Our Favourite Walking Apps to Keep You Motivated
Walking is an extremely popular low impact exercise. There are many benefits to walking, from improving cardiovascular health helping to reduce the risk of heart disease, to aiding weight loss through increasing heart rate.
If you would like to reap the benefits of walking, or are looking to get motivated again, there are many apps available to help you achieve your walking goals.
Here we have summarised some of our favourite walking apps to get your motivated.
Which app is right for you?
As there are so many different apps available, it is important you know what you want. Whether you want to track goal distance or steps, or you need advice or motivation, knowing your aims will help you find the perfect app.
With modern technology and GPS integrated on phones, most apps track workouts in distance as well as acting as pedometers recording steps. If you are doing a monthly step challenge, walking apps can be a great way to record your daily activity without special attention. Distance focussed apps may be preferable for those trying to achieve specific distance goals on longer, more purposeful walks.
Check out Race at Your Pace’s walking challenge >
Best Walking Apps
Map My Walk
Part of the ‘Map My…’ group of apps for a range of different exercises, Map My Walk specifically caters to tracking walks. The app effectively tracks a variety of walking data from distance and elevation, to pace and calorie burn. A key feature is the route tracking which enables users to save their own route, choose a popular route from the online community or share routes with others.
Ideal for those looking to keep track of their walks and distances complete with clear interfaces and simple data reporting, Map My Walk is a comprehensive tracking app.
Benefits of Map My Walk include:
- Data reporting on the app is clear and concise, allowing users to easily reflect on their walks and effect on fitness.
- App community allows users to connect, share goals, and recommend popular routes.
- It integrates with other fitness apps or wearable technology to record fitness data.
Argus
Argus is a lifestyle app tailored to health and fitness with focus on completing 30 active minutes each day. Not only are daily steps tracked, but also workouts and other aspects of health such as water intake, sleep records and food diaries.
From the activity measured, the app creates graphs and presents data for the user to reflect on. This can motivate those who want to understand the everyday activities they do that contribute towards improved health.
Benefits include:
- Fitness and healthy choices become part of daily lifestyle through considering aspects throughout the day.
- Data is plotted on graphs for analysis of developments over time, as well as plotted against trends; i.e. highlighting a possible correlation between increased active minutes and reduced resting heart rate.
- App allows for community data and goal sharing to encourage and motivate others.
Endomondo
Similar to a personal training app, Endomondo provides tailored workouts, goals, and stats while also tracking and motivating your walks. This app is perfect for those starting out with walking or those with specific distance goals in mind who need a helping hand.
Set your own goal and get personalised workouts to help you achieve it.
Benefits are:
- Increased motivation during walks through audio queues with uplifting messages and personalised workouts.
- Help and advice for those looking to improve abilities or increase goals.
- Endomondo believes social interaction is key for motivation and therefore has a strong community to motivate through comments, likes and pep talks.
- The app is tailored to each individual user – from differing workouts to giving users the option to play their own music.
Charity Miles
What better way to get motivated to exercise than knowing you are raising money too?! For each mile completed, Charity Miles gains donations from sponsors to give to a designated charity. Although cost per mile is low, the amount adds up across a whole community of walkers – they have raised over £2,750,000!
Users simply choose the charity they want to donate to, the app tracks the workout and then the donation is made. Sponsorship comes from Charity Mile’s corporate sponsorship pool or from users’ friends.
Benefits include:
- Knowing that money is involved may motivate users to walk more or for longer.
- The app maintains elements of walk tracking and distance measurements, so users know data from their walk.
- Sponsorship from friends may encourage more to get involved.
WalkTheDistance
WalkTheDistance is a virtual walking app around exciting locations that gives users a virtual adventure. The distance of walks are plotted on virtual trials though scenic and historic places such as the Grand Canyon, ancient Pyramids or cities. At checkpoints you can view photos and information about sights on the walk and even receive a medal at the end!
This motivates users to get walking through switching up the ordinary and giving them enticing views and facts.
WalkTheDistance benefits:
- Users can virtually walk with friends to maintain a level of connection even if apart.
- The unique locations give users a sense of exploration.
- Engagement is high on the app through novel ideas and a completion medal.
Get Started with Race At Your Pace
If you are looking for motivation to get your steps up and embrace walking, Race At Your Pace is for you. Combine the above apps with one of our many challenges to maximise your walking potential and reach your goals. There are many benefits to doing virtual challenges, none more recently relevant than keeping fit without a gym!
Explore other exercises too – we have monthly challenges for swimming, cycling, running, walking and steps. You can even sign your kids up for challenges!