The Gymbox

I've found a fun new way to work out. As you may recall, last year for my birthday I got a Tour de France workout bike. I felt like I could get a pretty good workout just putting in my ipod and spinning. It does get tedious after a while, so I wanted to see if I could find a spinning class on Netflix just to mix things up once in a while.

I searched all of Netflix and our other Roku channels with no luck. Then I found The Gymbox channel. It came with a 15 day free trial. I'm about 10 days in, and I love it.

I believe you can get it as an app on your ipad or tablet and also sign up to stream from a computer. As I mentioned, I signed up for the Roku channel. It's $10 a month, which is the cost of gym membership, but the beauty of this is that you aren't subject to class schedules. I can have a great spinning class anytime I want.

They have classes in: spinning, step aerobics, pilates, power yoga, treadmill, kickboxing, core, strength training, stretching, beginning workouts, and boot camp.

Every category has a variety of classes and teachers to choose from with varying intensity and length. I've mainly chosen beginning cycling classes, which just means they are 30 minutes instead of an hour. They still are killer workouts. I would guess my workout intensity has doubled from just riding on my own. New workouts are added every week so you never get bored with doing the same workout over and over like you would with a video.

My only complaint is that I wish you could save workouts you like. I haven't disliked any of the cycling classes, but I would like to find and save my favorite stretching and core classes. It does save each workout you do in a Recent Workout section, but I would like a way to remember which were my favorites. (Update: Rick informed me that the Recent Workout section is new workouts, not recently viewed workouts-bummer.) I did a cadence workout on my bike last week that I would like to do once a week, but had no way of marking it. Each workout has a star rating (1-5), but I couldn't figure out how to rate it myself. My Roku box is old, so maybe it's available on an upgraded model. I also wish they had better descriptions of each workout as you scroll through them. Right now, I have to click on each workout to get a one phrase description of the class before I hit play.
 
Click here for a link to their website.  You have to search for "The Gymbox" as just "Gymbox" brings up an actual studio.

They totally should be paying me for this. :)

My gymbox membership coupled with No Treat March (killing me this year), I've lost 5 lbs in 3 weeks. I'm also feeling great and motivated to work out. This may partially be due to the recent nice weather and the anticipation of having enough light to start biking to work again.