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Sunday, March 26th
You shouldn't have to be rich to be healthy. Fitness Blender is on a mission "to make health and fitness attainable, affordable, and approachable" . This online fitness platform offers over 600 free workout videos (streamed right on YouTube, no account necessary), ranging from 10-85 minutes and covering everything from beginner stretching to elite athlete conditioning.
No music?!
Now, you'll need to manage your expectations a bit: giving away content for free means that Fitness Blender probably doesn't want to deal with music rights... so you won't hear any, and we mean any, in their workout videos. You'll want to have your own Spotify playlist nearby, unless you really enjoy the sound of the instructor breathing.
Get started today
We love that you can just jump right in and start doing workouts here. New videos are added at least weekly, and the default sort is "newest first" - so you can always keep it interesting. Want some Power Yoga to Challenge Your Balance? How about Bodyweight Stacked Cardio Intervals? You'll find a lot of everything here, including an overview of the whole class and "chapters" you can use to move around easily. (For example, maybe your phone rang and you need to go back to the part you were on, or you want to skip ahead to the stretch because something came up.) And, each video carefully shows you how to complete each move properly, minimizing your risk of injury. That's fantastic.
Plenty of benefits with free and paid memberships
Once you have tried a few of the videos, we encourage you to sign up for a free Fitness Blender account. Besides the workouts, you'll get access to an interactive workout calendar, weekly giveaways, healthy living articles and recipes, and much more. When you're ready for even more, consider the Fitness Blender Plus subscription for just $6.29/month or $55.99/year. It'll make your online fitness experience ad-free, while adding many more helpful tools like progress trackers, the ability to enter custom workouts, workout challenges, and so on. You'll also get access to about 300 exclusive workouts that are only available to FB Plus subscribers.
Meal plans and workout challenges available a la carte
Or, if you want to jumpstart your fitness with a challenge, Fitness Blender has a series of a la carte Workout Programs for purchase. Many of them are included with an FB Plus membership. One example is the 2-Week FB Reboot Challenge - A Balanced, Approachable Return to Fitness. It requires 15-40 minutes per day, five days a week, and targets cardio (both HIIT and low impact), strength training, and stretching/flexibility. You'd pay $5.59 as a standalone purchase, which is fairly average for all of Fitness Blender's workout challenges. There are also Meal Plans that can be accessed this way, from one-week programs to help you know what to eat for strength training to four-week plans to learn how to eat "real" food and feel your best.
A few limitations
We give Fitness Blender a lot of credit for offering online fitness for all. There's really something for everyone here, and so much of it comes absolutely free. But, it's a little haphazard compared with other platforms: you might feel like you're cobbling things together on your own, even with the FB Plus subscription, the workout challenges and meal plans. And, for us, the lack of music is a huge downside: if you're playing your own tracks just to have a beat to move to, you might miss some of the instructions being offered, and it's not likely to sync up with what's being shown on the screen.
Not bad for free
If "free" is your main focus when selecting an online fitness option, take a look at Fitness Blender. On the other hand, if you want a slick smartphone app, integration with wearable devices, or a hot soundtrack with your workout, you'll want to check out the competition instead.
To answer that question, you should start with an idea of what you're hoping to accomplish. Are you at the very beginning of your fitness journey and need some gentle, encouraging guidance to get started? Do you have a gym membership but you're not quite sure what to do when you get there? Are you frequently traveling for work and looking for a way to exercise no matter if you're in Manhattan or Miami?
There are platforms that fit all of those situations - and so many others. Another consideration is whether or not you're looking to combine nutritional changes with your online fitness choice. Some services give you an all-in-one, with meal plans and workouts to choose from, while others specialize just in exercise.
Either way, most online fitness platforms work in roughly the same way: take advantage of a free trial, then decide if a paid membership is right for you. On a budget? No problem: there are several excellent choices that let you access tons of workouts at no cost. Yes, you'll probably be invited to upgrade to a paid plan, but feel free to ignore that and work out using just the regular content and tools.
Now that you've given it some thought and have an idea of what your online fitness "wish list" would include, it's time to start browsing what's available. You might feel a little overwhelmed at first, with so many choices and new ones popping up all the time. Don't stress. Here are some criteria to keep in mind that will help you narrow them down:
To help you choose the online fitness program that's going to be the best fit for your goals and lifestyle, Top Consumer Reviews has evaluated and ranked today's most popular services. We're sure you'll find the perfect way to take your fitness to the next level - on your own terms!
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