Living a healthy lifestyle is always a challenge, and maintaining it with busy schedule is even more difficult. It can be hard to find ways to stay motivated during your health journey, so finding workouts that you enjoy is vital. Over the course of the past few months due to COVID-19, most local gyms had to close, making it difficult to stay active during quarantine. Over the past several months, I have tried many different workout apps that I have found to be just as effective as in-person classes.
Seven
If you’re looking to fit in a quick but effective workout, Seven is great for people with busy schedules- the workouts take seven minutes! This is a free app, and it’s great for people who are new to exercise. The classes are HIIT (high intensity interval training) workouts with 12 exercises that last 30 seconds each. If you want to push yourself for longer than seven minutes, you can double up and take classes back to back.
Nike
Nike has an amazing reputation in the world of athletes. The Nike Training Club is free, and allows its users to access a large variety of different workouts that focus on specific goals. The workouts vary in intensity, and there’s a wide variety including classes that focus on stretches.
8Fit
8Fit not only includes awesome workouts, but also offers meal planning tips! Diet is a key element to maintaining a healthy lifestyle and requires planning ahead to manage in a positive way. Meal planning allows people to come up with tasty and healthy alternatives prepared early in the week, and helps prevent the last-minute unhealthy choices we make in a pinch.
Peleton
My top pick for a fitness app is the Peloton App, which costs $12.99 per month for unlimited access to a variety of classes including spinning, strength training, yoga, bootcamp, stretching, and meditation classes, and more. It is the priciest option, but it offers more classes than any other app and the instructors are highly interactive.
Headspace
In terms of mental wellness apps, I have found Headspace to be the best. Headspace has been around for awhile and is a very popular app offering both meditation and mindfulness services. You can use Headspace throughout the day, and it’s great for unwinding before bed. This app has helped me get better nights sleep, allowing me to feel more clearheaded and refreshed the next day. During this period of high stress and anxiety from both school and the pandemic, I have found Headspace to be the most effective way for me to keep everything in perspective.
Meditopia
Meditopia offers different types of meditation that focus on stress, anxiety, motivation, acceptance, and more. Providing motivation as a form of mediation allows me to stay positive physically and emotionally when things get stressful.
Sleep Cycle
Asie from activity and nutrition, sleep is one of the most important attributes to living a healthy lifestyle. With Sleep Cycle, I can track my sleep
patterns and measure when I am in light and deep rest.
Calm
Calm is a mediation app that offers different audio choices based on your preference. I use this app for sleep meditations and falling asleep. They offer sounds like heavy rain, which is my favorite audio choice to help calm me down and fall asleep.