GymRa featured on Self: http://www.self.com/blogs/flash/2013/03/fitness-gymra-custom-workout-videos.html
mar 14
BY AMANDA MACMILLAN AT 11:45 AM
If you’re like me, you’ve got a pile of workout DVDs by your TV that you use every so often [Ed. note: Or not so often. #Whoops], but mostly they just take up precious apartment space. I mean, we’ve finally managed to digitize our music and movie collections, right, so why can’t we do the same with our fitness DVDs?
My advice: Hang on to a few of your faves and ditch the rest — and in those discs place, sign up for an online service that sends workout moves straight to your computer. A cool new one to try is GymRa, a $5-a-month collection of 1,500 plus workout moves.
I gave GymRa a try over the last week or so, and I’m loving the customization and the sheer volume of options available. Their Workout Generator is by far the coolest feature — here, you choose which muscle groups you’d like to work, whether you have any type of gear available (resistance bands, Bosu balls, hand weights, etc.), whether you’d like male or female models (or both), your time (15 minutes to one hour), and your experience level, and once you’ve familiarized yourself with the videos and trainers, you can use the Customizer tool to save and create your own workouts.
If you’re looking for a more general, full-body training plan, you can choose to follow one of GymRa’s 8-Week Challenges for beginners or intermediates, or you can watch full workouts with one trainer, rather than mixing and matching shorter clips.
What’s missing? Spoken instructions; instead, they’re just printed across the bottom of the screen, which you’re not exactly able to focus on mid-plank. And the music — as with most workout DVDs, to be fair — is uncomfortably cheesy, but the cool thing is that you can upload your own music to play in the background, instead. A lil Katy Perry, anyone?
