Calling All iPhone Fitness Apps

CONNECTIONS | by MOLLY MARTIN

I STOPPED COUNTING AFTER 5,040: Fitness-related applications for the iPhone, that is. Wait, aren’t computers supposed to count such things for us?

© FITNESSKEEPER Inc.

Anyhow, the next and certainly not final frontier in exercise entrepreneurship seems to be software for smart phones that somehow helps with our workouts. You can track exercise sessions and duration, calculate calories burned, log calories consumed, read exercise descriptions, watch demonstration videos, even go through guided sessions for inspiration or relaxation.

Some concepts are simple: Hundred Pushups ($1.99) helps you follow a six-week plan to be able to do 100 consecutive push-ups. (There’s also Two Hundred Situps ($1.99) and, soon, Twenty-five Pullups.)

Others are more comprehensive and can be a little scary: The RunKeeper (free for basic version, $9.99 for pro) uses the GPS capabilities in a 3G iPhone to track your pace, elevation, duration, calories burned and actual distance traveled — and traces your actual path on a map. Very cool. But wait, that wasn’t really me ducking into Mrs. See’s after that workout…

And some fall into a familiar trap: The SixPack App Pro ($.99), for example, nicely shows a range of exercises for the abdominal muscles, but as everyone who’s fallen for an infomercial ab machine knows, a six pack is visible only if one also gets rid of the layer of fat that covers most bellies.

Smart-phone exercise apps do indeed hold the promise of making exercise easier. And, yes, tracking exercise better. But still there remains the age-old problem: Actually doing it.