What mobile fitness apps do users really need?

The fitness market is rapidly assimilating itself into the digital world. Technology leaders, such as Google, Apple, Samsung, Nike, and Amazon, have been quick in their responses to this trend and have introduced various mobile fitness apps. Nowadays, just knowing the level of your cardio workout from last week is not enough. People want to know their optimum heart rate, the speed, time, and calories burnt in cardio exercises in each workout since they want to compare those results to previous their workouts. It’s nice when fitness trackers can provide this kind of information in the middle of fitness activity and display the data in an easy and informative way.

But what do mobile fitness apps users really need?

Smartphone users want tools that will help motivate them and organize their fitness plans – and that includes the possibility of replacing a personal fitness instructor with a mobile fitness application. Health and fitness apps’ ability to set a goal for the user and help them reach and exceed it, meanwhile measuring progress on each workout level, is also important. There are many fitness applications with quite a breadth of functions, such as fitness activity trackers, calorie calculators, heart rate monitoring, digital coaches, timers, and more.

The best fitness tracker apps are designed to track, take measurements from, analyze, and motivate the user

A trainer fitness app analyses users’ fitness activity levels and measures their progress. Having analyzed the data, the digital trainer creates a plan to increase activity goals. When it all comes down to it, a good fitness app evaluates the user’s activities and provides further recommendations. Digital applications train the user like a personal coach does while running, jogging, power walking, and during training programs. Besides their heart rate, it also records users’ distance, time, and stair climbing and jogging pace.

Over the years, the huge popularity of fitness tracker bracelets like Fitbit and Jawbone UP has evolved from a market-targeted niche mainly from fitness gurus to now mainstream usage. Unlike the fitness bracelet, a smartphone is always with the user, providing them daily monitoring of their fitness and health. Wearable fitness trackers, except smartwatches, require constant synchronization with a smartphone or computer; they also cannot deliver the user the information during the exercises. A fitness tracker app is a simple way of turning your phone into a wearable fitness gadget. It uses GPS to track users’ movements and then creates a neat, analytical data timeline, monitors users’ physical activity, and keeps track of their cardio exercises statistics. A fitness tracker app is largely used to enter users’ fitness goals, a number of calories a cardio exercise burns, as well as measuring other sports activities that require time tracking.

Nowadays, workout apps for smart devices are adjusted to the pace of fitness enthusiasts of all levels. Over 8 million people use the All-in-Fitness app to get in or stay in great shape! The application includes a database of 1,200 Exercises + HD video instructions, 300 yoga poses, and 100 workouts in all categories. The All-in Fitness app features a calorie counter, a BMI calculator, and it also measures your speed, distance, and the calories you’ve burnt. For people who like to compete, share their results, and compare their progress with others, they have the chance to publish all of their successes and failures to social media. ‘Fit N’share is a motivational online social network community from the All-in-Fitness app that helps users check on their goals, challenge themselves, and compete with the goals of their friends, colleagues, and other users.

Some fitness trackers and smartwatches are already beyond step, heart, and distance trackers, offering a sleep-tracking function, which checks how much you slept at night, the night before, over the entire week, and during the past couple months. Thus, sleep quality is added to the overall, comprehensive wellness tracking assortment. Their trackers provide an analytical dashboard that indicates your sleeping process and they can also wake you up with silent and vibrating alarms. Such fitness apps can monitor various health areas that you specify and suggest how you can improve them too.

Technology always promises to make our everyday lives easier, but it can just as easily make it even more complicated and overwhelming. Unfortunately, not all of the health and wellness devices display data in a clear, straightforward way. Some fitness applications do not just record the data and interpret it, but rather, they follow a trend driven by people’s obsession with analytics and supply the customers with tons of unnecessary information. Such fitness activity trackers are not what the user really needs for fitness activity.

So, what is the best fitness app? Overall, it is the application that helps users to start and maintain a level of fitness activity, that encourages and monitors progress, and that does not complicate the data because, otherwise, it will only cause the user frustration. Fitness applications help customers to stay focused on their fitness goals. For users who may need that extra motivation, the fitness tracker apps prove really useful in achieving greater results.

Regina Akhmetova