These 5 great apps help you stay in shape on the road
We salute you, frequent flyers. Between meetings, airports, and impersonal hotels, you still try to stay trim. It’s not always easy, though, especially if you’re in a new town or staying in a place with less than desirable amenities. To help you stay on track, here are some apps, sites, and services that can help you keep moving regardless of where the road may take you next.
1. No gym? No problem!
If you’re staying at an unconventional hotel without a serviceable workout space, there are plenty of apps that can help you fight the fat with just your own body weight. One worth checking out is Home Workout (Android, iOS), which features exercises to target troublesome areas as well as full-body workouts—no gym machines required. You can choose from beginner, medium, and advanced levels and chart your progress over time with easy-to-use reporting. The app sports basic functionality for free, with a more fully-featured experience available for $60 per year.
2. Ready to run
Going for a quick run is one of the most straightforward ways to burn some calories while you’re on the road, but if you’re somewhere you’ve never been before, it can be tough to tell which trails are worth your time. Thankfully, a free and helpful site called Great Runs can suggest handpicked, worthwhile routes for hundreds of popular locations around the world. Once you’ve decided on one, the site hands you off to the map of the run on MapMyRun.com, which is another good resource to find plenty of additional—albeit noncurated—runs based on your location.
3. Close-by classes
If you’re more motivated by spin, yoga, and similar sweat inducers, make sure to check out ClassPass (Android, iOS, web). A fixed monthly fee gets you access to studios and gyms in 2,500 cities around the world, with prices starting at $15 a month and running all the way up to $199 a month, depending on how many classes you’d like to be able to take. There’s a 14-day free trial to get you started, which lets you access all the available classes. In case you find yourself in a location without any nearby options, the app has built-in streaming audio and video classes as well.
4. Train when you have time
Look, not everyone has time to reliably get in a full 30- or 60-minute workout. If that’s a challenge you’re facing, then give the Sworkit Fitness (Android, iOS) app a try. Along with offering a bunch of different exercise routines—including ones just for kids—Sworkit Fitness stands out for letting you tell it how much time you have to work out. It will then put together a custom workout for however many minutes you have to spare. The app is free for a limited selection of workouts, with premium access running up to $60 per year.
5. Exercise for people who hate exercising
Sometimes it just takes a little something extra to get you moving. For that, there’s the excellent Zombies, Run! (Android, iOS) app. Part exercise app, part apocalyptic thrill ride, Zombies, Run! makes you part of a survival story with hundreds of immersive audio missions: investigate a crash site, find supplies, stuff like that. Oh, yeah: You’ll also need to run away from zombies. You’ll hear mission updates, the approaching undead, and your own music selection throughout your workouts—all designed to keep you moving without realizing you’re actually running. The first handful of missions are free, with full access priced at $6 a month or $35 per year.
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