Virtual bike and smart trainer for a fitness app

A cross between a fitness tracker and an episode of The Last Of Us takes this to a new level. The app, like most running apps, allows you to track your route and pace. The twist is that it pipes missions through your headphones as you run, directing you to sprint to avoid a zombie or to pick up supplies to build a virtual shelter.

The Rouvy app connects with a smart trainer that transforms your regular bike into a stationary one for a virtual ride through different city streets worldwide. It can even change your bike's resistance as you encounter dips and hills. Pam Moore, a cycling coach in Boulder, Colorado, said she once biked with a friend in Portland, Oregon, without leaving home.

Although she was ahead of me, Moore said, we could still ride together.

Our brain also loves things that seem tailored for us. A recent study revealed that athletes who had received a customised workout plan outperformed those who thought they were following a generic one.

Personal trainers are a natural way to take advantage of this perception. Or you can use an app like Stronger By The Day, in which trainers take your fitness stats the heaviest load you can lift and produce a strength-training programme adapted for you.

I'm obsessed with it, he said. By simply demonstrating and doing what it said, I've gotten so much stronger. We remember events by how we feel at the end of it, according to Panteleimon Ekkekakis, an exercise psychologist at Michigan State University. He recommends rearranging the order of exercise doing the hardest part of the exercise, doing the hardest part early on after a good warm-up and gradually reducing the intensity so you leave the session with the best possible memory. The reverse slope approach not only increases pleasure after a workout, but also improves our perception of exercise up to a week later.