App of the Week: Fitness Buddy app helps with exercise plans

While it may be more challenging in the hectic digital age, it's still important to stay in good shape and listen to the needs of our bodies.

For example, when my body tells me to sleep, I sleep. When it tells me to eat, I eat. When it tells me to exercise, I patiently wait for it to pass until it gives up and tells me it would rather sleep or eat.

In the modern world, there are so many emotional hurdles piling up between us and our necessary workouts that it's probably only a matter of time before "gym commuting" itself becomes an Olympic event.

We all have our excuse-laden sob stories to tell. Some of us would rather not sweat in front of strangers. Some of us associate all that imposing gym equipment with scenes from old movies set in medieval torture chambers. And it's hardly our fault if we joined a gym with a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop right next door.

The app

One effective, multi-purpose excuse eliminator may be Fitness Buddy (Dh3.67; iPhone, iPad, Android) a fitness tracker and workout motivational app with a collection of almost 2,000 exercise how-tos. The app also offers access to more than 1,000 high-definition exercise videos that can be organised into playlists for personalised workouts.

The details

Once you download the app and open it for the first time, Fitness Buddy asks you if you'd like to download all the workout videos at once - something you might want to delay unless you're on a Wi-Fi network.

While the videos are generally short, downloading all of them at once can take a big chunk out of your monthly 3G data plan allowance.

But otherwise, Fitness Buddy tries really hard to be your best workout pal, keeping track of your daily callisthenics calendar and helping you to browse different exercise categories for specific muscle groups (core, lower body, chest, etc).

There's always the risk of information overload, but Fitness Buddy's search engine and "workout creator" makes it easy to find and sort routines for your particular needs. There are also about 75 ready-made workouts if you're not one for specialisation.

Once you set up an exercise regimen, the app allows you to track, record and graph your progress (body weight, blood pressure and other metrics).

It even boasts a built-in music player so you don't have to navigate out of the app to play your tunes while you spin, press, pull or run in place.

Fitness Buddy has a lot to offer no matter your exercise skill level - extensive tracking and specialisation for gym devotees and useful, instructional videos for first-timers.

And, thankfully, none of the exercise videos were shot anywhere near a Baskin-Robbins.

Have some great personal finance apps that you want to share? Write to Personal Finance at [e-mail].