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Technology frequently gets a bad rap. It's blamed for increased inactivity globally, and accused of increasingly removing peoples' need for outdoor stimulation. However, technology doesn't have to be a bane to physical activity, and with the increasing development of smartphone apps and accessories, physical activity promoted by technology is easy to achieve.

Here are five apps or fitness tech accessories that can boost your health and workout routines.

1. Heart rate monitors

One of the best ways to gauge whether your exercise is intense enough is to track your heart rate, and while you can do this manually, it can be immensely difficult to measure your own, particularly when it's elevated.

Enter the heart rate monitor, which can track your heart rate as you work to show what intensity your workout provides throughout the entire session. The best use a chest strap, although wrist monitors are also available if less accurate. A good monitor will cost at least $100 and can range up to $700, but you don't need top of the line to improve your workouts.

2. Food trackers

There are multiple apps on the market for calorie tracking, including MyFitnessPal, Lose It!, and Fatsecret among others. These tools allow you to input nutritional data about the food you eat, enabling you to track and monitor your intake for various goals and purposes.

Most of these apps allow you to scan barcodes of products, enter recipes, participate in forums and create meal entries as well, allowing you to simplify and streamline your calorie tracking strategy and not have to struggle with re-entering information repeatedly. They can also provide advice for multiple kind of fitness goals, allowing you to adapt your nutritional goals as your needs change.

3. Workout apps

Multiple workout program apps are also available, from the Seven Minute Workout program to Zombie Run, to Sweat With Kayla, which works similarly to food tracker apps but for physical activity.

Many of these can either allow you to create your own workout, or come with pre-installed workout routines of their own. Some, like Zombie Run, are meant to help you have fun while working out, while others like DailyBurn are meant to track your progress and input your fitness goals and achievements.

Yet more like FitnesssBuddy and RunDouble offer social inventives to keep up with workout apps, allowing you to make friends on the app and follow each others' progress, which is effective to help people achieve fitness goals.

4. Activity trackers

Activity trackers of various types are on the market today, including pedometers, workout trackers and daily activity trackers that monitor everything from your calorie intake to your sleep cycle. Pedometers, which nowadays frequently come built into your phone, are shown to be effective tools to promote physical activity and monitor your own day to day movements.

These tools can range in price from $10 to $80 or $90, and some broach triple digits, but you don't need to drop a large amount of money on these tools to find an effective one.

5. Interactive video games

Perhaps one of the most popular accessors for the Nintendo Wii was the WiiFit, a board and video game that allowed users to practice everything from yoga to jumping exercises to running you through a standard work routine

Combining entertainment and workouts, like you would at GYC Senior Care, work to motivate people into physical activity, and video games do not have to remain a stagnant activity, as evidence by the WiiFit. Games that promote exercise are useful tools for those who prefer to stay inside or away from others, and especially can help to bridge the gap between inactivity and regular workouts in those who regularly spend hours playing video games.

Rather than dismissing technology as the antithesis of physical activity, the best way to tackle a sedentary nation is to learn how to combine the two and make workouts fun again, using the entertainment we rely on today.