8 of the best Apple Watch fitness apps to get you sweating

Like our physiques, it’s fair to say that some of the Apple Watch’s fitness apps are still a work in progress. Many are still tethered to their iOS app, fail to the make the most of the Watch’s powers, and lack useful complications for live, glanceable info. But a few have worked extra hard on their Apple Watch games and fought their way onto our watchOS dock. Here are our kings of the activity rings.

STRAVA

Strava’s clever trick is splitting your bike rides into known segments, which let you compete against yourself, friends and annoyingly speedy strangers who’ve done the same route. It’s simple, addictive and now has a standalone watchOS app that uses the Apple Watch’s GPS for iPhone-free rides and runs.

RUNKEEPER

Runkeeper uses the Apple Watch’s built-in GPS to let you run phone-free, something of a blessing for anyone with a hulking iPhone 8 Plus. It’s more than just a dumb tracker too, with options to set target paces and maximum heart-rates (for the app’s graphs rather than your ticker, sadly).

STREAKS WORKOUT

This one’s our favourite watchOS app for a quick calorie burn. Choose the length of your workout on the Apple Watch – the choices are 6, 12, 18 or 30 minutes – and it’ll string together your choice of some simple exercises, which are shown with little diagrams and rep counts. Think seven ‘knee raises’, into five ‘stance jacks’, into three ‘supermen’, and repeat.

GYMAHOLIC

Those gym weight machines look pretty intimidating when you start out – best to just hang out at the rowing machine and treadmill, right? That’s how we thought until we started using Gymaholic, which teaches you good lifting form using and provides some handy machine-based workouts.

GYMATIC

It’s not perfect, but Gymatic offers a glimpse of the future: it’s the only app we’ve seen that can learn to recognise which exercise you’re doing and record the number of reps. It’s only really able to auto-log exercises that involve movements of your wrist rather than your legs – but teaching it new exercises beyond the ones that are built in is just a case of repeating the movement a few times

MYSWIMPRO

Apple’s own Workout app does a fine job of tracking both indoor and outdoor swims. But if you fancy going beyond your usual 50 lengths into the world of speed-boosting swimming drills, this app is well worth a spin. Videos of each drill are only available on the iOS app, but once you’re familiar with them you can ping step-by-step training workouts to the watch.

CARROT FIT

Not a fan of robotic, stats-obsessed exercise apps? It’s time to bring Carrot’s portly ‘fitness overlord’ into your life. Rather than cheesy pats on the back, she takes the opposite approach – threatening and ridiculing your ‘flabby carcass’ into taking her ‘7 minutes in hell’ workout.

POCKET YOGA

If you already know your ‘dolphin plank’ from your ‘extended puppy’, this Apple Watch app is a useful Yoga companion, showing little diagrams of the next position, the length of the hold and how far you’re through the session. Its five ‘practices’ (or sessions) will be more than enough to unblock the pranic energy of most beginners.