I Love Free Yoga

If you asked me a year ago today if I'd ever do yoga, I probably would have laughed in your face. How can you get a good workout by "barely moving" and bending in ways that should be impossible?

Then, I discovered free exercise videos OnDemand. RCN is my cable provider, where any workout is available on "Exercise TV" - anyday, anytime - free of charge. Now, I've always been skeptical of exercise videos - how intense of a workout can you really get in your own living room? - but some of the yoga videos I discovered and decided to try blew my mind (and muscles). This was a few months ago, and, at the time, I was in dire need of a new, challenging workout...and yoga became it.

For new, skeptical, soon-to-be-yogis like I was, I found Jillian Michaels' Yoga Meltdown to be the perfect transition into yoga. Michaels' Yoga Meltdown combines some cardio with traditional yoga moves to accelerate your heart rate while providing the strength training and balance yoga is meant to create. Plus, Michaels scares me, which made me much more motivated to follow the challenging workout to a T - right in the comfort of my own apartment.

From there, I started to do more traditional yoga workouts - two I highly recommend that can be found OnDemand (at least, on RCN) are Bethenny Frankel's "Body by Bethenny" and "Yoga Fitness Plus" with Elise Gulan. Both are very intense, about an hour long, and have a great flow to them.

I have to admit, yoga yields results - and it is anything but easy. I've added regular yoga workouts to my weekly workout routine (I do yoga now about two to three times per week), and after trying just a few of the videos accessible to me, I don't have any desire to sign up for a pricey group class at a local gym. Free workouts are a beautiful thing!

Do you practice yoga, or at-home workouts in general? What's your opinion on either/both of them?

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