Quick Guide: The Latest in Fitness and Training Apps and Gadgets

Personal fitness apps and wearable technology have become one of the hottest categories of smartphone apps these days. Some big bucks have come into the marketplace that give consumers some amazing and advanced technology that lets you get in shape and stay in shape.

The new 1,000-pound gorilla in fitness apps is MapMyFitness, bought up for $475 million million by Under Armour and part of a huge move into what’s called Connected Fitness. Apps that read from activity trackers, heart rate monitors, watches and fitness accessories. MapMyFitness gathers all that data, tracks movement, measures calories, counts steps, maps routes and even tracks nutrition in food.

But added to the purchase of MapMyFitness is the app Endomondo, a powerful fitness training app also bought by Under Armour for a whopping $80 million. It’s billed as a personal trainer in your pocket and it has customized workout plans and tracking data available for just about every kind of fitness training you can imagine, indoors or outdoors.

And then there’s Withings – short for wireless things – flooding the fitness tech market with a bunch of new app-connected devices that measure all sorts of activities as well as your heartbeat and even the quality of sleep you get.

The apps are all free and available for all platforms.

Check out my NBC segment on the apps here: