6 Essential Apps To Stay In Shape

No matter where you travel — city streets, forest trails or at home on the treadmill — Nike+ Running will follow you.

It tracks your route, distance, time, pace and calories burned. Set goals and track your progress with Nike+ Coach. The app will give you a cheer in real time if you post your run to Facebook and receive a like or comment.

Challenge yourself to beat your own personal best from yesterday or last week.

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Lose it! sets personal fitness plans for each user. It factors in your age, weight, gender and fitness goals to come up with the number of calories you should be consuming each day. It’s up to you to log your food and exercise, but the Lose It! resources make it easy.

The app’s database has nutrition information from thousands of restaurants, grocery stores and brand name foods. It also lets you factor in exercise to get an accurate calorie budget.

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Prefer cycling to running? MapMyRide has got you covered.

The app has more than 70 million routes to chose from, or you can create your own. Like the Nike+ Running app, MapMyRide records the duration, pace, speed, elevation and calories burned for each ride. You can easily save and upload your workout data to MapMyRide.

Share the details of your cycling adventures with friends and family on social media.

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This app is exactly what you need to get that swimsuit ready for summer.

Abs Trainer has tons of abdominal workouts both with and without exercise equipment. Each exercise has step-by-step instructions on how to perform the move, and information about which muscles it’s specifically targeting.

The app also offers a selection of different workouts that are timed, ranging between seven and 17 minutes each with varying levels of difficulty.

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Moves is an “automatic diary of your life,” as in it shows where, when and how you move in a sleek, storyline format. What makes this app different is that it’s always running, which is why it’s recommended that you charge your phone every night.

Moves works as a pedometer, and it automatically recognizes when you are walking, bicycling and running. It includes a calorie counter for your activities, and options for adding gym training and other activities that are not automatically recognized.

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Getting a good night’s sleep is a vital part of staying in shape. Sure, you don’t even need an additional app to set and customize multiple alarms on your phone, but SleepBot’s smart alarm will find the best time to wake up up within a 30-minute window before your first alarm.

When falling asleep, just hit the start sleep button so that SleepBot can track your movement and sounds while resting (only if you allow it, of course). In the morning, you can review your sleep, adding notes, ratings or hashtags so you can come up with the best sleep patterns.

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