Not being able to make a gym class doesn’t mean you have to press pause on your fitness goals. There are loads of amazing workouts, apps and fitness influencers offering whole programmes to follow to keep you moving and keep you motivated. We’ve been using these since the start of the year and they’re perfect to use if you’re staying in more.
The London Fitness Guy
We got to know about The London Fitness Guy through Instagram. His daily posts give you a circuit to blast through, often with a routine of five exercises to complete as many times as possible within a set time, or through a number of 40 seconds on, 20 seconds off blasts. There’s minimal equipment, making it accessible to all, and you don’t even need a lot of space to make a workout happen. He also offers a ton of advice on rest, nutrition, which workouts are best for certain goals as well as inspirational stories and the realities of how even the fittest people have bad days, so he’s super relatable. You can also subscribe to his app and follow a tailored 12-week program to burn fat, build muscle and boost your overall fitness.
Shona Vertue
Shona is a badass with a good ass, her words not ours (100% true though). The Aussie-born personal trainer and yoga teacher lives between London and Sydney and is a bit of an Instagram fitness superstar. Shona makes YouTube and Instagram vids to follow as well as all kinds of interesting and insightful clips on life advice with a wellness focus. Oh and there’s dancing, lots of dancing. We first followed Shona in an effort to do more yoga, then found her 12-week program and boom, we became members of the Vertue Method program for video workouts that we smashed 4 times a week. These change up every two weeks; Saturdays are all about getting outdoors and surrounding yourself in nature and Sunday is for yoga, to refocus your mind and check in with your body. Nutrition is super important and Shona shares lots and lots of recipes for breakfast to dinner and all the snacks in between.
FitOn
FitOn is an app that is totally free and with short videos across an array of disciplines. Yoga, HIIT, dancing, kickboxing, weights…whatever you prefer, there’s a workout for you. It’s a bit like Netflix in that sense, you can dip in and out of anything that is taking your fancy. There are celebrity trainers on there as well as PT’s who take you through the workouts. You need to pay to unlock the pro features but it’s worth it. The app reminds us every day that we’ve said we want to commit a workout to and it tracks our progress week on week, so it’s good for motivation and to see how that journey is progressing.
Strava
If running is your thing then you need Strava in your life. The app is free to use and tracks your runs across distance and speed. It also breaks this down into segments to show what bits you run faster or slower, as well as placing you in a leaderboard of other Strava users running the same route. It’s perfect if you’re the competitive type because it’s all about getting that number one spot in your neighbourhood right? We can tell you that it feels pretty damn awesome getting that ‘PB’ badge at the end of a run, although we’ve not quite hit the top of a leaderboard yet. One of our favourite features is having audio notifications telling us the time for every kilometre covered. It even calculates if that km was quicker or slower than the last one, so really good to push if you start slacking. All routes are stored and shown via an orange line on a map in the app. The more you get into this, the more you will see those orange lines come to life and probably notice you’ve run a route that looks like a giraffe.
Freeletics
If you’re one to make excuses about not having the right equipment for a workout, then get the Freeletics app. There are hundreds of workouts to challenge every muscle group and fitness goal, and there isn’t a kettlebell in sight. The focus is on using your own bodyweight as your tool to boost your fitness and sculpt your figure. The app is free and features step-by-step video instructions on how to complete the exercises, though you’ll need to become a premium user to unlock more plans and features. It’s a great app and don’t be fooled into thinking that just using your bodyweight makes it easy because these are by far some of the most challenging workouts we’ve faced. You will need a towel.
