The digital fitness landscape offers a solution for every goal, age, and training style. The key is to choose the one that aligns with your lifestyle and removes the friction from starting your workout. The best workout apps for women are the ones that make you excited to move.
Best Strength Workout App for Women: JuggernautAI
Some workouts may also require equipment in order to follow tutorials in select apps. Our tester shared that the AI even adjusted her workout in real time after she rated her perceived exertion at 10 during her second of three sets. She said, “The AI deleted the third set it had planned because I reached an RPE 10 (max effort) on the second set. So, it just stopped me at 2×10.” This is a useful feature both for experienced strength athletes who may push too hard and beginners who are still learning their limits. While Aaptiv is self-driven because there is no personal training, it does offer some limited interactivity, earning a 3 out of 5 from our tester. She noted, “You can check out other people’s workouts on the community feed, but that’s what fitness apps work best with apple watch? about it.” It also does not offer any GPS tracking for when you take it on a run or walk.
What to Consider When Choosing the Best Workout Apps for Women
The app tailors workouts to your fitness level, tracks progress, and includes nutrition guidance, making it a top choice for women seeking a complete fitness solution. WH editors and our trusted Strength In Diversity (SID) trainers are constantly testing and trying new fitness apps throughout the year, so we polled them about their most-used and most-loved platforms. The apps on this list represent the ones that fast-tracked strength and performance gains, were user-friendly, and really delivered on the user experience, and kept us returning to our workout plan. Consider these picks the ones we will never delete (even if we are running low on storage!). Our top pick for the best workout app for women is Future, which relies on the expertise of a real-life personal trainer. Finding and affording a personal trainer is more costly, and they will not be nearly as accessible.
Obviously, the age of technology that brought us these apps has come with its own issues—but man, do these apps help you de-stress from thinking about them! Ahead we listed some of our favorite workout apps that require minimal equipment, give you actual results, won’t blow the bank, and may even be taught by a celebrity or two. The best workout app for you covers the exercises you’re interested in doing at a level that’s accessible to you. Ideally, a good fitness app will support multiple levels of expertise so that as you get fitter and more comfortable, you can push yourself to the next level. If you’ve ever done a BodyPump class in your local gym, you’ll have been introduced to the world of Les Mills. It’s a series of tempo-based classes, set to music, designed to get you fitter and stronger.
We encourage you to use a simple checklist when choosing between platforms without getting lost in marketing. Check the quality of coaching, the clarity of progress tracking, and whether the content aligns with your life stage. Confirm that the platform has strong privacy controls, an inclusive tone and updates new sessions every week rather than recycling old fitness content. If you ever type favorite fitness into a search bar, remember that the most popular results are not always the best fit for you. A shortlist of 15 apps on a blog will not know your schedule, equipment or preferences the way our recommendations do, and we think that difference shows within your first few sessions. Women see wide ranging benefits from resistance work across strength, bone health, metabolic health and confidence.
The Audio Trainer (Spotify)
It is a brilliant novice resource, taking you from the point at which 90 straight seconds of running nearly kills you to 20 minutes of effortless (ish) gliding in eight short weeks. Lewis’s Insta content is a bit poetic – sometimes she’ll just go on a hike. The YouTube 30-minute cardio workouts are more systematic and challenging. You will have heard of Joe Wicks, but it would be churlish not to include him.
Best Workout App for Women: Obé
But he has a winning Australian can-do attitude and a brisk narration style. The Olympic sprinter and former TV Gladiator Jenny Stoute has exactly the perfect, straight-bodied, elegant, strong technique that you would expect – you don’t end up in the Olympics for no reason. The videos are short and useful for drilling in the right way to do a particular exercise or use a piece of equipment. I’ve done couch to 5k, then back to couch, then up to 3k and back to couch again, and hearing my coach of choice, Michael Johnson (there are five, you can choose a funnier one), say “well done” never gets old.
Best workout app for beginners
So, you’ve done the cardio, the crunches, the planks, and even the downward-facing dog. Relax Melodies allows you to cool down to a range of calming sounds including rain, wind, and white noise (i.e. not the sound of email alerts). Are you someone who wants to run more often and for longer, but finds it kind of boring? It’s an immersive, long-term “exergame”—you guessed it, an exercise game—that makes you the protagonist of a story in which zombies are chasing you and you’re trying to save humanity. This is as compelling as a really good podcast, and you’ll forget you’re even exercising. However, the partnership didn’t last and the workouts were removed from Netflix in March 2024, according to What’s on Netflix.
There are meditations, some led by Hemsworth himself, designed to connect you mind and body, and that can improve your focus and form during the strength training sessions to get the most from your workouts. If you want to, you can also add strength work, Pilates, and mobility-focused sessions into your plan, with a calendar view detailing your sessions for the week. Learning a new strength training movement, for instance, requires a visual. But if you’re on a treadmill, you don’t always need a video of a coach just telling you that it’s time to pick up the pace.
It is perfect if you do not want to stare at a screen while moving. It features world-class strength, tread bootcamps, and stretching classes with incredibly high production value. Instructors like Jess Sims bring personality and energy, making it perfect if you need motivation and a good playlist. We’re going to cover the essentials of picking an app that fits your life, followed by a categorized list of the best options out there. From heavy lifting and yoga to nutrition tracking and the gear you need to keep your phone safe while you sweat, here is what you need to know.
Minute Workout: Fitness App
There are HIIT, strength, core, yoga, Pilates, and meditation classes, taught by a range of different trainers. We are swamped with advertising for gyms, yoga studios and personal training so it’s easy to assume that getting fit or improving a technique will be expensive. But there are plenty of free or affordable classes and programmes online. We believe better results come from understanding your body and fuelling it well. That is why we include healthy recipes with macros, practical education on the why behind training, and recovery tools that keep you fresh. Our Learn section covers women’s fitness topics you ask us about most, from cycle literacy to how to structure training weeks, and we reference credible sources so you can go deeper if you wish.
- So, you’ve done the cardio, the crunches, the planks, and even the downward-facing dog.
- For beginner and experienced yogis alike, Alo Moves can be an excellent download offering over 170 flows and sessions across a wide range of yoga categories.
- Why you can trust Tom’s GuideOur writers and editors spend hours analyzing and reviewing products, services, and apps to help find what’s best for you.
- If your phone slips out of your pocket or off a mount during a run, the polycarbonate construction ensures your device and your workout data survive the fall.
- Both of our testers rated Caliber’s interactive features a 5 out of 5.
- Do you only want to keep track of your regular jogs and ensure you’re improving gradually all the time?
More Life Health
The Les Mills+ base membership gives you a stripped-back version of the app and starts from $4.99 per month. The full membership, Les Mills+ premium, gives you access to all classes and starts at $9.99 per month. All of the workouts can be done from home, and for most of them, you’ll only need one set of dumbbells.
How we chose the best workout apps
When life is full, a pocket coaching experience you trust can be the difference between not training and getting the work done. Your training should work wherever you are, so we give you complete flexibility. Prefer a home workout with minimal kit, a circuit of bodyweight moves and Pilates for core control, or a brisk session of HIIT that lifts your heart rate and mood, we have you covered. When you want the barbell, dumbbells or machines, you can switch to gym workouts in two taps and follow instructor-led sessions with clear coaching and alternatives. Our workout videos are easy to follow, and our exercise videos include tips for tempo, range and breathing, so you can feel coached, confident and safe. Evidence shows shorter higher-intensity formats can improve cardiorespiratory fitness and mental health when applied progressively, which is why you will find options for quick cardio work as well as longer steady efforts.
Best workout app for women
The app has workouts for every skill level and equipment access, provides video demonstrations, and allows you to track your progress. That’s why we put these fitness apps to the test, joining strength training sessions, yoga classes, and high-intensity routines over several weeks. If you’re looking for a top all-rounder, we recommend downloading Centr, the app developed by actor Chris Hemsworth. Yes, we think so, It offers goal-based programs, from strength training and yoga to pre or post-pregnancy fitness.