Lily Peng

Apps like Nike Run Club, Apple Fitness and Strava help athletes track their workouts and meet training goals. “I couldn’t make it to practice one day, but I still went on a run on my own because I wanted to maintain my streak on Strava,” cross country runner Aahana Sharma (10) said.

From Zoom to DoorDash to Spotify, there are mobile applications for nearly everything—including fitness.. Exercise tools support a wide range of physical interests, from laid-back recreation to intense workouts. Beyond recording miles or calories, these apps transform how people experience movement through personalized guidance and new ways to stay motivated.

For athletes like junior Jaden Ruffy, Strava is his go-to. Using phone sensors or paired devices like Apple watches and heart rate trackers, Strava provides detailed workout summaries containing distance, pace, calories burned and other metrics for a variety of activities, including numerous foot, cycle and water sports. 

Jaden downloaded Strava to track bike rides and runs with his dad. His favorite features are the top speed, live location and route tracing statistics provided by the app. 

“Strava helps add a sense of competitiveness between my dad and me,” Jaden said. “I love going fast on my bike and seeing how high I can get my top speed. On some of the famous climbs I did in Italy and France this year, they have Strava checkpoints which automatically start a timer for certain segments of bike rides, so I can see where I rank compared to everyone else.”

Alongside standard workout tracking features, Strava offers a unique social networking component. Strava allows users to follow others, create groups and react to friends’ workouts. 

Sophomore Aahana Sharma downloaded Strava and joined the Harker cross country group through recommendations from upperclassmen. The communal nature of the app helps hold her responsible for staying consistent with training.

“I couldn’t make it to practice one day, but I still went on a run on my own because I wanted to maintain my streak on Strava,” Aahana said. “It gives you encouragement to not fall off. Strava also encourages me to keep up my pace, because when other people can see the run you did, they can see how hard you were trying, so it makes me want to do better. ”

Exercise software not only supplements experiences with helpful workout details but also provides convenience and accessibility. Peloton is a widely used stationary machine and app that closely simulates the real experience of mountain or road biking. The equipment uses immersive technology to mimic scenic routes and offers interactive, instructor-led classes. 

Senior sales representative at Folger Graphics and avid biker Carlos Armenta started using Peloton during the pandemic to work out from the safety of his home. Post-COVID, Peloton remains an important part of his routine.

“I warm up on it when I’m going to do a 40 or 50-mile bike ride,” Armenta said. “I do about 15 to 20 minutes on the Peloton. Then once I hit the road, I’m ready to go at full speed. For professionals, when they finish their races, they jump on the Peloton to cool down.”

On Peloton, a ride isn’t confined to four walls. With a few clicks, users can pedal along the beaches of Hawaii, through the streets of Paris, or up mountain roads in Spain. For Armenta, those virtual landscapes have sparked a bucket list of places he hopes to see on two wheels in real life.

“It’ll take me to Utah, to China, to Thailand, to India,” Armenta said. “It actually took me to some of the roads that I’ve done in Monterey, which was entertaining. I was like, ‘Hey, I’ve actually passed that road.’ The Peloton has actually intrigued me to do a ride sometime in the Grand Canyon in 2027.”

From neighborhood streets to simulated bike rides in the Alps, workouts now unfold across both physical and digital terrain. The stats that once lived on paper now live on the cloud, and runners who might never have interacted now fight for the ultimate spot on a leaderboard. In this hybrid world of fitness, connection and exploration can happen anytime, anywhere.