Getting in the best shape of your life doesn’t necessarily mean splashing out on a top-dollar personal trainer. Because as the 21st century saying goes, “There’s an app for that”.

Whatever your fitness goals – big arms, a 5K personal best, abs you can grate cheese on, swapping the Big Macs for something healthier, or even a more scenic cycle route – there really is an app to help you absolutely smash it.

And the technology is better than ever, with apps getting increasingly smart and tailored to customizing workouts. The best fitness apps are also multi-functional – instructional guides, workout and dietary planners, hardcore stat crunchers, and scientifically-proven motivation tools all at once. Essential stuff, whether you’re a workout addict and hitting the weights every day, or a time-strapped family man who has to snatch the odd few minutes of exercise in your own home.

But with so many apps to choose from, it’s hard to know where to start. So we’ve done the research for you. Here some of the very best workout and fitness apps available.

Apps For Calorie Counting

MyFitnessPal

All the apps in the world won’t help you out-train a bad diet. That’s why you need one of the world’s top nutrition and calorie counting apps – one of several apps dedicated to various areas of fitness and health from Under Armour (you can try MapMyRide, MapMyRun, and MapMyHike for cycling, running, and, well, hiking).

MyFitnessPal offers a weight and progress management system by tracking your meals. You tap in or scan the barcode of everything (and that means everything) and it subtracts them from your daily total. Exercise adds back onto your total.

It has a database of over 11 million foods, including pretty much all branded food, so you receive instant calorie and nutrition info. And you’ll be surprised at how calorific your current diet is. It’s scientifically proven that diet tracking helps you lose weight by motivating you to balance the numbers by putting in extra effort to exercise or have some self-restraint at the deli counter.