WHICH FITNESS SERVICE?

APPLE FITNESS+

If you’re an Apple user, you’ll love Fitness+. It integrates tightly with your iphone, your Apple Watch and your Apple TV to deliver genuinely personalised workouts and coaching across every conceivable activity: not just traditional workouts and runs but also HIIT, yoga and dancing. It’s £9.99/m for up to six users in one household (everybody gets their own version so your family won’t mess up your stats), and the audio and video guides are very high-quality. If you’re all-in on Apple, it tracks all kinds of things – including walking the dog and mooching around the shops – and it works seamlessly with Apple’s Health app.

NIKE RUN CLUB

Nike Run Club is all about motivation. It uses gamification – with videogame-style encouragement and rewards – and friendly challenges to keep you pounding the pavements, and it’s very good at congratulating you on little wins as well as big milestones. You can share your achievements, which turns out to be a very effective way of getting you off the sofa and into your running shoes. It’s a polished, beautifully designed app with excellent visuals and good music integration, and it’s ad-supported so you don’t have to pay a penny. This is a superb option for urban and rural running.

PELOTON

Peloton might be known for its extremely expensive stationary bikes, but you don’t need a Peloton bike to use the app – and it’s not just about cycling either. Its video guides cover a wide range of fitness activities including cycling, strength training and running but also boxing, yoga and Pilates. Classes are both live and on-demand so you can use them at times that suit you, and there’s a particularly good collection of guides covering recovery and mobility. In addition to phone and tablet apps, Peloton also works on multiple TV platforms including Apple, Google, Roku and Amazon. The price is surprisingly low too: £12.99/m.

SWEAT

Sweat was designed for women and non-binary people; and while it covers all the key workout types, there are also programmes you won’t find in many apps – such as post-pregnancy fitness and workouts based on barre, which is a low-impact exercise technique that combines elements of ballet, yoga and Pilates. One of Sweat’s key selling points is that you can use it anywhere, even if you don’t have any equipment to hand: it’s packed with workouts that’ll really push your body no matter where you happen to be, and the superb Apple Watch app means you don’t need to have your phone handy. It’s £14.99/m.