MNN - Mother Nature Network

Few activities inspire more excuses than avoiding the gym; all too often getting from home to an exercise class seems more impossible than spinning a room full of hay into gold.

 

But for those not so attached to their excuses — those who really do want to work out but have time constraints or other impediments keeping them from the gym — a new website called Wello may offer a fix. It provides affordable workouts via webcam for one-on-one exercise classes with a trainer; and the company has now launched group workouts, which allow three to five participants and a trainer, all in different living rooms, to have a class together. You can invite friends who you would like to have a workout with, or if you prefer to go stag, the site will match you with a group.

 

Katherine Boehret from the Wall Street Journal has given the site a spin and notes that, although occasional tech glitches can stymie the momentum, there are plenty of upsides. She wrote, “The thought of seeing friends during workouts and not having to leave home motivated me to use Wello. I could imagine using it as a way to stay in touch with people who live far away. And unlike using a stale workout DVD, Wello's live trainers watched each move I made and offered feedback.”

 

Currently the site offers personal training, yoga, Pilates, CrossFit, boot camp, Kettlebell workouts, Zumba, martial arts and others. Plus the search can be narrowed by schedule, price, workout type, trainer style, gender and reviews. And something you can’t get at the gym: a dashboard that tracks not only your workouts, but your goals and progress over time.

 

So rather than rolling through the roster of excuses that keep you from the gym, you can have the gym come to you. And while you’re at it, invite your friends from disparate parts of the world to join in; no one will even notice the rip in your yoga pants. As Boehret described her experience, it was an “activity based Skype date — we saw each other, we had fun, and we got a workout in the process.” Who needs an excuse for that?

 

Boehret reports on her experience in the video below: