50 in total.

If you want to lose weight, I hope you do. Without doubt, this is the best diet I’ve ever been on. It’s easy to use and effective. I feel lighter and happier, and I’m eating better. My kids are eating better too. My long-suffering sofa is grateful.

Should I ever need to go on another diet, I would gladly pay the subscription (which I didn’t have to this time) to do it again.

But hopefully, I won’t have to. WW has changed how I eat – and I don’t see myself going back to the bad old ways ever again.

Join the WW digital program | £14.95 a month | Download the WW app from App Store or Google Play

WW’s latest programme is called PersonalPoints, where no two plans are alike. To find out more, visit ww.com/uk

General Strava Premium FeaturesStrava Premium Features For RunnersStrava Premium Features For Cyclists

If you’re a runner or cyclist, there’s a good chance that you already use Strava (or you’re at least aware of the fitness social media platform with the orange logo). The app has more than 80 million users worldwide and is hugely popular because of its ability to not only track and log runs, rides and swims, but share them with friends – earning you kudos as you go.

The free version is a great introduction to Strava. As well as providing you with stats and summaries from every workout, it gives you access to clubs, challenges and the all-important kudos (essentially the ability to “like” another user’s activities).

But there comes a time in every free subscriber’s journey when they might consider subscribing to Strava Premium – unlocking additional features in the process. So what do you actually get for your £47.99 a year (or £6.99 a month)? And is it worth it?

Before we go through the Premium features aimed specifically at cyclists or runners, here are a selection of those that apply to both.

General Strava Premium Features

Strava Segments

One of Strava’s best-known, and best, features is its segments. Created by users, segments are a defined route between two points. Your elapsed time between the start and finish markers along these predetermined paths is logged and ranked against other Strava athletes – with the fastest times earning the title of King/Queen of the Mountain (cycling) or Course Record (running). Although there are thousands of segments to take on, the main ones that we focus on are hill climbs or a circuit that you would complete laps of during training.

These were previously fully available to all Strava users but now those who are not paid-up subscribers can see only their overall position on a segment. While this is fine for most, the additional ability to analyse and compare efforts against others’ is a useful tool if you’re striving for the top spot (either overall, within your age bracket or among friends).

The biggest benefit of Premium is Live Segments, though. This allows you to see your performance on any starred segment in real time on the Strava mobile app and compatible devices. When it’s paired with a bike computer or running watch, we’ve found this is a great way to beat PBs (or take it easy if we’re not close to matching our fastest time).

Custom Goals

It might sound primitive, but creating a goal can be all the motivation you need if you’re not training towards an event but want to keep your fitness level up. Strava Premium’s custom goals feature allows you to set targets for segments, cycling power, duration or distance – both weekly and yearly.

We found this to be an extremely useful tool while COVID kept events off the calendar. In January, we set ourselves the target of running 25km and cycling 100km a week, and while there have been times when we let it slip (wedding planning and long weekend rides don’t go hand in hand), the desire to keep on track gave us the boost we needed – even when the weather’s not playing ball.

What’s more, because Strava collates data from a number of third-party devices, it helps you to view all of your activities in one place – handy if your running watch and bike computer aren’t the same brand.

Relative Effort

When following a training plan it can be easy to stick rigidly to a schedule without listening to the needs of your body. Enter Relative Effort. Based on your heart rate data (if you use a heart rate monitor) or perceived exertion, the Premium feature analyses the impact of your activities on your body, and can provide early warning signs if you’re doing too much too soon or need to lower the intensity – helping to prevent overtraining and potential injury in the process.

We find the Relative Effort feature a useful guide but when near the upper end of the recommended range, we don’t let it stop us going for a run or ride. It does, however, help to moderate the level of intensity during those activities.

Routes

Each training wearable or cycle computer is likely to have its own online route-plotting platform, while companies like Komoot have opened up a more user-friendly experience for exploring the unknown on a ride or run. But most of these require you to have a destination in mind. Strava’s Premium offering allows you to craft a route from scratch on desktop, but also has a handy tool on the mobile app that generates routes depending on a number of customisable preferences (such as sport, distance and elevation). From experience, the routes are pretty good too, because they rely on other users’ data to keep you on popular paths rather than forcing you on to busy roads – particularly important when cycling.

See related 

• Eight Essential Tips For Strava Beginners
• Strava’s Beacon Safety Feature Is Now Free To Use
• Strava’s Group Challenges Lets You Compete Against Friends

Strava Premium Features For Runners

Workout Analysis

If you’re working towards a race and have a time in mind, or you just want to break down each mile or kilometre of a training run, this is a highly useful feature, especially for pacing. The information is also available by using tools like Garmin Connect and Wahoo Fitness, but if you’re using the Strava app, you’ll need to go Premium.

Strava Premium Features For Cyclists

Power Analysis

The only cycling-specific feature of Strava Premium is its power analysis, which uses the data collected from a power meter and provides information such as training load, intensity, power curves and time spent in each power zone.

We’ve only trained with a power meter when using a turbo trainer that had one built into it, but we can see why it might be useful to have all this information readily available in one place. While this feature alone wouldn’t be worth the subscription, the more general features such as Strava Segments, Relative Effort and Routes are good enough to warrant the small fee each month.

Sign up to Strava | Download from App Store and Google Play | Free, premium £5.99 a month, £47.99 a year

Both the Apple Watch Series 8 and Apple Watch Ultra are among the best fitness smartwatches available, and that’s true even if you never download a single third-party app to them. The native sports tracking on the watches was upgraded considerably with watchOS 9 and this applies to all versions of the Apple Watch dating back to the Series 4.

However, adding some of the best fitness apps to the Apple Watch still improves it greatly. Indeed, access to the App Store is perhaps the main feature that makes the watch stand out from its competitors. So don’t miss out – here are the best fitness apps for the Apple Watch that you should consider.

The Best Apple Watch Fitness Apps

Fitness+ is one of the best guided workout apps and if you have an Apple Watch then it’s certainly worth giving the free one-month trial a whirl. The app contains a range of training types, including strength and HIIT sessions, yoga, and workouts you can do on cardio equipment like treadmills and exercise bikes if you have access to one. It works seamlessly with the Apple Watch, so you can start, pause and end workouts from the watch, and your heart rate and calorie stats are taken from the watch and shown on-screen during workouts. The Fitness+ service is contained within the native Fitness app, so you don’t need to download anything new to use it – just sign up for the service.

Read more in our Apple Fitness+ review

If you love the smart features on your Apple Watch but wish it had the functionality of a sports watch, WorkOutDoors will make any regrets you had over choosing Apple disappear. The app transforms your Apple Watch into a proper sports watch at a stroke. The only things missing are an always-on screen (though this could be coming through an update, since Apple now allows third-party apps to use it) and the beefier battery life of a Garmin.

If you’ve been diagnosed with a chronic condition or are returning to exercise after a long sedentary period, and you aren’t sure how to start working out safely, EXi is the solution to all your exercise-related problems. This NHS-recommended app has been created by a team of medical experts and will generate a free personalised 12-week training programme for you based on your fitness level and any medical conditions you have. This programme will automatically take into account the medical guidelines for your condition, so you can be confident you’re not taking any unnecessary risks.

The smartphone app is great for everyone, but a dedicated app means it’s even better for Apple Watch owners. The device will guide you through the workouts in your plan, making sure you’re working at the right intensity using your heart rate. As well as giving you visual feedback on your heart rate on the screen, the app provides haptic feedback that alerts you if you’re in the wrong effort zone.

Adding this app to your watch is a no-brainer, since it’s free and could save your bacon if you find yourself in trouble in the great outdoors. What3words divides the world up into 57 trillion 3m squares, each of which has a unique three-word code assigned to it. If you’re lost or hurt and can’t see a landmark that will help describe your position, then simply giving the three-word code for your location will help your contacts or the emergency services find you. The app is used by over 85% of the UK’s emergency services, including 100% of ambulance services. The watch app will show your current location and code when you open it up, and you can also use a voice search to find other people using it.

It’s the biggest and best diet-tracking app around, and MyFitnessPal’s watch app provides the info on how many calories you have left for the day, and breaks them down by protein, carbs and fats. It also tracks your step count and tells you how many calories you’ve earned by pounding the pavements.

The king of bodyweight exercise apps, Sworkit builds workouts for you to follow based on four different categories – strength, cardio, yoga or stretching. You can also choose which part of the body you want to focus your workout on, or opt for a full-body session, and set how long you want to exercise for.

The instructions on the phone app are good, but it’s even better to have them beamed to your smartwatch, which displays what you’re meant to be doing and buzzes when you need to switch up your exercise.

If you’ve opted for the Nike version of the Apple Watch then this popular running app is baked into it, but even if you have the regular Apple Watch, runners of all stripes should give the Nike Run Club a try.

The clear interface excels on the small screen, showing all the info you need about your run, but it’s the added extras – particularly the guided runs – that make Nike Run Club stand out. You can do training sessions where elite athletes like Eliud Kipchoge or Mo Farah talk you through the intervals, or relax with runs produced in partnership with mindfulness app Headspace.

This popular mindfulness app is full of guided meditation sessions that can help you relax and get to sleep. Having Headspace on your wrist is often even more useful than having it on your phone, because you can fire up a quick session to help you take a moment on, say, a busy train. The app also contains guided mindfulness sessions to do when walking or running, when having it on the watch is very handy.

There are several great couch-to-5K apps available on the Apple Watch, with WatchTo5K being a strong low-cost option, but if you find that programme too challenging then None To Run is a fantastic alternative that tweaks the approach to give beginners a shot at getting into running. 

The 12-week programme advances slowly and focuses on running for time, rather than completing a set distance, and it also includes strength workouts which can help you avoid injury as you start to exercise more frequently. The first week of the plan in the app is free, but from then on it costs $5.99/£5.99 a month, though you can also get the complete plan for free on the None To Run website.

Find out more about the None To Run running app

The native Workout app does not offer any integration with Apple’s navigation features, but Footpath is one app that steps into the breach to offer route-planning features to runners, hikers and cyclists. You can easily create routes in the partner app by drawing them on a map, then sending them to the watch to follow. The free version of the app will get you from A to B with a trail overlaid on a map, and you can upgrade to the Elite version to get turn-by-turn directions and more detailed maps.

Golfers are well served by this excellent app, which allows you to track your score across a round and provides distance to the front, middle and back of the green throughout each hole you play. The app also lets you note down how many putts you hit on each hole and whether you landed on the fairway with your drive, so you can pore over the stats at the end of your round.

Gymaholic provides a selection of workout plans for all abilities, and you can also create your own from the vast library of exercises, each of which comes with a visual guide showing how to do it correctly and which muscles it targets. You can see this on the Apple Watch during your workout, and there is also a short text description to help you ensure you’re doing the move correctly. The level of detail provided by the app is fantastic and keen gym-goers will spend many a happy hour diving into their stats and planning workouts.

For those keen to take to the yoga mat, but not quite ready to do so under the scrutiny of a group class, this app can be your guru instead. Over 200 different poses are explained and used in 27 different sessions, and having the images on your wrist as well as your phone means you can keep an eye on the guide no matter what contorted position you end up in.

One of Strava’s most useful premium features, which allows you to share your live location with up to three people, has just become free.

The feature, Beacon, is a great safety tool because your contacts can keep tabs on where you are during activities like outdoor runs, hikes and bike rides, and hopefully spot if you come a cropper and provide you with assistance.

Beacon is free only on the smartphone app. It remains restricted to Strava Premium users if you want to use it independently of your phone on smartwatches like an Apple Watch or a GPS bike computer.

To get set up in the smartphone app, first go to Settings, turn on Beacon for Mobile and allow Strava access to your contacts. Then pick your emergency contacts and edit the text of the message sent to them when you start a new activity. This text will automatically include a unique link to your activity with a map, so your contacts can track you as you exercise.

See related

• Eight Essential Tips For Strava Beginners
• Strava Launches New Routes Feature For Runners And Riders
• The Best Running Route Planners
• The Best Running Apps

Your contacts are also shown the details of your activity once you complete your workout, so they know you’ve finished it safely.

Along with being a very useful safety feature, Beacon also works as a handy race tracker. Your contacts will be able to see exactly where you are on the course so they’ll be ready to cheer as you pass and know when to meet you at the finish line.

Download Strava from App Store and Google Play | Free, premium £5.99 a month

The Olympics and Paralympics are incredible events that can inspire people from all walks of life to get active and try new sports. But if you have a physical impairment, a lack of accessibility in fitness facilities is a barrier to acting upon that inspiration.

Paralympian powerlifter Ali Jawad is aiming to help on that front with his new app Accessercise (App Store and Google Play), which not only has a video library of exercises that are suited to certain impairments, but also allows users to rate gyms on their accessibility so others can more easily find suitable venues.

We spoke to Jawad about Accessercise and the problems disabled people can face in accessing fitness facilities.

What made you create the app?

During lockdown, when you have more time to reflect on life in general, I questioned why I was the only disabled person in the gym when I was younger. I thought, has that situation changed in the last 15 years? And the answer is probably no.

I’ve been quite lucky in my career that I’ve accessed world class facilities because I’m a Paralympian. But I felt like disabled people who didn’t want to be Paralympians don’t get the access that I have. So I wanted to create something that would bridge the gap in terms of accessibility when it comes to exercise and fitness. It’s a way for disabled people to take control of their health and fitness.

What kind of barriers exist when it comes to accessibility?

My career started when I was 16, so I was fast-tracked to elite level quite quickly and I never really experienced any barriers myself, but when I speak to disabled people in the community, they mention the lack of access in the facilities. Is it accessible? Does the machinery swing away, so they can get into it? What is the knowledge of the staff about their disability? A lot of able-bodied people train disabled people like able-bodied people, which is not right.

Then you’ve got things like having to actually get to a gym or sporting facility, because public transport is quite tough for people with impairments, so you have to drive or get a lift there.

How does the app work?

When you download the app we ask you what your impairment is. For example, I’m a double amputee, and that means I’d be given a library of exercises performed by somebody that’s a double amputee. These are short videos with a voiceover and subtitles as well.

The person using the app gets to build their own training programme. I’m not an expert on every impairment, but the person accessing it is an expert on their impairment. We give them the tools, and the education and the guidance, and they create their own workout. It empowers and educates them, so they take control.

In terms of other features in the app the game-changer for me is the verified gyms. The user will rate local gyms or sports facilities in terms of accessibility. So hopefully in a couple of years we can gather that data and ask are sporting facilities good enough? Are they accessible enough? And we’ll actually have something to prove it, which I think is great.

Also the app has a social hub where people can share, like and comment on people’s journeys. That community element is really important in terms of motivation.

So the app aims to help people’s confidence?

Sure. A lot of people don’t know what they’re capable of, unless you present the opportunity to them. I’m hoping that people with impairments can get the opportunity to reach their potential.

See related 

• Autistic Triathlete Sam Holness Gives His Advice On How To Get Into Sport With A Disability
• Train Like A Wheelchair Tennis Champion With This Workout From Gordon Reid
• “Focus On What You Can Do, Not What You Can’t”: How To Get Into Exercise If You Have A Disability
• How One Pro Runner Is Adapting To Training During The Pandemic
• How To Use Exercise To Help A Long-Term Health Condition

Are more impairments being added to the app?

When I set myself this challenge I knew that to get the content for every single impairment could take years. I’ve started with a few impairments and will then grow it from there. The idea is to add one impairment every couple of months. Eventually I want to not only have physical impairments, but also chronic illnesses and mental health conditions. I’m hoping it’s going to be the most accessible fitness app there’s ever been.

What else can be done to promote accessibility?

I think a lot of it is down to education. We need to think about disabled kids growing up and what environments they’re exposed to. We need to change the mindset of people feeling sorry for disabled people, and give them the opportunity to be equal so they can achieve their potential.

When it comes to gyms and facilities, they need to make sure they’re as accessible as possible, but also increase the knowledge of staff there to make disabled people more confident that they can actually attend the facilities. I’m hoping the gym function in the app where you can rate the accessibility of the gyms will give people more confidence about what facilities are accessible.

Download Accessercise on App Store and Google Play | Free, £11.99 a month, £29.99 a quarter, £64.99 a year

Social activity tracking app Strava has announced a major new feature that allows users to create challenges for them and up to 24 friends. There are three types of challenges: who can chalk up the most activity, who is the fastest over a set distance, or who can go the furthest in one go.

Each challenge is invite-only and remains private, so that friend who is much fitter and faster than anyone else can be excluded without their feelings being hurt.

The cumulative activity challenges revolve around a time, distance, elevation gain or elevation loss goal. A leaderboard ranks competitors by their progress towards the goal.

The cumulative activity challenges revolve around a time, distance, elevation gain or elevation loss goal. A leaderboard ranks competitors by their progress towards the goal.

The fastest effort mode is restricted to running, virtual running and travelling in a wheelchair. The organiser chooses a specific distance and then participants are ranked by average pace.

The distance challenge can be set for one activity in any sport (which tracks distance, of course) and the organiser can set a minimum distance to guide participants towards what’s expected.

Strava explained to Coach that the limit on the number of people who can take part is related to 25 being the maximum number of people Strava users follow. This clearly isn’t the virtual race feature many thought Strava would announce, and running and cycling clubs may find it frustrating that they can’t use it to run large-scale virtual events for their members.

We expect group challenges to be a big hit. The competitive spirit is ingrained in Strava’s DNA, with segment leaderboards one of the app’s most compelling features. However, the top 10 segment times have become harder and harder to break into, so group challenges should add some leaderboards that the average user has a shot at topping.

Last year, segment leaderboards became a subscriber-only feature (although the top 10 were still publicly available). Group challenges are restricted to subscribers as well, although users of the free service can set up or participate in three challenges before they are required to join the premium service.

See related :

• The Best Health And Fitness Apps
• Eight Essential Tips For Strava Beginners
• 21 Lessons In Strava Etiquette From @stravawankers

The new challenges feature is accompanied by improved integration of segments into the subscriber-only Maps tab in the app. There are now six new filters, which overlay grouping of segments on the area displayed on the map.

A few are especially exciting because they make better use of the unrivalled amount of information Strava holds on where people run and cycle. One filter shows popular spots where other users go, while another only highlights the popular segments you’ve never tried. Another filter points to where local users record intervals or laps, suggesting these spots are well suited to certain workouts.

The other three filters overlay where Strava thinks you could set a new PB on a segment, or where you’re close to breaking into the top 10 (regrettably this filter returned no results for the Coach editor’s account), or finally where a Local Legend title (where repeated efforts are rewarded rather than performance) is within reach.

Download Strava from App Store and Google Play | Free, premium £5.99 a month

Of the many we’ve tried, we rate Fiit as the best workout app. It offers a large range of excellent classes with likeable instructors across different disciplines like strength, HIIT, yoga and Pilates, plus it’s slick and easy to use.

Another clever trick Fiit pulls is that it can connect to external devices and show your heart rate on screen, helping you get into the right heart rate zone in HIIT sessions, and ranking your effort against everyone who’s ever taken the class. Certain devices can also count your reps.

Among the devices that you can use with Fiit are Fitbit’s Versa (1, 2, 3 or Lite), Ionic and Sense smartwatches. To help alert you to that fact, Fitbit and Fiit have teamed up to create the Four X Four challenge.

The challenge involves doing four classes a week on Fiit with your Fitbit watch connected. You can do any classes, and there are prizes up for grabs throughout January if you can hit the target of four a week. The prizes include Fitbit watches and Fiit memberships, as you might expect.

While Fiit normally requires a subscription (£20 a month, £45 for three months or £120 a year) it is currently offering a 30-day free trial. What’s more, you can access that trial simply by entering your email address – there’s no need to submit any payment information as with most other apps’ free trials. If you do want to stick with the service after the trial you can do so with a 25% discount.

See related :

• January Challenges To Get Your New Year Health Kick Started
• Fitness Challenges For Every Age From 20 To 80
• The Best Health And Fitness Apps

Once you have the Fiit app set up on your phone, you’ll also need the Fiit app downloaded on your Fitbit smartwatch. To get started, open the app first on the watch and then on your phone, and you’ll be able to connect your Fitbit to the phone app when you select a class. Your heart rate will be shown in the Fiit app, and you’ll also see the Fiit points you earn throughout the class, though your reps won’t be counted – you need the Fiit chest strap (£45) for that.

Whether or not you win a prize it’s worth getting involved in the competition to keep you motivated for the rest of January, and even if you don’t have a Fitbit watch you can get the 30-day free Fiit trial and take part in the challenge. Maybe you'll win a watch, and if not, at least it's 30 days of free access to the best home fitness app, at a time when we all need to stay home.

Sign up to the challenge | Free

There is no app, tip or trick out there that can make losing weight easy. If there was, you’d definitely know about it by now. Losing weight means changing your habits and lifestyle – no easy task, and one which can be a frustrating experience at times.

However, there are certainly things that help make reaching a healthy weight quicker than otherwise, and finding the right app is one of them. The best weight-loss apps out there offer support from experts and a friendly community alongside advice on how to improve your diet and become more active. Although there are good free weight-loss apps, you do generally have to pay for them, especially when they include regular advice from experts like dietitians and/or personal trainers. However, the cost is usually under £10 a month, and the benefits you get are well worth the outlay.

At the free and cheap end of things are apps that are built around calorie counting. Getting a handle on how many calories you’re consuming vs how many you’re burning will help you work towards creating a calorie deficit, which in turn will help you lose weight. However, calorie counting is rarely exact and logging everything you eat and drink before you’ve even swallowed can make trying to lose weight even more of a chore, so it’s usually best to use the apps as a rough guide rather than obsessing over the precise numbers.

NHS Weight Loss Plan app

This entirely free app was launched as part of the UK government’s Better Health campaign. It contains a 12-week programme to help you eat more healthily and get more active so that you ultimately lose weight. The design of the app is simple, with checklists to help you record your weight, calorie intake and activity, and a target weight based on your BMI. nhs.uk/better-health

Download from App Store and Google Play | Free

WW

WW is the new name of Weight Watchers, which represents a step away from the negative associations with diet plans, but shouldn’t lessen the effectiveness of its weight loss plans. Although the app is free, you will require a subscription to get the most out of it, with digital memberships starting at £2.59 a week.

The app now offers more than just ways to improve your diet – although of course you’ll still get plenty of healthy eating advice – with tools to help improve your sleep, mindset and activity levels. You begin with an assessment of your lifestyle to highlight the most relevant advice to kick-start your weight-loss plan.

In the app you’ll also find ways to track your weight, activity, and calorie and water intake, along with thousands of recipes, free audio and video workouts, and online coaches who are available 24/7 to help you if you’re struggling to stick with your programme. weightwatchers.com

Download from App Store and Google Play | Free, membership from £2.05 a week

Noom

The focus is very much on mindset with this app, which aims to help you hit a variety of goals including weight loss by changing your behaviour. Noom provides tips and coaching to help you break out of the cycle of yo-yo dieting and instead build healthy habits that will last a lifetime. Once you sign up for the full membership you get help in setting your goals as well as coaching to keep you on track, with customised meal and workout plans available. noom.com

Download from App Store and Google Play | Free, premium £7.99 a month, £14.99 for three months, £39.99 a year

Second Nature

Alongside working on improving your diet and activity levels, Second Nature (once called OurPath) puts a lot of focus on mindset, teaching you how to eat mindfully and overcome the setbacks almost everyone encounters when they try to lose weight. You get a personalised three-month plan that includes weekly goals set by your online health coach, who will be a registered dietitian or qualified nutritionist, and you also get access to a supportive community you can chat with in the app.

Second Nature is on the more expensive end of weight-loss apps, starting from £40 a month for the three-month plan, but the advice – especially with regard to healthy eating – is designed to be sustainable, avoiding things like calorie counting which many people find hard to maintain, so after that three-month period you should be set up to keep the weight off. secondnature.io

Download on App Store and Google Play | From £30 a month

MyFitnessPal

The most popular free weight-loss app out there (although there is a paid premium version too) helps you to keep a food diary, setting an overall calorie target plus a breakdown of the protein, carbohydrate and fat you want to eat each day. You can log what you eat manually, or by using a barcode scanner or searching for the exact food you’ve eaten, which provides a more detailed macronutrient breakdown.

You can export this information to a lot of other fitness apps, like Fitbit for example, which makes it easier to see how what you’re eating fits with your exercise programme. If you go premium you get more detailed insight into what you’ve eaten and you can log goals around individual meals and the exercise you’ve done. myfitnesspal.com

Download on App Store and Google Play | Free, premium £7.99 a month

See related 

• The Best Workout Apps
• The Best Healthy Eating Apps
• 13 Expert Weight-Loss Tips

Lifesum

There are a range of diet options available on Lifesum and the app will help you determine the one that suits you best through a quiz when you first sign up. You can be assigned a low-carb diet or a high-protein one, for example, and the app will provide a detailed meal plan to help you hit your goals. The app includes plans for some diets that the British Dietetic Association has labelled “fads”, like the ketogenic, intermittent fasting and clean eating diets. We recommend sticking to the plain healthy balanced plan.

Lifesum also offers a standard calorie counter with barcode scanning if you want to keep things simple, and it syncs with other health apps. There is a free version of Lifesum that you can use to keep a food diary, but you’ll need a premium account to access the meal plans. lifesum.com

Download on App Store and Google Play | Free, premium £7.99 a month

Lose It!

While there are certainly benefits to a more holistic approach to losing weight that takes into account the mental side of it, the simplest way to look at it is if you consume fewer calories than you burn, you’re on the right track. Lose It! is all about this simple approach. It gives you a personal daily calorie target and you can then log your food and activities in the app to see if you’re sticking to it.

There are meal plans, recipes and workouts on the app to help you out, and you can log what you eat by taking a photo of it, which makes the process even easier than using a barcode scanner – although this doesn’t always work, so you have the option to log everything manually too. The free version of the app is impressively full of features and covers everything you really need, though naturally you can get more helpful insight and content by upgrading to premium. loseit.com

Download on App Store and Google Play | Free, premium £34.99 a year

There are plenty of fantastic free health and fitness apps, which means that a subscription-based app that offers pre-recorded fitness classes to follow at home has to offer something pretty special. Fortunately, Fiit is special. It’s especially great if you’re partial to exercise classes at boutique gyms and want to recreate that experience at home.

Fiit’s ever-expanding range of classes is divided into three sections: strength, cardio and rebalance, the latter offering yoga and Pilates sessions. There are 10-minute, 25-minute and 40-minute classes available, as well as entry-level, beginner, intermediate and advanced options for each. The catalogue of classes is also searchable to help you find a body part you think needs particular attention or the type of music that will play in the background. And if you think one of the trainers is particularly good, you can easily find all the classes they instruct.

There are an awful lot of apps out there that also offer this fitness DVD experience for the online age, but Fiit offers the best user experience of those I’ve tried for several reasons. It starts with the app design itself, which is slick and intuitive, and those qualities are present throughout the entire Fiit experience.

The videos are all well produced and Fiit has rounded up an excellent group of trainers to lead the classes, who all give clear instructions. That’s handy in all the classes, but essential in the yoga and Pilates sessions. I have little experience of either, but I was able to follow the beginner classes on a phone screen and be reasonably confident that I was in the right positions.

With each class, you select the screen you want it played on – TV, phone or tablet – and then the app connects with the heart rate chest strap that’s provided with your membership. This is a Fiit-branded Wahoo Tickr X and, as well as being accurate and easy to use, it’s able to count reps for certain exercises, a feature that’s used in the strength classes on Fiit. While Fiit will now sync with the Apple Watch and the latest Fitbit smartwatches, you are restricted to following a class on a smartphone.

Your heart rate and reps are displayed on screen and these stats are used to motivate you in cardio and strength classes. Strength workouts have sections where they challenge you to beat your rep totals for certain exercises within a class and the next time you try the class. The heart rate is used in the cardio classes to evaluate how hard you’re working and if you are pushing yourself enough. The heart rate zone you should be in is displayed on screen and you earn more Fiit points for being in the right zone – the goal is to beat your tally next time.

I found the heart rate more useful than the rep counting, in part because there are a limited number of exercises which involve enough movement for the chest strap to recognise and count reps. Many of the strength classes I did on the app had sections where the reps weren’t counted, although there was also a challenge section where they were counted and you were encouraged to do as many as possible.

If you book into a live broadcast of a class you’ll see a leaderboard where participants are rated by Fiit points according to how hard they’re working. It’s an extra incentive and doing a live class provides a welcome sense of camaraderie if you miss the communality of the gym.

Fiit launched with on-demand, bodyweight classes only, but now has sessions that use equipment, like free weights or resistance bands.

You can also find classes which support your performance in certain sports, such as running and cycling. Filter by cycling and you get mainly mobility workouts – useful, but not that sport specific – but the running section has strength, Pilates and yoga/stretching sessions that cater to runners. These are brilliantly done and the instructors seem knowledgeable about running, rather than just being PTs reeling off leg exercises.

Along with individual classes, there are also training plans available based around targets like losing weight, becoming more flexible, building muscle or general fitness. These plans pick out classes in the app for you to do each week, and the plans range from two to six weeks. These plans are a great way to introduce yourself to the app and avoid being overwhelmed by choice.

The Fiit experience undoubtedly gets a big thumbs up, and it’s far ahead of the other home workout apps I’ve tried in the quality, range and presentation of its classes. It’s more expensive than those apps, however, especially if you opt to pay a monthly fee of £20 a pop. However, the £45 for three months is more reasonable and an annual subscription of £120 is undoubtedly good value, especially considering that most live boutique fitness classes are £20 a pop. There is enough in Fiit that you can use it several times a week, and that’s true even if the classes are not your main activity – I run regularly and would mainly use Fiit for a bit of strength training and Pilates to support that.

Splashing out £120 or even £45 in advance is a big commitment, but you can try the app free for 14 days to get a better sense of how much you’d use it.

This free app, which was put together by the soon-to-be-disbanded Public Health England, contains straightforward healthy eating guidance and helps you put it into practice with more than 150 recipes. These pull off the difficult trick of catering to the typical British palate and being healthy, especially when it comes to calories per portion. To help save time, you can send recipes to an automatically generated shopping list, categorised by which aisle you’ll find the ingredients in. Tick them off in the app or, if you prefer, email it to yourself or whoever’s doing the shopping in your household. There’s also a daily meal planner which suggests plenty of ideas for what to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner, with the option to go vegetarian. It’s a shame you can’t plan for more than one day, but that doesn’t stop this being an essential free download.

Download from App Store and Google Play | Free

There are plenty of calorie-tracking apps out there, but MyFitnessPal is the most popular for a reason. Its database is colossal, containing over five million foods, meaning the frustration of being unable to log the exact item you’ve eaten is a rare event, rather than the norm. It’s also very quick to use and remembers your favourite foods, so every meal isn’t finished with five minutes of clicking.

Download from App Store and Google Play, | Free, premium £7.99 a month

Meal IQ

We’ll come clean from the off: this isn’t an app (yet – you can sign up to trial a forthcoming app in its beta phase), but the web-based meal planner is clever enough that we’ll bend the rules just this once. The free version searches recipes on the web that fit the criteria you select and it can get really quite specific, including diet types along the lines of vegan and gluten-free, your budget, macro splits, preferred cuisines and even excluding ingredients you dislike. You can then review the recipes the service spits out, swap dinners out if you like, and then generate a shopping list that takes into account what you’ve already got in your cupboards. And then, if you want, it’ll put those items into an online Tesco shopping basket for you to check out at your convenience. Phew, that’s pretty comprehensive. If you cook regularly, or want to, it’s well worth a try.

Sign up to Meal IQ | Free

VNutrition

Even if you have absolutely zero dietary restrictions it takes some planning to make sure you’re eating all the nutrients that your body requires, so it’s vital that you pay even closer attention if you make the decision to go vegan – whether that’s just for Veganuary or for good. The Vegan Society has created the VNutrition app to help people get from plant-based food what that they would previously have consumed by eating animal products. The advice is from a registered dietitian so it’s trustworthy, and there’s a simple checklist in the app to help you track how close you are to hitting your daily nutritional targets.

Download from App Store and Google Play | Free

This app has a very simple purpose: to bypass occasionally confusing and annoyingly inconsistent food labeling to reveal how much sugar, fat and salt packaged food contains, and hopefully persuade you to avoid, or at least limit, anything that’s too unhealthy. Scan the barcode of a food and the app will tell you how many cubes of sugar it contains, each cube being equal to 4g of the sweet stuff, and shows the salt content in sachets (each sachet is 0.5g) and saturated fat (each fat lump is 1g). You’ll also get a handy visual of the piles of sugar cubes, salt sachets and fat lumps the food contains, which can be a real eye-opener, especially with things like ready-made sauces and microwave meals.

Download from App Store and Google Play | Free

The big cheese of recipe apps has more than 16,000 dishes to choose from and the free version offers a meal planner and automatically created shopping lists, as well as detailed step-by-step guides including video demonstrations and built-in timers so you don’t have to keep barking “set timer for three minutes” at your home’s voice assistant. In fact, if you have Amazon’s Alexa, its dulcet tones will guide you through each recipe. It’s good to have the help because the food can sometimes feel like it's targeted at people who will post a picture of it on Instagram before eating – but since cooking for yourself is a shortcut to a healthier diet, it’s well worth expanding your culinary repertoire and there are so many dishes to choose from you’ll be able to find something which suits your skill level. A premium version unlocks more recipes and meal plans.

Download from App Store and Google Play | Free, premium £4.99 a month, £48.99 a year

One for fans of the gym with a healthy commitment to fresh food and eating enough protein, this app has more than 500 video recipes, which slot easily into meal plans with calorie and macro information. Its distinguishing feature is the focus on meal prep, with recipes lending themselves to intense bursts of cooking two days a week, then enjoying the fruits (and veg and lean protein) of your labour. While there is no free version, you’ll find the man behind Fit Men Cook, Kevin Curry, regularly serving up recipe videos on Instagram and YouTube so you can get a flavour of what’s in store.

Download from App Store and Google Play | £3.99

See related

• The Best Weight-Loss Apps
• The Best Health And Fitness Apps
• The Best Mindfulness Apps

We can all agree that it shouldn’t take the possible death of a cute virtual plant to make an adult human drink enough water every day, but let’s skip over that and focus on the cute plant. Look how cute it is! Do you want it to die? Of course you don’t! So drink your water and log it in the app. You and your new plant pal will both be better off.

Download from App Store and Google Play | Free

It’s been a great year for Chelsea’s academy, with graduates like Mason Mount, Tammy Abraham and Reece James all enjoying significant roles in the first team under Frank Lampard as the Blues qualified for the Champions League.

A whole lot of credit is due to the coaches in Chelsea’s academy, and we’re sure there are thousands of amateur footballers who could benefit from some of that coaching expertise.The new Perfect Play football training app might just be able to help on that front.

The app is full of training games developed with and used by the Chelsea academy that will help you work on various parts of your game, whether that’s dribbling, passing or blasting the ball into the back of the net.

Using tracking and augmented reality tech, the app can even map out your playing area and follow you as you complete the drills to provide feedback. It also includes training plans that can be personalised to your level and targets to help you develop as a player.

See related 

• Football Fitness Tests: See How You Compare To The Pros
• Nail Pre-Season Training With These Football Fitness Drills
• Is Blue Fuel’s Supplement Subscription Service Any Good?

“The training programme the academy created gave me the core physical and mental skills I use every time I play,” says Mount. “It’s fantastic that all young footballers can now undertake the same training plan using Perfect Play.”

There are some training games you can try for free on the Perfect Play app, but the full version costs £9.99 a month. The app is available now on the Apple App Store and an Android version will be released soon.

If you’re looking for some football drills but don’t want to sign up to an app, you can check out the series of videos Chelsea made in partnership with Hyundai UK. These are all available on YouTube and cover skills like dribbling and passing.

Download Perfect Play on App Store | £9.99 a month

It’s all too easy to fall into a pattern of running the same handful of routes, and while you will still be getting all the fitness benefits of the sport, after a while you might start to lose your mojo with the monotony of seeing the same scenery time and again.

You can simply veer off these well-trodden paths at random, but while that will undoubtedly liven up your run it can lead to extended trips where you’re completely lost, have to navigate main roads or hit dead ends with annoying regularity.

The solution is to plan your routes using an app or website, and then, if you have a running watch capable of showing those routes, pinging them to your wrist to follow. Even if you don’t, you can pop your phone in an armband or running belt and check it occasionally; or if you have the memory for it, just map out your preferred path and keep it in mind when you run.

How I Test Running Route Planners

I’m a keen runner who logs about 50-70 miles a week and I’m always on the lookout for new routes, whether that’s discovering previously unexplored areas near my home, or finding the best and most popular routes for runners when in a new place. I’ve tested a wide variety of the best running watches with navigation features, and used their partner apps to plan routes, as well as using standalone apps to plan and follow routes.

The Best Running Route Planning Apps And Websites

If you’re a keen runner chances are you already use Strava to track or just share your training. If you upgrade to a premium membership you get access to Strava’s excellent Route Builder tool. You can use this to get recommended routes near you based on where other app users run, altering the app’s suggestions based on how far you want to run, the terrain and whether you want to avoid hills.

You can also build your own routes from scratch, using Strava’s Global Heatmap to help judge which paths are popular with other runners. I find it’s sometimes not helpful in urban environments where most people use main roads, but when you head off-road it’s great to know that marked paths are actually good for running, rather than impassable owing to mud or overgrown vegetation. 

Download from App Store and Google Play

Komoot’s route planning software is impressively advanced and is great for point-to-point planning, generally keeping you off busy roads where possible. You need to create an account to save routes and send them to your phone and watch via Komoot, but you do get one area free when you sign up—your local area is chosen as default—and it then costs $3.99/£3.99 to unlock a new region, or $29.99/£29.99 to unlock the entire world.

One thing I find particularly useful with Komoot is that it pairs with all the major sports watch brands—Garmin, Coros, Suunto and Polar—so it’s easy to sync routes from Komoot to partner apps and then on your watch. The route planner will also tell you what surfaces your planned route covers, so you can see if your road running shoes will need to cope with trails.

Download from App Store and Google Play 

You don’t have to own a Garmin device to use the Garmin Connect route planner in the app and on the website (although you will need to create an account), but naturally the main point of creating a route there is to sync it to a compatible watch to follow when running. The route planning is easy enough to use and you can export runs you’ve done previously to use the routes again or send them to someone else. It can be hard to find in the app though. Go to the More menu, tap Training, and then Courses.

I’m usually wearing a Garmin watch, so I do use the Garmin route planner a lot since it’s the most direct way to get a route on that watch, but I find the route-planning features less intuitive and useful than those of Komoot and Footpath. The app can create routes for you if given a distance and rough direction, which is smart, but it often sticks to main roads with these routes.

Download from App Store and Google Play 

You need a premium account to export routes from the Footpath app, but once you have one it’s the best route builder I’ve come across. It’s easy to use, has the best snap-to-path feature available that rarely makes errors when converting my quickly scribbled line into an actual route, and shows the elevation on your route clearly with a color-coded graph.

It’s easy to export Footpath routes in a variety of files to use with watches, and there is also a standalone Footpath app for the Apple Watch, which is the best Apple Watch app available for navigation. The app itself can also be used to navigate with turn-by-turn directions, and you can download maps to use offline if you’re heading somewhere without signal.

Download from App Store and Google Play 

Suunto’s route planner is the most useful I’ve come across in a partner app for a watch, with popularity heatmaps and other overlays including one that shows you which paths are paved. There are also different map types to choose from including some I have not seen in other apps, like avalanche terrain, which is unlikely to ever be useful where I live in north London, but could be invaluable to those in the mountains. 

You can also filter the heatmaps by sport, which is useful for a runner because otherwise heatmaps often highlight main roads that cyclists favor and these aren’t much fun to run along. The only downside here is that Suunto’s user pool is a lot smaller than that of Garmin or Strava, so the app doesn’t capture as much information.

Download from App Store and Google Play 

Coros added a route builder to its app in 2023 and while it’s not as advanced as dedicated navigation apps, it’s a speedy and easy way to get routes on a Coros watch. It’s also free to use if you have a Coros account and you can export the route to use with other watches, not just Coros ones. 

There’s no popularity heatmap on the app as yet, though, which you do get with Suunto and Garmin’s route builders. In general it’s pretty light on the details and overlays that you get with other route planners.

Download from App Store and Google Play 

Strava, the GPS tracker app and social network for sharing your sporting endeavours, is exceptionally popular in the serious (and not so serious) running and cycling communities. Today it announced some significant changes to what is and isn’t free, moving a fundamental part of the experience – segment leaderboards – behind a paywall. But to soften the blow it’s granting everyone a free 60-day trial of the premium features, even for new users who sign up in the next 30 days.

While you will need to enter payment details and set a reminder to cancel unless you want the trial to roll over automatically into a paid subscription (£5.99 a month, £47.99 a year), we think it’s well worth giving it a whirl. Here are, in our opinion, the three key benefits of a Strava subscription.

1. Strava Routes

Strava recently changed the route builder feature in the mobile app and today brings the internet browser version into line. Now it’s easy to get running and cycling route suggestions for round trips for a range of distances, which can include or avoid hills, and prioritise paved or dirt surfaces. The winning aspect of this feature is that it can draw on the three billion activity uploads to the platform to work out where’s best to send you.

For running, we’ve found that it suggests routes which avoid the usual overcrowded park loops, which is exceptionally useful during lockdown considering the difficulty of maintaining a 2m exclusion zone around you.

As an added bonus for some, the routes can now be automatically exported to and followed on many Garmin devices with map functionality – a running watch, say, or bike computer. (You’ll need to flick a toggle in your Garmin account settings on the page where you can change your password.) This alone would be enough to get us paying the price of admission, because up to now we’ve had to pull out and unlock our phone to check directions. Of course, we refuse to stop running while we do this – it’s a miracle we’ve never run into a lamppost.

2. Training Analysis

Strava is retooling its training section, offering different views of your activities. If you own a Garmin, Polar or Suunto device the information will be familiar and there’s little need, in our eyes, to double up. If you have a more traditional fitness tracker from the likes of Fitbit or even – gasps – no device at all, the information on your training load could be very useful. At the very least it will help you make sure you don’t overdo it and put yourself at risk of developing a niggle. For instance, we wish we had seen this screen before continuing to overdo it the following week and developing a bit of knee pain.

See related 

• Eight Essential Tips For Strava Beginners
• 21 Lessons In Strava Etiquette From @stravawankers
• The Best Running Apps
• The 23 Best Cycling Apps
• The Best Health And Fitness Apps

3. Segment Leaderboards

One of the most popular parts of Strava has been the facility for runners and cyclists to compete for the fastest times over segments. In a move that may well see Strava get a lot of stick from users who don’t currently pay, the leaderboards will now be a subscription-only feature, bar all-time top ten and the top ten women. You will still be able to see segments around you, chalk up times and get awards for being the fastest, but you’ll have no idea how close you are to taking the crown. Or how close you are to leapfrogging that person whose avatar you’ve taken umbrage at (the best part in our opinion).

There are plenty more features that are only available to subscribers, but sign up, set that cancellation reminder in your phone and spend the next 60 days exploring them for yourself.

Sign up to Strava | Download from App Store and Google Play | Free, premium £5.99 a month, £47.99 a year

At this stage of the COVID-19 lockdown, your home workouts might well have started to get stale. The internet might be awash with excellent free workout ideas right now, but finding something new each time can be a drag, and perhaps you’re starting to yearn for the days you could outsource all the planning to a favoured gym or studio.

If so, good news! Worldwide functional training franchise F45 is adding two new bodyweight workouts a day to its F45 Challenge app and making access free until 1st June. The F in F45 stands for functional, with all the classes built around functional exercises that work a variety of muscles and joints. And the 45 stands for 45, because the classes are 45 minutes long.

The Challenge app has been around for a while and includes a nutrition planner and the facility to track your exercise, meals, water intake and sleep, as well as the size of your muscles, but we’re here for the workouts so let’s focus on them. The first option will be one of the brand’s Gravity classes, a HIIT workout that promises “to develop aerobic conditioning, plyometric and agility skills” (expect lots of jumping). The second is Calypso Kings, which consists of stretches, a fine activity if you find yourself worse for wear a day or two after tackling a Gravity workout.

From 1st June, the app will also include on-demand videos of the studio’s most popular HIIT classes, including Romans, Hollywood and Athletica, but will cost £30 a month. It’s a shame users won’t be able to try out the full range of on-demand classes during May, but you are getting two bodyweight sessions every day to do at home until then for free.

See related :

• A 30-Minute Functional HIIT Circuit Anyone Can Try
• F45 Changed My Opinion Of Group Training For The Better
• A Simply Savage Dumbbell Complex From F45
• Best Workout Apps

Although the daily workouts on the app at the moment are based around bodyweight moves, F45 classes usually involve using equipment, whether that’s free weights or accessories like agility ladders, skipping ropes or resistance bands. To make it easier for people to get what they need to follow the workouts in the app at home, F45 sells two different Live Inclusive Interval Training (LIIT) Kits, which can be ordered now from the Australian F45 website for delivery in late May.

The standard LIIT kit costs $96 (AUD, approximately £50) and includes agility cones, sliders, an agility ladder, a skipping rope, plus an array of resistance bands. The LIIT Kit Pro is $215 (approximately £110) and adds 8kg kettlebells, 4kg dumbbells and an 8kg weighted ball. Shipping to the UK costs an additional $14.50 (approximately £7.60).

We’re going to give the F45 Challenge app a whirl once the full paid version goes live, so check back for a review in June to see what we think of it. Until then, enjoy the free workouts!

Download from App Store or Google Play | Free until 1st June, £30 after

The treadmill gets a bad rap. Sure, running on the spot isn’t the most exciting way to run, but it allows to get your training done easily when time is tight or the weather is frightful, and there are many ways to entertain yourself during an indoor session. These range from classics like sticking on your favourite playlist or podcast, to more immersive experiences like Zwift, where you watch your avatar run in a virtual world.

If that sounds like it might be complicated to set up, don’t worry, it really isn’t. And to help you get started, here’s some advice from Zwift group run leader Tim Grose, who, when we spoke to him in April 2019, had logged 1,655km on the app and is the man behind the Power Of 10 and Run Britain results and ranking websites. We’ve also logged some Ks since then, and you can read about our experience once Grose shares the 411.

What You Need

To get going on Zwift you need a device to use the Zwift app on, a way to tell Zwift how fast you are going, and access to a treadmill – the good news is any one will do. You can also link a heart rate strap to see how hard you are working live on screen

Although the Zwift app is available on multiple platforms (iOS, Android, PC, Mac and Apple TV), I find the most practical device is an iPad because it has a good screen and you can easily take it to the gym or use it at home if you have your own treadmill. You’ll also need a small device called a footpod which clips on to one of your running shoes to tell Zwift how fast you are going. Zwift itself sells the relatively cheap RunPod or you can get the more feature-packed and expensive Stryd.

If you get really into Zwift and want to get your own treadmill, you can get smart ones like the Technogym MYRUN, which convey the treadmill’s exact speed and your cadence direct to Zwift so you don’t need a footpod. And if you are able to get your own treadmill you can also think about more immersive big-screen set-ups, while the really adventurous can stream their runs live on platforms like YouTube and Facebook.

Find out more about these picks in my guide to the best treadmills.

How To Start Running

Open the Zwift app on your chosen device and either create an account – Zwift Run is free at the moment – or login. Then you need to pair your footpod with Zwift and, if you have one, your heart rate strap. Select which route you want to run on, click “Run” and start running on your treadmill – you should see your avatar running on Zwift.

How To Get Involved In Group Runs

My favourite part of Zwift is that you can run with other people remotely, and the best way of doing that is to join one of the several group runs that take place each week. Each run normally has four pace groups, ranging from A (fastest) to D (slowest), so most runners should be able to find a suitable one.

There are three main group runs each week. On Monday we have Monday Run Club which is a “stay together” group social run where we typically do a mild progression run, starting slow and building up the pace gradually. We try to have some chat on the way using the Zwift in-game text messaging. On Wednesday we step up the pace in Workout Wednesday Run and do a traditional interval session like 10 x 400m. Then on Saturdays there is Run in the Park, which was the first ever group run. It is also a progression run and has an optional 500m race at the end.

Each of these events is held at multiple times in the day to cater for different time zones, and these are not the only group runs. We also have a few popular run/walk events and you can even set up your own group run with the Meetup feature.

Every month we try to have a special event on Zwift which can be a race for some or just a challenge for others. In January we had a 10K race, in February a festival with both a half marathon and 5K and in March we had our first marathon event, although I have to admit I went for the easier half marathon option!

To find out more details and to sign up, you can use the Zwift Companion app (App Store and Google Play) or visit the Zwift website. Another great resource for Zwift Run is the Zwift Runners Facebook group that I help to administer. Head there with any questions or problems you may have, as well other other Zwift-related stuff and events.

The Best Running Routes On Zwift

1. Watopia 5K Run Path

Watopia is Zwift’s virtual world, complete with volcanoes, glass underwater tunnels, jungles and mountains. It is also home to the largest runners-only course on Zwift. It is an exact 5K loop and has a seaside feel with a large part next to a beach and a section on a raised platform that takes you out to sea. It is the best place to meet up casually with other runners and not feel overrun by bike riders whizzing by.

2. New York

The other dedicated running route in Zwift is modelled on a real-world path around a lake in Central Park called the Shuman Trail. It is not that long – you need to go round twice for 5K – but Zwift has lots of other routes that take in some of it. It is a good place to see other runners as well as experiencing the rest of the New York course, including the futuristic elevated glass roads.

3. Find Some Hills

Runners nearly always go slower than riders on Zwift, but on steep hills things can even out, especially since matching the incline of the course is only optional for runners on Zwift. So if you can’t find a group run but want some company try selecting a route takes you up one of Zwift’s major climbs: the Alpe du Zwift (modelled on Alpe d’Huez), the epic KOM on Watopia, or Box Hill on the London course and see how many riders you can pick off! Remember to give a Ride On – a virtual thumbs up – to each one though.

Zwift Running Review

Having access to a treadmill during the COVID-19 lockdown has led me to become very well acquainted with the world of Zwift running. After overcoming a few early frustrations, the platform has really grown on me.

The frustrations arose mostly from trying to get a reliable link to Zwift, since both the Zwift RunPod and Runn Smart Treadmill Sensor consistently let me down. The RunPod was often not found at all when setting up, and although the Runn sensor would be found so I could connect it, the signal frequently dropped during runs so my avatar kept stopping. I imagine with persistence either option could have worked, and perhaps they’d link better to a phone or tablet rather than the set-up I was using (a MacBook Pro with an ANT+ receiver in a USB port), but I was ready to give up on Zwift running full stop until I tried the Stryd footpod.

Zwift had no trouble finding and connecting to that, and I only had to calibrate it once. This meant I could take to the treadmill every day and run in Watopia knowing that I wouldn’t have to spend ten minutes at the start of my run faffing with sensors trying to get them to work. I have a baby in the house, so every minute of exercise time is precious.

It was a great solution for me, but it may not be right for everyone. The Zwift RunPod is just £37.99 and the Runn sensor is £77, while Stryd costs £218. Unless you also want the Stryd for its running power measurements and reliable, better-than-GPS pace stats when outside, it’s overkill for a Zwift set-up.

However, if you do have a Stryd or are able to get a cheaper sensor to work reliably, running in Zwift is great – definitely an upgrade to a standard treadmill session. With Zwift displayed on a TV in front of my treadmill, I found the colourful world of Watopia in particular surprisingly immersive.

When I arranged an ersatz group run with a friend who also uses Zwift it really came into its own. Running together on screen while chatting on WhatsApp was a lovely break from all the solo running I’d been doing during the COVID-19 lockdown. Whether I’d feel as positive about it at a time when I could just meet friends for a run outdoors, I’m not so sure, but certainly it would be a fun way to catch up with friends who don’t live locally.

The onscreen stats are also presented well. You get a breakdown of each split you’ve run at the side of the screen, plus the time you’re on track to run in your current split. At the top of the screen you see total run stats like time and distance, and you can also link up a heart rate sensor to get your heart rate and zone on screen. There are also workout options, and when you set targets you get a virtual finish line to run through at the end of each interval, which is a nice touch.

There’s even a track you can use for sessions in Watopia; while I didn’t think there would be much point to running in circles when the whole virtual world can be as flat and free as running on a track in the real world is, I did find myself choosing that option from time to time.

Zwift will never appeal to runners like it does to cyclists. When riding, the app can control your turbo trainer or exercise bike to account for the hills in the virtual worlds, which it can’t do with treadmills.

A home indoor cycling set-up also tends to be cheaper than a treadmill. And aside from a couple of run-specific options, the routes on Zwift are mostly aimed at cyclists, which sometimes means long straights where the landscape doesn’t change much. That’s fine when it’s just one or two kilometres of a 30km ride, but not so good when it’s almost half your 5K run.

That said, if you are lucky enough to have a treadmill and a reliable sensor, Zwift is a great way to spice up your indoor running. The app itself is free to use at the moment (cyclists pay £12.99 a month) so it’s definitely worth a try.

People who need physiotherapy right now – whether struggling with a long-term condition or having picked up a new injury attempting a wild array of new home workouts – are in trouble, thanks to the lockdown put in place to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Fortunately, we live in a golden age of communication. While you may not be friends with a physio who you can lure into an ad hoc consultation with the promise of a trivia session on House Party, you can access one through Ascenti’s online service.

The service is operated through the Ascenti app which, along with video appointments with a physio, also has a variety of tools to help you manage your condition, including exercise demonstrations and progress diaries you can share with your physio. These are all restricted to clients, though – you can’t just open the free app and get access to them.

The online sessions cost £35 for 30 minutes, but are free for anyone over 65 or who works for the NHS. You just need to fill in this form to access the free treatment.

See related

• The Best Health And Fitness Apps
• Common Running Injuries And What To Do About Them
• Strengthen Your Joints With These Hip And Knee Exercises

“The online physiotherapy sessions work just as if you’re having a Facetime or Skype call with a friend,” says Stephanie Dobrikova, CEO of Ascenti, “but these video calls are just part of a digital experience that will help to educate, motivate and rehabilitate patients through this challenging time.”

The lockdown has changed the way many people exercise, whether it’s taking advantage of the exercise allowance to get out for a run or cycle every day, or embarking on a series of increasingly aggressive home HIIT sessions. As we all know, changes lead to new strains on the body. Overdo it and those strains can lead to niggles, and niggles can lead to the dark side. Or injuries. If it’s the latter, don’t ignore it – see a physio.

Strava, the social app for logging and sharing your sporting activities with the world, has announced a major new feature for subscribers: route suggestions for runs and rides in the mobile app.

You’ll find it prominently placed in the Explore tab, and users with premium Summit accounts who click through will be presented with three 15-mile (24km) bike rides from your current location. There are filters to toggle where the route should start from, whether you want it to run or ride the course and how far it should approximately be.

Cyclists can choose one of 13 distances between one and 100 miles, or if you prefer the other unit of measurement, eight between 2kmand 160km. Runners get nine options between one and 30 miles or ten distances between 2km and 50km. Obviously the distances at the upper end of those scales aren’t appropriate to use while the UK is in lockdown, but you can at least plan epic outings for when it’s safe to do so.

There are also filters for elevation, so you can head for the hills or avoid them, and surface, with the split being paved and dirt.

Strava deserves kudos for putting the data it has to good use, chiefly by using its records of three billion activities to create heatmaps of popular recreational routes to inform this feature (it guesses which journeys are commutes and doesn’t use them). There’s also the option to overlay heatmaps on the map in the app. Each route also has an estimated time it’ll take you to complete it based on your recent activity and the breakdown of the surface type is in part worked out by looking at the type of bike frame people use on certain stretches.

In practice, however, this beta version can’t match local knowledge and, for now at least, lacks practical application. In the Coach editor’s patch of south London, there are four parks in the vicinity which he runs to and around. Strava’s route suggestions, however, only occasionally recommend running down the side of one – odd, since the circuits round the green spaces are white-hot.

Another contributor found only one of three suggestions went through nearby Epping Forest. To be fair to Strava, the new feature is labelled as beta so it’s still being developed, and we’d wager the suggestions will be refined through taking on board this kind of complaint, and the suggestions people actually save and use.

See related 

• Eight Essential Tips For Strava Beginners
• 21 Lessons In Strava Etiquette From @stravawankers
• The Best Cycling Route Planners To Get You From A To B Fast

We expect more developments in the feature soon as well to make it more useful. For one, Routes beta doesn’t offer point-to-point mapping, something that’s offered in Strava’s free route creator on desktop. The most important thing that’s missing, to our minds at least, is better ways to follow the route. For now, you have to have your phone out to follow the route – it won’t sync to a smartwatch so that you can follow it from your wrist, or offer audio cues. This is less of a problem if you’re a cyclist with a phone mount on your handlebars, but runners will find it too much of a faff to pull out, unlock and check a phone periodically. We found the mapping features on Garmin’s Fenix 6 Pro GPS watch so useful we’d go so far as calling it life-changing – a rare thing for technology to achieve. If Strava manages to add that utility, paying £6.99 a month for one of the stand-out features on a £600-plus multisport watch is a no-brainer.

Strava does offer a free two-week trial that will let you try the routes feature, but if you’re not currently a premium user, we’d suggest letting the feature mature – and the lockdown lift – before cashing in your ticket to try it.

Subscribe to Strava | £6.99 a month, £47.99 a year

Fronted by Thor star Chris Hemsworth, Centr promises to be your one-stop shop for health and fitness, providing a meal planner, personal trainer and meditation coach in your pocket.

Boasting nearly 1,000 workouts, 493 recipes and 137 mindfulness exercises – with more continually being added – Centr has something for everyone.

If you’re looking to give your food and fitness routines an overhaul, this app will do that and then some – although do brace yourself for a hefty commitment of both time and money.

I tested the app for two weeks. I’m a freelance writer, which often equates to long hours in front of a laptop, and although I generally make it to the gym for resistance training or yoga classes between three to five times a week, I’m a creature of habit when it comes to workouts. And a lack of time and poor planning, rather than motivation, often keeps me from eating as healthily as I could. Would Centr reveal a more organised, fitter and more mindful me?

Getting Started

A subscription is currently £93.99 for 12 months (66% off the normal price of £275.88), with a seven-day free trial for new sign-ups. There are also one- or three-month subscriptions if you’re wary of committing long-term.

During the set-up, you enter your vitals (height, weight, sex) and goal (get fit and toned, lose weight, build muscle), then select a dietary preference (regular, vegetarian, vegan, pescatarian) and a workout intensity (beginner, intermediate, advanced), and you’re ready to go. I chose a regular meal plan with the aim of getting fit and toned, and intermediate level workouts. After this, Centr pulls together a weekly plan tailored to you.

My top tip? Set aside some time to read through the information provided, such as the “essential guides” to food and fitness. If you skip this part, you might miss important points about how to use the planner, such as the fact that snacks are crucial to certain plans but aren’t included in the weekly planner – that was a hungry couple of days.

The Experience

Centr is organised around a weekly planner that allows you to tick off activities as you complete them. My week included breakfast, lunch and dinner each day (sometimes using leftovers for lunch), seven 20- to 40-minute workouts, ranging from yoga to HIIT, along with two 10-minute bonus (read, optional) workouts, four sleep visualisations, two meditation sessions, and various articles to read and podcasts to listen to. I’ll admit that I felt a touch overwhelmed at this point as I mentally calculated the time required for food prep and mindfulness.

The workouts were consistently excellent. I particularly enjoyed Tahl Rinsky’s yoga classes (although she makes it look deceptively effortless), and the HIIT and HIRT (high-intensity resistance training) sessions with Luke Zocchi. The workouts are challenging – that’s what you’re here for, right? – but variations are offered where possible, and there’s always the option to pause the video and catch your breath.

You can swap workouts, raise or lower the intensity level, and choose between coached (full-length videos to follow) or self-guided (images and clips to move through at your own pace). I preferred the coached option, enjoying the pace and extra explanation from the trainer. Before you start, you can see the length of the workout (ranging from 20-40 minutes) and the equipment you’ll need.

Many workouts didn’t require equipment, while some required items I already own (such as dumbbells, kettlebells and a jump rope). A few required more space than my living room permitted or items like a medicine ball or pull-up bar – for these, I either went to the gym and followed the workout on my phone rather on my laptop, or swapped for a similar workout that required less equipment. In the FAQs, Centr advises substituting equipment for household items (using cans or bottles as weights, for example) but it also states that if your goal is set to build muscle, you’ll need access to a barbell, dumbbells, bench and incline bench.

Recipes on the plan are colourful and varied: options include oat bowls for breakfast, salads and wraps for lunch, and stir-fries and curries for dinner. Mondays are always meat-free, which is ideal for flexitarians.

There are some quick options that take less than five minutes, such as smoothies, but also more complicated dishes that take more than an hour from start to finish, such as a chicken pot pie that requires making almond pastry from scratch. To me, this seemed overambitious for a Wednesday night.

Luckily, swapping recipes is easy, allowing you to filter by dietary requirement (such as dairy-free) or search by keyword. As a sports dietitian curates the meal plans, Centr advises replacing like for like – a salad for a salad, a wrap for a wrap – in order to keep the nutritional balance.

Portions are generous, although – as expected – all that exercise does work up an appetite. Initially I didn’t realise I should also be including two to three snacks each day, but after adding these in, I definitely wasn’t hungry. In fact, it felt as though many of my waking hours were spent eating.

Brace yourself for a lot of food prep, cooking and washing up – I’ve never been more thankful to own a dishwasher. It’s also worth using free time on the weekends to scan through your upcoming menu and meal prep where you can.

The shopping list functionality is useful, though do keep an eye on portion sizes while you add ingredients – some of the recipes in my planner served four, while others were for one or two.

After adjusting all recipes to serve one (or two to provide leftovers for the next day’s lunch), my shopping list came to an eye-watering 93 ingredients, adding up to £108.91 from Tesco online. This excluded ingredients for snacks and protein powder (required for some of the recipes), but it did include lots of non-perishable items that wouldn’t need to be bought every week, such as rice or olive oil. At times, however, the auto-generated shopping list quantities means you’re left with odds and ends, which you have to be prepared to snack on or freeze to avoid food waste. made it difficult to avoid food waste.

Some specialist ingredients weren’t available from Tesco at all (tempeh, black sesame seeds and hemp seeds) and some were available online, but are unlikely to be stocked in your local supermarket (raw cacao powder and dukkah). Pumpkin and chard were out of season, so I substituted butternut squash and kale.

Centr excels in providing no-nonsense nutritional advice, emphasising that it doesn’t want you to get bogged down in the details but instead to focus on eating whole foods. While this is commendable, as a bit of a data geek I would have been interested to see a nutritional breakdown for each day. I’d also have liked to add other items, such as snacks, to my planner.

The mindfulness sessions were an unexpected highlight. It turns out sleep visualisations are the practice I never knew I needed. Designed to help you relax and switch off before you fall asleep, they take you through a meditation body scan (focusing on relieving tension) before describing a soothing scene, such as walking through a bamboo grove. I particularly loved Sergio Perera, who has an incredibly calming voice. Meditation has never been my strong suit, but I found myself looking forward to it each day.

Also worth noting is the Centr community, a private group on Facebook with posts from users all over the world. It’s great for asking questions (the Centr team moderate and post answers), sharing successes and getting inspired.

The Verdict

I loved using the Centr app. It’s impossible to get bored – the recipes were varied and delicious, the workouts were challenging and exciting, and the mindfulness exercises were engaging and useful. The app took the stress out of planning my weeks and I loved having the decisions made for me, requiring just a few taps and swipes to tailor it.

Physically, I felt better. Working out more frequently meant I felt less lethargic and while I still had some aches and pains, it was mainly from post-workout DOMS rather than my usual shoulder and neck ache from staring at a screen. I also noticed the sleep score on my Fitbit nudge up from 71 to 80, and my resting heart rate nudged down, from an average of 64 to 60 – promising results considering I was only two weeks in.

The downside, however, is that Centr can feel overwhelming at times. To follow the plan to the letter you’ll need to have a fairly flexible schedule, with time to spend on food shopping, cooking, washing up, working out, meditating, visualising and food shopping (again) for those pesky specialist ingredients you couldn’t locate in your local supermarket. It’s a significant commitment of time and money, but if you’re willing to make it long-term, I have no doubt that Centr would help anyone become fitter and healthier.

Join on centr.com | Download on App Store or Google Play 

As a runner I’ve always envied the wealth of indoor training options that cyclists have. For one thing a good-quality exercise bike (or turbo trainer you can ride your bike on) is cheaper and smaller than a treadmill, making it a more accessible domestic cardio option. For another, there are a lot more entertainment options for indoor cyclists, if only because it’s easier to watch TV when sitting on a bike than using a treadmill.

Virtual training app Zwift is one of the best options cyclists have for making indoor training more exciting – and although Zwift caters to runners as well, the point about affording a treadmill fitting in your house still stands.

To use Zwift you connect a smart turbo trainer or exercise bike to the app, and it’s this that controls your avatar, which rides in a virtual world. The main Zwift world is called Watopia, an island with underwater tunnels, snow-capped mountains, a desert and a volcano, among other environments. Alongside Watopia you have access to cycle routes in London, New York and select World Championships courses in Yorkshire, Innsbruck and Virginia, with one of these guest worlds available each day.

Zwift will automatically control a smart trainer to simulate the hills your avatar is riding on, creating a very realistic and immersive experience that’s absolutely if you want to keep riding for cyclists looking to train through the winter to prepare for their outdoor rides when the weather gets warmer.

Zwift’s appeal to cyclists is obvious, but what about the average person who’s just looking to get fit? Since Zwift is relatively cheap to set up (costs are detailed below) and allows you to train at home in a convenient way that’s also more exciting than simply sitting on an exercise bike or rower, I thought it could be a great option.

After a few months of riding on the platform, I think Zwift would suit some people perfectly as a get-fit-at-home option – but the heavy, and understandable, skew towards keen cyclists can be a little off-putting for others. If you don’t get sucked into the world of cycling, indoors and out, you may struggle to find the motivation to keep at it.

The Set Up

I’m going to go ahead and assume you already have a bike (ideally a road bike, although a hybrid will probably suffice – check before investing). If you don’t, factor that price into your initial budget. If you do, you can choose between a cheaper wheel-on turbo trainer and a pricier direct drive trainer, where you remove your back wheel and attach your bike directly to the trainer. This creates a more realistic feel to your ride and stops you wearing out your back tyre cycling indoors.

A smart trainer will automatically communicate with Zwift to add resistance when you’re climbing hills in Watopia, and let you freewheel down hills, which really enriches the experience. You can opt for a cheap turbo and then buy sensors that will provide Zwift with your power and speed/cadence in the app, but it’s far more enjoyable with a smart trainer and I’d say it’s worth the extra outlay if your budget can stretch that far.

For the purpose of this review Zwift provided me with an Elite Direto smart direct drive trainer, which is usually available for around £500 to £650 online. That took care of all the required cycling sensors, and I already had a chest strap heart rate monitor I could link to the app once I bought a cheap ANT+ dongle for my laptop.

The trainer and bike are the key bits of kit, but I also put an old TV in my garage to link to my laptop, because the bigger the screen you play Zwift on, the more immersive it is. It’s also worth having a mat under the trainer and a fan, because indoor riding is about as sweaty an activity as there is.

The Zwift subscription itself costs £12.99 a month. You can set everything up for less with a standard smart turbo, which will set you back something in the region of £200 to £300.

If you don’t have a bike, or don’t want to attach your bike to a trainer, you can opt for a smart exercise bike like the Wattbike Atom for Zwift. This will set you back a lot of money, however, at £1,599.

Once I had all the gear, it took about 30 to 40 minutes to get my bike rigged up. I’d not used a direct drive turbo before and am not what you’d call handy, so most people would probably get this done more quickly. Most people probably wouldn’t have drawn blood from their hand in two places during the process either… Anyway, after that mild palaver, it was time to ride.

See related 

• How To Get Fit At Home
• How To Get Started With Zwift Running
• The Beginner’s Guide To Turbo Training
• The Best Turbo Trainers 2021: Which Direct Drive, Magnetic And Smart Indoor Trainers Are Worth Buying
• Savage Turbo Trainer Workouts From Pro Cyclists

The Experience

I was not expecting Zwift to be as fun as it is. I like being outdoors, but cycling outdoors in London isn’t always that enjoyable for the obvious reasons. The best part of riding in Watopia is that you can cycle at whatever speed you like safely.

Easy rides on Zwift are a joy, pootling along admiring the virtual landscape. That’s especially the case early on when you’re exploring the different areas of Watopia and the other worlds. I was using Zwift for one to three 30-minute sessions a week, and at that slow pace it takes a while to explore all the routes, though you could see everything a lot quicker if you knocked out two or three 50km rides.

Throughout the Zwift worlds there are little mini challenges, like a King of the Mountains segment up a climb or a sprint on a flat section. These add a little spice to rides, because even if I was on an easy cycle I’d feel compelled to put in some effort for those short sections.

If you choose a particular route on the start screen you don’t have to do anything to navigate around while riding, but if you want to explore the map on your own terms the best way to do so is with the Zwift companion app. This allows you to make turns when you come across them and shows where you are on the map.

One feature I didn’t expect was that you have to level up on Zwift to be able to visit every area of Watopia whenever you want to. Certain routes, including the daunting but exciting Alpe Du Zwift, a 1,036m climb that recreates the famous Alpe d’Huez, remains locked to me until I have hit level 12 yet. It takes a while to progress through the levels when only using Zwift for short rides a couple of times a week, because you earn points through distance covered. You can, however, reach the locked areas of the map if you enter group rides, workouts and races, or if you ride with a more experienced Zwift user who has hit the required level.

Group events are a key part of Zwift and there are a lot to join every day at times to suit every rider. There is also a range of rides to suit all abilities, with each having an advertised category from A to E. The letters correspond to your functional threshold power in watts per kilo, which is complicated, but basically E is the easiest and once you’re in a group pride you’ll be expected to stay in a certain power range so you stick with the group. You can see your watts per kilo rating onscreen at all times, so there’s no excuse for not staying in the right zone, and if you fail to do so repeatedly you’ll be kicked out of the group ride (after many warnings).

There are also lots of workouts and training plans that you can follow on-demand on Zwift. There are long and short workouts, and plans designed to help you work towards cycling events, or improve a particular aspect of your cycling. All of the workouts are designed around your functional threshold power (FTP), which Zwift will detect automatically while you pedal, but it’s best to do a proper FTP test on the app before you start on the workouts to make sure they’re tailored correctly to your ability. The FTP test is fairly brutal, be warned.

If any or all of the above sounds quite jargon-heavy, it did to me too. This is one downside of using Zwift just to get fit: it’s all aimed at cyclists so things like FTP are central to everything, and all the workouts and plans are built to help you nail cycling events rather than just, say, burn a load of calories. The interval workouts will have the same effect as doing a HIIT class with a peppy, charismatic instructor on a luxury Peloton spinning bike, but on Zwift it’s all couched in cycling terms that take a little while to get used to. Over time you might well get dragged into the world of cycling and start considering entering outdoor events, but if you’re purely using Zwift as a way to log your 150 minutes of cardio activity a week, the jargon might be a bit off-putting.

However, Zwift is still a brilliant option for people trying to get fit at home, and it will probably appeal to a different kind of person than something like Peloton. If you love being out in the open air when possible, actually cycling in a virtual world will appeal more than indoor spinning sessions, as odd as that might sound since you are still indoors. Simply riding around Watopia is tremendously enjoyable, moving from the desert to the forest and then up a mountain in the space of one ride, and if you can get a TV rigged up to play it on, it’s highly immersive.

A large upfront investment is required, but it’s a lot cheaper than Peloton (bike £1,990, monthly unlimited classes £39) and will even out with a gym membership after a few months (or years if you use a budget gym). The ongoing cost of Zwift is also low, and with an indoor trainer you’re not tied just to the Zwift platform – there are others like TrainerRoad to explore, and you can try spinning classes from other apps too.

There is one other question that you might well ask – why not just ride a bike outdoors? And of course you can, but when the weather is bad, or you want to do a hard workout in a short space of time, or you’re housebound for whatever reason, or when you just fancy riding without having to worry about other road users at all times, there’s Zwift, and it’s excellent.

Join Zwift | £12.99 a month

There are lots of reasons you might not want to exercise in the weeks and months after you give birth. You’re tired most if not all of the time for one, and taking time out of looking after your child to exercise can inspire (unwarranted) feelings of guilt in many new mums.

It can also be tougher to exercise during pregnancy, for mostly obvious reasons. Any exercise you were doing before you became pregnant becomes quite a bit tougher once a human starts growing inside you.

As someone who returned to compete at the Olympics after giving birth to her first child, Jessica Ennis-Hill knows about the challenges involved. Her new app Jennis aims to make exercise easier for pregnant women and new mothers, with carefully designed workouts to suit what you’re able to do in those periods. And the app also contains a whole load of 20- to 30-minute HIIT workouts that will benefit everyone. We spoke to Ennis-Hill about the app and what people can expect from it.

What made you want to make an app?

With Reggie, I wanted to go back to being an elite athlete again, to go to the Olympics. And then with Liv, I was retired and didn’t have anyone guiding me in what to do. I wanted to create a space where all these workouts and exercises that I had were in one place for women to know what to do. When you’re a mum everything has to be so easy and quick, because you’ve just got no time, so I thought an app would be perfect.

How does the app work? Do you follow a training plan or pick one-off workouts?

The pregnancy section is broken down to three trimesters, and within each trimester, there are workouts specific to that trimester. There are cardio and core stability workouts, yoga and meditation. You take the pregnancy section at your own pace, because everyone’s pregnancy is completely different.

Then the postnatal section is broken down into three sections and again it’s about starting when you’re 100% ready – when you feel that you’ve recovered from labour, and you’re physically and mentally ready to start doing something. And then you go to zero weeks – always start at the very beginning. It’s about building your core muscles back up and activating them in the right way.

The fitness section is workouts that change every month – three workouts are added every month. They’re high-intensity workouts that anyone can do.

What are the benefits of being active in the postnatal period?

It’s one of the most important periods in your life exercise-wise, because your body has obviously gone through a huge change over nine months, and then you’ve gone through labour. A lot of your muscles have all switched off, and everything’s been stretched. It’s about doing the right exercises and making sure that you switch on the muscles in the right way again, in the right order, so that you can get your strength back.

It’s not necessarily about being super-strong and super-fit. It’s kind of like proofing your body so that you don’t have back problems a year or two years down the line, because you’ve got young kids and you’re literally nonstop. But making sure your body’s in a great place after birth allows you to then build up to a good level of exercise if you want to.

What would you say to new mums who might feel guilty about exercising?

You do feel guilty because you think “I have to give all my time to my baby”. And any time away from them, you just feel “ah, I’m a bad mum!” But actually, you need that time, and with the postnatal stuff, it’s ten minutes here and there that you could do while they’re having a nap. It’s really important to do it and make sure that you’re doing it at the right stage.

Do you have any tips on how to stay active during pregnancy?

It’s hard because it’s determined by what kind of pregnancy you’re having and how you’re experiencing it. But within the app each trimester has a number of different workouts. So there’s yoga stretches and poses that you can do, which is not going to get you out of breath – it’s just helping to stretch and release that tightness that you often feel in pregnancy. And then if you are someone that has exercised more, some of the cardio sessions are circuit workouts, so there are things like squats and dumbbell exercises. You can get your heart rate up a bit, and you’ve done something but not pushed yourself in an uncomfortable way. It’s all about remaining in that comfort zone.

The Jennis app is now available on the App Store and Google Play and costs £9.99 a month.

More Useful Information For Pregnant And Postnatal Women

• The free, expert-approved pregnancy workout plan every expectant mother should know about
• Expert advice on running when pregnant, from first to third trimester
• What women need to know about postnatal exercise
• Suspension training exercises for postnatal women

What motivates you to exercise? In an ideal world, your first response should be the sheer unadulterated joy of it, but we don’t live in an ideal world, and for most people the responses will involve hoping to lose weight, or getting fitter and healthier.

If you use the fitness app Sweatcoin, though, it could be cash. Sweatcoin, like other reward apps Running Heroes or Pact, aims to incentivise you to get moving by awarding you Sweatcoins if you do. These coins can then be used to purchase a variety of rewards, ranging from small items like a razor or a trial of a streaming service all the way up to a new iPhone (you’ll be doing a lot of walking for a couple of years if that’s your goal). The rewards cost anywhere from five coins up to 20,000, with 1,000 outdoor steps earning you 0.95 Sweatcoins.

It’s a simple idea, and one that works, according to new research undertaken by the Institute of Digital Healthcare at the University of Warwick. The study, which named Sweatcoin’s founders as co-authors, looked at 6,000 Sweatcoin users and found an average sustained increase of around 20% in their daily step count over the six months they used the app, compared with the three months before they signed up.

Perhaps most encouragingly, the users most likely to increase their step count were those who had previously been particularly sedentary. This is right in line with the app’s main aim, according to Anton Derlyatka, one of Sweatcoin’s founders.

“Sweatcoin’s mission is to make the planet more active with an emphasis on the people who struggle to find motivation,” Derlyatka told Coach. “We are less concerned with making people who are already active – say walking or running 10,000 steps a day, or cycling or swimming – even more active. Our core focus is reaching those who struggle to find motivation for the most basic types of physical activity, such as walking, and make them walk more. For example taking 900 steps a day, up from 600 steps a day.

“The fact that Sweatcoin drives a disproportionate increase in activity level among those with extra weight or low activity levels means we are successful at targeting the segment that is most difficult to reach. This segment is the major driver of obesity and other conditions linked to lack of physical activity.”

Sweatcoin doesn’t reward any activity aside from walking outdoors, so regular gym-goers or swimmers won’t be earning anything from the app, though keen runners might find they rack up a lot of coins in short order. However, to do that you will have to upgrade your membership, because free users of the app can only earn up to five coins a day or 150 a month. There are four levels of membership at the moment, with the top one allowing you to earn 20 coins a day and 600 a month.

The good news is you upgrade your membership using Sweatcoins and it’s certainly a worthy investment to do so if you are racking up the steps each day. The top level of membership costs 30 coins a month, so if you’re earning 20 a day it quickly pays for itself. The study did not look at the different subscription levels people had with the app, just the step count logged each day, because the app tracks your total steps regardless of whether you’re getting rewards for all of them.

Download Sweatcoin on the App Store or Google Play | Free

If you have grand plans to get fit in 2019 but aren’t sure exactly how to make it happen, then here’s a freebie that you should take advantage of. Fitness app FiiT, one of the best workout apps, is offering free access to a 30-day plan that includes a range of workout videos you can play in the app and follow at home.

Classes in general are great for beginners, because you don’t have to think about what to actually do in the gym – just follow what the trainer says and you’ll get fitter. Classes you can do at home without having to pay a penny? Well that’s even better.

We were impressed when we reviewed the FiiT app at launch, and since then the range of classes has expanded massively, with the sessions grouped in three categories – Cardio, Strength and Rebalance.

The Cardio classes are HIIT workouts with a focus is on getting your heart rate up and increasing your cardiovascular fitness, while Strength sessions involve bodyweight exercises to build muscle. The Rebalance section of the app consists of yoga and Pilates sessions to improve your flexibility and mobility.

On the 30-day free plan you don’t get access to everything on FiiT, but you do get access to four classes a week across the categories, which will be more than enough to get you going in the new year. The balance of HIIT and strength workouts alongside the stretching sessions will help ensure you don’t go overboard in one discipline and burn yourself out, instead laying a broad foundation for a year of active pursuits.

You don’t have to enter any payment details to take advantage of the 30-day plan, which is available from 2nd January 2019. Just download the FiiT app (App Store only) and select the 30-Day Plan within the app. You also don’t have to start the 30 days promptly on the 2nd January – you can sign up at any point before the 31st, after which the plan will only be available to premium FiiT members.

Premium membership to the app gives access to every class FiiT has and costs £45 a quarter or £120 a year. If you opt for premium membership you also get sent a FiiT heart rate tracking chest strap that links to the app to count reps in Strength sessions and help ensure you’re working at the right intensity in Cardio classes.

One of the most common barriers to falling asleep is a restless mind, which is what this meditation app aims to address. There are several guided meditation sessions and a seven day course all dedicated to helping you sleep better, along with a range of Sleep Stories – short tales narrated by the likes of Stephen Fry – designed to help you fall asleep. You can try the 7 Days Of Sleep meditation course and one Sleep Story for free, but you’ll need a premium subscription for access to the rest of the app. calm.com

Download on App Store and Google Play | Free, premium £9.99 monthly, £35.99 annually

If you own an Apple Watch and are interested in sleep tracking, this is the best app available. Pillow will track your sleep automatically if you wear the watch overnight, and gives a detailed breakdown of your rest, including time spent in REM, light and deep sleep, with your heart rate plotted over the top to see how it changes during different sleep states. Pillow also breaks down your sleep into two rings – one showing sleep duration and the other sleep quality – that fit with the activity ring style on the Apple Watch. Finally, there’s a smart alarm that will wake you up when you are sleeping lightly so you’re not groggy, and personalised recommendations to improve your rest. neybox.com/pillow-sleep-tracker

Download on App Store | Free, premium £4.99

The blue light that emanates from electronic devices can disrupt your sleep if you use them in the hours before bedtime, so the simplest bit of tech that could help your rest is a filter that bathes your screen in mind-soothing red light in the evening. There are a few apps available to do this on Android, such as Night Shift: Blue Light Filter and Twilight.

Download Night Shift on Google Play | Download Twilight on Google Play | Both free

Night Shift is a simple blue light filter feature baked into Apple’s operating system that allows you set a period of the day, say 10pm to 7am, when your phone or tablet will switch to warmer colours on the display (find it under Settings > Display & Brightness).

Bedtime is another built-in feature found in the Clock app that aims to ensure you keep a consistent bedtime, which should help you sleep better, and wakes you up gradually with a choice of gentle alarms.

Available on Apple devices running iOS 10 and later | Free

Based on research done to help NASA’s astronauts sleep, this app has a wealth of science to make you sleep faster, longer and deeper. Sleep Genius uses jargon like “neuro-sensory algorithms” and “psychoacoustic music” to explain how it works. In other words: soothing noises. sleepgenius.com

Download on App Store and Google Play | £3.99

A lot of apps claim to wake you up during a light sleep phase so you feel refreshed and relaxed when your alarm goes off, rather than sluggish and unhappy, but this might be the one that delivers on that promise with the most consistency. Sleep Cycle also provides analysis of your sleep, which you can then compare with stats from people around the world and also check against habits, like drinking or working out, so you can see how they affect your rest. sleepcycle.com 

Download on App Store and Google Play | Free, pro 99p-£1.49 

Sometimes the only thing you need to drift off to sleep is the right background noise, especially if you need to drown out the hubbub of city life. This free app gives a range of options to try, including a crackling fireplace or the Niagara Falls. whitenoisemarket.com

Download on App Store and Google Play | Free

People looking to track their activity with an app have an almost overwhelming amount of choice, with excellent free options available to record every possible type of exercise, and runners and cyclists especially well catered for. All of which means it takes an offering that hits the absolute centre of the sweet spot to convince anyone to part with their hard-earned. And that’s the spot activity tracking app Strava has aimed for by slicing and dicing its previous premium package and offering the pieces under the Strava Summit banner. You can still get all of Strava’s premium features through the full Summit membership, but if only a couple of features are of value to you, you might find that you can sign up for a cheaper pack with just the ones you want.

The new packs are called Training, Analysis and Safety. As you’d expect, the Training pack is aimed at people training to achieve a goal, such as completing a race in a particular time. The pack delivers training plans and in-depth pace analysis of their races, among other features designed to get people in shape to hit their target.

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Many people link Strava to a GPS device, heart rate monitor or a power meter, and it’s those people the Analysis pack is designed for. Stand-out features include Workout Analysis, which breaks down your training into pace zones, and Relative Effort, which is designed to keep you working at the right level to build fitness without over-exerting yourself.

The third pack on offer is Safety, where the star attraction is Beacon. This allows people to send their location to select contacts so they can be tracked on a map during an activity. If you’re constantly heading out to trails in the middle of nowhere with spotty phone reception, or just tackling a daily cycle commute on busy city streets, Beacon allows friends or family to check where you are.

Each of the new packs cost £2.99 a month or £18.99 for a year, while the full Summit membership including all features clocks in at £6.99 a month or £47.99 a year. Current premium members will continue to have access to all features at the current price of £5.99 a month.