(Go to last update 14 Aug 2023)
First published 24th of September 2020
Lockdown YouTube Fitness Videos
I’ve done a few fitness DVDs over the years: T25, Insanity, Ashtanga Yoga with David Swenson, Rodney Yee, Zumba… and I am a fan of them. No need to go to a gym and, once you make the initial investment, it works out cheap and I can do it whenever I have time, rather than having to attend at a set time.
Thanks to lockdown the online fitness industry is thriving. It has given many people an opportunity to try new things online, especially, in my case, as it coincided with a 3 month free trial of YouTube – no ads!!!! (Eventually, I carried on with the subscription, as Google Play music was being replaced by YouTube music).
Below are the channels I ended up visiting regularly…
Functional Training with Rebecca Kennedy
Functional Training (FT) is the “new thing”, except it’s not a new thing, it’s been around for a long time, but it is more prominent lately, the new, old, fad.
The fitness industry is always coming up with new things or repackaging old things. It can keep things interesting so I’m not criticising it, just pointing it out. Functional training is not too dissimilar to Insanity/T25 (HIIT, High Intensity Interval Training). FT uses body weight and requires no equipment – the rest intervals are also similar to HIIT, along with the 30s or 45s rep duration. Each workout has 3 levels of difficulty for you to pick. Quite handy. Sometimes I switch between levels mid exercise, if it gets too intense.
The Evolve Functional Fitness channel is tied to an app, where you purchase some components, such as tutorials on how to do the moves. If you have been doing Capoeira, HIIT or similar and Yoga/Pilates you should pick it up by doing and won’t need detailed tutorials. I couldn’t install the app even if I wanted to, as it doesn’t seem to be available on Android. (correct me if I’m wrong, but I couldn’t find it in the app store).
This is on their channel: “The released workouts were originally filmed for an app, pre-quarantine. Once the pandemic hit, we wanted to share these workouts for free…”
Here are Rebecca’s workouts. I selected the most intense workout of the lot to show here, and my favourite, but there are shorter/less intense ones in there.
You can pick 30 min 45 min or 1 hour workouts with various instructors, no extra equipment needed. I started with Rebecca Kennedy and continued with her. There are also stretching sessions.
Heather Robertson
I found Heather Robertson’s channel two weeks ago while searching for “no repeat HIIT” and she delivered exactly what I was looking for, with weights thrown in! So I’ve been trying her workouts, today I did the Pilates/HIIT with my husband followed by Low Impact Cardio+Abs. A great thing about most of her workouts: there’s no talking, so you can play your own music.
Heather has given the world a FREE 12 week workout, HR12WEEK 1.0 , with 30-40 min daily workouts. Thank you Heather!
Update: April 2022 – Heather has become my preferred virtual trainer and I recently completed her new Free 12 week programme – HR12WEEK 2.0. The workouts on this series are longer than on HR12WEEK 1.0, 40 min per daily workout.
Betty Rocker
I also did a few of Betty Rocker workouts, need dumbbells for most of these. I don’t have a jump box, so I just jumped on the ground. She does various things, including HIIT, Tabata, strength, stretching… There’s a lot of content on her channel, here’s a workout I enjoyed:
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Five Parks Yoga with Erin Sampson
If you want a Yoga that will make you sweat, look no further! I found Five Parks Yoga while looking for Ashtanga/Power yoga, but didn’t want over an hour of it (I already have access to full Primary Series Ashtanga) and this one delivered:
There are also gentler and more specific classes, today I did a hip/lower back class which I enjoyed.
Most classes are outdoors in beautiful parks, but there are indoor classes too – there are A LOT of classes in there, from 10m to over an hour in duration. Very impressive! Five Parks Yoga playlist. Erin is my regular virtual Yoga instructor – I like the timing of her voice and the delivery of the instructions.
Yoga with Adriene
A few people I know do Yoga with Adriene and I ended up trying too. It’s a safe Yoga to do at home, ideal for beginners.
Here’s one of the classes I tried:
Yoga with Adriene playlists
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Just Dance!
Sometimes dancing can be the best exercise there is! I love this and do it with my granddaughter regularly. We have the game, but she was only 4, and getting frustrated with herself for not scoring points. With these videos she thought she was doing really well and enjoying the game a lot more. This is my own Just Dance playlist with some of our favourites
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Bonus (for some, depending on music tastes) –
My running playlist on YouTubeMusic. Running has kept me sane during lockdown – to be fair, it kept me sane before lockdown. It burns the most calories and it’s my favourite stress buster!
14th of October 2022
I thought I’d continue to add any interesting channels I find here, chronologically.
I have recently (last week) found this channel which I’m really enjoying: fitness_kaykay. She lives in Germany and her exercises are more complex (compound) than the ones I’ve done before, with boot camp/military/boxing theme + weights.
Her channel is still small (179K followers at the moment) but I hope it grows. I’m enjoying the combination of the exercises and the pace. Yesterday I did this one to burn some extra calories, and it did deliver, while not being too exhausting or frantic. I burned 481 calories, which is A LOT for someone my size.
For the last 3 weeks I’ve been going back to NoBadAddiction. Their claims of burning 1000 calories per workout obviously don’t apply to me! I usually only burn around 270-300 calories, but I’m small and cheap to fuel… I’m sure that muscular, taller people do burn 1000 calories. My husband probably would if he did these workouts. The 1 hour workouts have been fun, with new move combinations and they release new ones every Monday.
Still doing fitness_kaykay for workouts with weights, she now has 312K followers.