Sport is something that is as positive as possible for both our physical health and general wellbeing. We can write whole books about the benefits of practicing any physical activity on a regular basis - however, this article is not supposed to be about it. We would like to talk about another, but nevertheless important issue: adequate motivation and determination are needed to practise sport.

Probably a great many - if not most - of us decide to practice sport systematically on a regular basis, but in practice very little is coming out of it; it quickly turns out that we do not have enough determination to comply with such provisions. Two "ideal" moments for such decisions are the beginning of the new year and the period shortly before the summer holidays. They are quite similar to each other, because in both cases we promise ourselves that by the "next summer" we will look much better.

In the era of smartphones there is a lot of interesting sports applications, which can be a very helpful tool for anyone who wants to facilitate the difficult task of perseverance in such provisions. Such applications are indeed very useful and versatile - they can be used in many different disciplines. They measure the steps we have taken, the distance we have travelled and the time in which we have travelled on the route of our choice. Most importantly, they also show how many calories we burned during a specific workout. They also help you to follow a strict diet, they also allow you to prepare an accurate training plan and make it easier to stick to it.

Thanks to all these functions we are able to measure our training progress on an ongoing basis, which of course gives a great motivation to maximize the effort and duration of your decisions. Despite all the advantages of such applications, statistics show that in many cases we do not use them at all. The statistics mainly concern how many applications bought and downloaded are actually installed and used on smartphones. The results are quite surprising.

First of all, it turns out that people prefer to download sports applications to their phones in the run-up to summer - in spring we start to feel the upcoming holidays and we are more motivated to work on our silhouette to look good on the beach. Improving the weather and more and more sunshine also give us extra energy and stimulate us to act, which certainly also has an impact on this result. On the other hand, an exactly opposite trend can be observed at the end of summer and in autumn. The weather starts to deteriorate and it is more and more difficult to force oneself to go to the gym or run after returning from work or school - after all, this requires additional equipment and is simply more difficult. Many of us then have the moment when we come to terms with a kind of failure: this summer I was unable to look perfect, but I will start working on myself as soon as possible to make up for it by next year. In autumn, however, we tell ourselves that we still have a lot of time and we don't have to "throw ourselves" so much into the whirlpool of training and exercises.

Of course, in most cases the result is the same - we wake up only in spring, when there is not enough time to prepare the silhouette of your dreams. The statistics also show an interesting relation between the time elapsed since the installation of a given application and the frequency of its use. Also in this respect, there are hardly any big surprises; at the very beginning we are very motivated and we really try to fulfill the whole training plan conscientiously. Over time, however, the frequency of using the application decreases significantly, which shows that we lose our previous enthusiasm and do sport less and less often. The statistics also show the average daily time we spend on exercises.

Of course, this is only average, as most people do not exercise every day. The largest number of users is in the group practicing daily for up to 5 minutes on average - this is as much as 58%. 16% of users exercise between 5 and 15 minutes. Interestingly, 11% of users exercise more than 60 minutes. Considering the fact that this is only a daily average, it can be noticed that these 11% of people spend quite a lot of time on exercises during the week. On the basis of the statistics you can also try to prepare a list of the most frequently used sports applications. In this case the unquestionable leader is Endomondo, probably the most famous application of this type. Its maximum range exceeds 60%, so it is difficult to compare it to any other application - we will not find one whose maximum range would exceed the 10% barrier.

Slightly better is the ranking of average monthly usage of a given application. Also in this case Endomondo is the leader with a result of about two hours. In second place is the FatSecret application, which achieved 44 minutes. Does the use of sports applications automatically guarantee that we will get the desired results in a given sport? Certainly not, because everything here depends only on our motivation. As the statistics above show, the vast majority of people quickly give up their decisions, even though they use this type of thing. Of course, they can be very helpful and actually help to keep track of their progress and to better systematise all efforts. However, if we don't have the right determination to exercise, even the best applications will not help us.