By Mohan Ramkumar, MakeUseOf – July 19, 2010 at 12:31PM
Everybody wants to be fit and healthy. Working out in a gym and taking the help of a fitness coach can be a very relaxing experience. But going to a gym to work out is not everyone’s cup of tea. Gyms with personal trainers tend to be expensive and if you are anything like me, driving to a gym is such a chore.
The quasi lazy person’s alternative is workout videos. Online workout videos offer the best of both worlds – staying in the comfort of your own home and also getting professional fitness advice. After the advent of broadband, delivering professionally produced videos for free while upselling full length DVDs and fitness products has become one of the most common ways to workout at home.
There are a lot of sites and blogs out there that help us tone our body with free workout videos. We have covered quite a few of them in the past and have come up with five more for our beloved readers.
Diet.com
Diet.com has a dedicated videos section featuring hundreds of video workouts and exercises. All the videos are neatly categorized and are updated pretty regularly. Even though there are paid plans available, the videos are not chopped off in the middle and can be viewed by unregistered users free of charge.
Video with tips to reduce weight, reduce fat etc. are an added bonus. Diet’s workout video archive is quiet fun to watch with videos like celebrity workouts, workouts without the need for gym equipments and the like. The Diet Investigates section features videos that probes a lot of health related topics and is a must watch.
Workoutz.com
On top of the great workout and exercise videos, Workoutz.com also has a dedicated section for specialty training videos. Video workouts of Yoga positions, kettle ball, speed & agility, stretching etc. are covered in the speciality training section.
These workout videos are of varying length and are available in their complete form on the site. All the workout videos can be downloaded for free to your desktop or for watching in your iPod and offer one of the most convenient ways to workout at home. Video links can be emailed to friends and the same can be embedded in your blog or website.
Freeworkoutvideos.org
Freeworkoutvideos.org is a workout blog that features selectively aggregated workout videos from YouTube. A variety of workouts on abs, weight loss, Yoga, abdominal exercises etc. are available here. All the workout videos are in their entirety and the duration ranges from 2 to 15 minutes.
FitnessFly.com
FitnessFly.com has an exhaustive collection of workout videos in its YouTube channel. A little more than 200 videos are listed in three different playlists – FitnessFly collection, Gilad workouts and the studio series with Ellen Barrett. The production values of the videos are very impressive and the instructions by fitness coaches are easy to follow.
PhysicalFitnet.com
Apart from the fitness and workout videos, PhysicalFitnet.com has a section where the visitors can ask questions to experts on various health related topics. Workouts are broken into step by step smaller videos to enable us to master exercises one by one.
In addition to the voice overs, every workout video has a brief description and specific instructions published for users to read and follow.
Final Thoughts
All the sites have a brilliant collection of workout videos and the videos load pretty fast too. However, one huge let down is the lack of visual appeal and poor website navigation. The design of these fitness sites are pretty rudimentary with a stale Web 1.0 look. The video players only support basic playback options. The production values of the videos are great with professionals, background music, proper equipments but the video quality is above average, which I guess is intentional to keep bandwidth charges at bay.
Are videos one of the more effective ways to workout at home? Is there a great workout video site that we have missed? Do share your thoughts in the comments section.
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