Fit Crashing With Crunch Live

Fit Crashing With Crunch Live

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I will be the first to admit it: doing a workout at home isn’t typically the most inspiring experience. I’ve set up my own equipment to do self-made circuits. I’ve streamed yoga videos.

Heck, I’ve even put swiffers under my feet to do a few faux megaformer lunges. Kills two birds with one stone and my apartment gets a nice little wipe down.

I can’t be the only one who has ever tried this. Come on, fess up.

Anyway.

Crunch Fitness reached out to see if I would be interested in reviewing their online workout portal “Crunch Live.” For $9.99 a month (the price of a green smoothie here in NYC), you get access to an entire website full of streaming workout videos led by their top instructors. Choose from yoga, cardio, pilates, strength training, and dance options. There’s even a workout that combines kickboxing with West African dance moves. Classes are offered in both 30 and 15 minutes segments and videos are added all the time so there’s always something new to try.

Browsing through the videos, it’s immediately clear that these aren’t your standard group fitness offerings. I mean, check out some of their names:

  • Laugh Your Ass Off
  • Absolution
  • Diesel
  • Brazilian Burn ‘N Firm Pilates
  • Stiletto Strength
  • Broadway Dance
  • Center Court Choreography

 I live in an apartment building and wanted to be conscious of the fact that jumping or running in place might get me a nastygram from the folks living below. I’ve been there, I can’t blame them. So I browsed through Crunch Live to see if there were any options that might be a little bit more apartment-friendly. Luckily, there were quite a few.

That said, you can stream any of these on a mobile device so you can take the workouts with you anywhere you need them: a hotel room, your gym, or even the office. Who doesn’t need a 15 minute Brazilian Burn N’ Firm break from all of those emails every now and again, am I right?

Over the past week, I tried the following four Crunch Live workouts:

Fat Burning Pilates Extreme: This class begins with a 15 minute standing sequence that felt a whole lot more like barre than traditional pilates. There were some jump lunges and burpees, all of which I modified for maximum quietness. The second half of the class was done on a mat, and I followed along as we did teasers, planks, bicycles, and other basic moves. Was it “extreme”? Not really. But I think that’s my fault. It probably would have been more intense if I had been able to do the more dynamic moves.

Barre Assets: This 30 minute workout is more of a classical ballet conditioning class, not a barre class like you’d experience at your favorite boutique chain. Piano music floats in the background as an elegant, silver-haired teacher takes you through a number of exercises and sequences involving plies, stretches, and various over ballet movements. While I wasn’t expecting this to be such a traditional class, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Stretching and focusing on my posture was something I sorely needed.

Yoga Body Sculpt: This is a 30 minute strengthening vinyasa class taught by Bethany Lyons. Full disclosure: I choose it because I’ve taken one of Bethany’s classes at Lyons Den Yoga and absolutely loved it, so I had a feeling her video would also be a slam dunk. And it was! The video was energetic, powerful, and delivered a fantastic mini yoga session to add to my day.

Laugh Your Ass Off: I did this 15 minute quickie workout at the gym as an add-on to my run over the weekend. Crunch Live streams well on a smartphone and it was easy to just pop in my earphones and get the party started. It did the trick! Plus the instructor was sassy as all get out and a total hoot to watch. It made the burn in my derriere a bit more tolerable. But only a bit.

 

 While no group fitness video can substitute for the real thing, I love finding new options to add to my arsenal and think it’s important to know what’s out there. Crunch Live gets points in my book for versatility, accessibility, and having instructors who bring their A game to make every video full of energy. It was fun to try out a few new classes I wouldn’t have had access to anywhere else, and I was able to do them on my own time when I needed them.

 

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