Good Gym Design App To Use On Google Play Store

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 extensive planning, or you can just download one of the many excellent workout apps that exist for your smartphone.

These will do all the planning for you and chuck in some motivation too. Here are the best workout apps.

Home Workout Apps With Free Trials

With much of the world in some sort of lockdown and gyms shuttered, home workout apps are having a moment and many of them are offering extended free trials of their premium features. Here are a few choice picks we think are worth giving a whirl – line up your free trials consecutively and you can see yourself through the next few months nicely.

FiiT

Our favourite home workout app has a premium feel to it, with workouts led by celebrity trainers (and sometimes celebrities – Fearne Cotton pops up for one) that fit into three areas: strength, cardio and rebalance, the latter including things like stretching and yoga classes. You can currently try out FiiT premium for 14 days for free, gaining access to the 500-plus classes on the app.

Download on App Store and Google Play | FIIT review

Peloton

You don't need a Peloton bike to use the app (good thing too considering they cost just shy of £2,000), which is laden with workouts across all manner of disciplines. There are spinning sessions of course, if you happen to have an exercise bike or a turbo trainer set-up, as well as strength workouts, audio guided runs, yoga and meditation classes, and a whole lot more. You can try it all for free for two months.

Join on onepeloton.co.uk | Download on App Store or Google Play | Peloton bike review

Fitbit Premium

This app is useful regardless of whether or not you have a Fitbit strapped to your wrist, but if you do it will naturally be that little bit more useful owing to the integration with the tracker. There are many guided programmes on the app that can help you get fitter, eat better and look after your mental health, and there are also 250 on-demand workouts you can follow at home. The trial is also for a generous 90 days.

Download on App Store or Google Play

David Lloyd Clubs @home

Like many other gym chains, David Lloyd has opted to grant free access to its home workout app during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Along with over 600 classes, covering a wide range of activities from HIIT to yoga to post-natal workouts, the app also has a community vibe with users arranging quizzes, virtual coffee mornings and book clubs. There is also a virtual running club you can join, and members are encouraged to exercise each day for the David Lloyd Mile, which is a great way to nudge families to get outside for at least a short while each day.

Download on App Store and Google Play

Wondercise

The Wondercise app is full of video workouts and training plans to hit all manner of fitness goals. To get the most from it you can pair a Wondercise band, Apple Watch or Garmin fitness tracker with the app, which will enable it to track your movements and heart rate during workouts and award you points. While the Wondercise band itself is slim and comfortable, we did find that you get more accurate heart rate tracking from an Apple Watch. A Wondercise subscription is £4.99 a month, but you can try the service free for 14 days.

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

PureGym

The gym chain's partner app is usually available only to its members but during the latest lockdown it's been made available to all for free. The app contains over 400 workouts across a range of exercise types that are suitable for all levels of fitness.

Download from App Store and Google Play | Free

Oro

This app has been created in partnership with the Sports Performance Team at Loughborough University, which include coaches and nutritional experts who work with Olympians and other pro athletes. When you set up the app you get a workout and a nutrition plan, which generates a handy shopping list. Oro offers a lot of this for free, but the premium service adds a wider variety of recipes and the flexibility to change the exercises in workouts, along with other benefits. At the moment, you can try the premium plan free for two weeks and see if you consider it worth the upgrade.

Download from App Store and Google Play | Free, premium £8.99 a month

Centr

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. The free trial on this app is for seven days. That'll be plenty of time to find out if you can handle living like a Hemsworth, because living like a Hemsworth is pretty full on.

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

Eastnine

This app is chock-full of guided running, strength and stretching workouts, and you can test it out with a seven-day trial. If you've started running during the lockdown then it's well worth exploring Eastnine's range of audio-guided sessions, which can introduce you to things like interval and tempo training, and make your runs more enjoyable thanks to the coach in your ear. The app has recently added video workouts to follow at home, as well as nutrition advice and tips to keep you moving and motivated.

Download on App Store

Auro

Auro offers hundreds of audio-guided workouts that can be done using no equipment, or using cardio machines or free weights if you have them. You can get 14 days of Auro's premium service for free at the moment, while NHS staff can get a 50% discount on longer memberships using this sign-up link.

Download on App Store or Google Play

The Best Home Workout Apps

There is, naturally, heightened interest in workout apps due to the COVID-19 pandemic and various social isolation strategies put in place by different countries. So we've rearranged our list of the best workout apps to highlight the ones that help you train at home.

We've included apps that may require dumbbells or resistance bands, so double-check you have (or are prepared to pay for) the necessary equipment before committing to a premium service.

Best For Exercise Classes: Fiit

Bring the boutique gym experience into your home with this app and its ever-expanding catalogue of video workouts. The workouts are divided up into strength, cardio and rebalance (yoga and Pilates) sessions, and your movement and heart rate is monitored throughout via a chest strap that's included with your subscription and will also count your reps. There's something for everyone, no matter your current fitness level, and you can pick between 25-minute and 40-minute workouts to suit your schedule and/or motivation.

Join on fiit.tv | Download from App Store and Google Play | £20 a month, £45 for three months, £120 a year | FIIT review

Best For Guided Workouts: Nike+ Training Club

There are more than 185 workouts in this app covering a range of activities, including mobility work and yoga alongside pure strength sessions. And 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.

Download from App Store and Google Play | Free, premium £13.49 a month

Best For Fitting To You: Trion

Rather than picking workouts one at a time, this app encourages you to share your details and goals, and put the time you set aside for fitness entirely in the hands of the software. There's a good range of aims to pick from, and you can determine when you want to work out and test your fitness to assess your current level before it generates your plan. For example, we plugged in the goal of improving our athletic performance and specified two days a week where we could work out using bodyweight moves only. Trion spat out two workouts a week to fit that goal, changing each week to keep it fresh. You can do the same with other goals like losing weight, or increasing endurance, and also say what kit you have to hand or whether you're heading to a fully-equipped gym (when possible). The workouts all have warm-ups and warm-downs, and videos guide you through every step.

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

Best For Postnatal Workouts: Jennis

Jessica Ennis-Hill's app offers quick HIIT workouts which are suitable for everyone, but what sets it apart are the pregnancy and postnatal sections, where expectant and new mothers can find a range of training sessions suited to them. The pregnancy section is broken down by trimester, while the postnatal workouts start slow and short, and are designed to build your fitness up slowly. Each section has a variety of workouts, including yoga sessions, so there'll be something to suit your mood on any given day. jennisfitness.com

Download from App Store and Google Play | £9.99 a month

Best App To Overhaul Your Life: Centr

The Chris Hemsworth-fronted fitness app is more life coach than workout app, with a seven-days-a-week meal planner and mindfulness session all included. That's complemented with a six-days-a-week schedule of workouts, with variations to suit every level from some of the A-list trainers Hemsworth has worked with, spanning functional bodyweight moves, yoga, boxing and MMA training, and weights-based gym training.

Join on centr.com | Download from App Store or Google Play | From £7.83 a month | Centr review

Best For Coaching: Freeletics Personal Trainer

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.

Download from App Store and Google Play | £25.99 for three months

Best For Transformations: F45 Challenge

This app is eye-wateringly expensive, but if you're looking for a comprehensive plan that will allow you to make serious changes in a short period – including workouts and a meal plan with recipes, with the option of a meal delivery service – then this app is your best shot. The free version offers nutritional advice and goal-setting tools, but paid membership affords you access to the F45 virtual challenge, a 45-day programme that will help you get very fit indeed.

It uses the library of on-demand video workouts used in the studio franchise's in-person classes, along with a meal plan, shopping lists and access to over 1,000 recipes. You'll also be tackling the challenge at the same time as others since they run on a schedule. The next start date is Monday 18th January, and subsequent challenges tend to begin four weeks after the end of the last one.

To join the challenge you need to be a member of your nearest F45 studio – membership costs from £25 a week. You can then also choose to sign up to the meal delivery service in the challenge app, which is provided by Fresh Fitness Food (our favourite meal delivery service). It costs £150 for five days' worth of food or £203 for seven days' worth. Like we said, it's not cheap, but the challenge is sure to whip you into shape, and when F45 studios reopen you can put that membership to good use with in-person workouts.

Download from App Store and Google Play | Free, from £25 a week for full membership

Best For Abs Workouts: Runtastic Six Pack Abs

If you're looking for a rounded approach to training that will develop your entire body, then look away now. This app has one goal in mind and that's to net you a rocking set of washboard abs. Or at least strengthen your core considerably, which is also good. There are more than 50 abs workout videos and a ten-week six-pack plan to follow, none of which requires any equipment so you can do the exercises anywhere.

Download from App Store and Google Play | Free, pro version £4.99

Best For A Quick Workout: Seven

There are a whole host of seven-minute workouts in this excellent workout app for beginners, which all fit into one of three categories – Get Fit, Lose Weight or Get Strong. All of the workouts can be done without any equipment, so you can get your training done anywhere any time you have seven minutes to spare.

Download from App Store and Google Play | Free, premium £9.99 a month

Best Yoga Workout App: Pocket Yoga

Yoga can be a tricky activity to follow from an app, especially if you're a complete beginner, because learning the poses so you can flow between them quickly during a session takes some time. This app makes it easier with a 200-strong library of poses that you can look through to get a grounding in the basics before trying one of the 27 vinyasa yoga classes offered.

Download from App Store and Google Play | £2.99

Best Audio Workout App: Aaptiv

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. 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 want you want from your audio coaching.

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

Best Alternative Workout App: CARROT Fit

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, but if you've had no success with normal seven-minute workouts it'll cost you less than a fiver to try something very different.

Download from App Store | £3.99

Best 30-Day Challenge App: 30 Day Fitness Challenge

The best way to start your fitness kick with a bang is to cash in all that early confidence by committing to a 30-day challenge. This app has three 30-day challenges available: full body, abs and butt, for those who are really committed to sculpting their glutes.

Download from Google Play | Free

Best Beginner Workout App: Sworkit

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 guide you through a variety of exercises in a circuit.

Download from App Store and Google Play | Free, premium £3.99 a month

Best Workout Apps For The Gym

Of course, you can recreate a gym at home given a garage and a big enough budget. Consider a weight bench, barbells, weight plates, Smith machines and multi-gyms.

Best For Serious Lifters: Gymaholic

With a huge library of exercises and routines Gymaholic is another great option for weights enthusiasts, but what really makes this app stand out is the 3D augmented-reality animated exercises. You create your own avatar in the app and it then shows you how to do the exercises and highlight the muscles you have worked in your training. You have to see it to believe it.

Download from App Store | Free, premium £3.49 a month

Best For The Weights Room: StrongLifts 5x5

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 workouts a week of 45 minutes each, and a nice motivational trick is the app's prediction of the weight you'll be lifting with each exercise after 12 weeks.

Download from App Store and Google Play | Free, premium £8.49 for three months