First of all, under no circumstances was Asia Fitness Today paid to do this review. In fact, Babel Fit did not even know we did this. During the launch of Babel KLCC, one of the goodies we received was a month-long pass which we utilized for this review.
Babel
seems like the perfect gym for all of us. The gym features top of the line
equipment and amenities. Sounds too good to be true but with plush towels
that’s softer than your moisturizing conditioner hair, one can’t complain.
Your
first impression of Babel KLCC is its entrance. It looks posh, to say the
least. Second, there is this pleasant aroma that wafts through you as you walk
in. This aroma is all over the gym too. I don’t know what this is but it made
me feel relaxed and energized at the same time whenever I go to Babel.
On my first day at Babel, I went at 8 am and did the registration. I registered for the HIIT30 class straightaway by Evon, scheduled at 10 am. I had two hours of free time until the class so I decided to do some warm ups in the training room.
Babel KLCC access card
Obviously there is a lot of the latest equipment provided there but what caught my eye was the sheer number of actual living plants there. My photos do not do them justice. They just look like plastic plants but, trust me, they are as real as you and I. The plants made me felt as though I was being given extra oxygen during my warm up. According to Babel, they have an in-house botanist that helps them maintain these plants.
Be surrounded by real plants at Babel KLCC
Then
it was time for HIIT30. For the uninitiated, HIIT30 is a class where we push
ourselves to reach our limit in 30 minutes. So, four different exercises for
four rounds with just one minute of rest in between. It was really tough for a
newbie like I am. But did I feel good? I obviously did.
After
my class I decided to pamper myself at the infra-red sauna. It looks as though
it is based on Japanese design but I can’t be sure. Well, it doesn’t really
matter because as soon as I entered the sauna, I was able to relax and calm my
mind. I might have even fallen asleep in there!
I didn’t manage to go to Babel as often as I would like to as work had me bogged down but after a week I went there as soon as I was done with work. I felt as though I needed to recoup the days I missed so I did it by deciding that it was a good idea to attend three classes in a row.
My obvious first class back to the gym is my now all-time favorite, HIIT30. There are no words that can describe how much I enjoy this class at Babel. As soon as I was done with this, I went for Slo Flo Yoga. Led by Tony, I found the class quite relaxing and personally I enjoyed the stretching after the vigorous HIIT class. It’s best said now that this was my first yoga class ever. I learned to control my breathing and didn’t drop a single sweat during the class.
Slo Flo Yoga
I
had a 30 minute break from yoga to my final class. This would be the first time
for me to attend an RnR class and luckily I was met with a familiar face by way
of the trainer. I’m pretty sure you can guess what kind of class this is solely
based on its name. So yes, we do some more stretching but it wasn’t as gentle
as Slo Fo Yoga though. I ended feeling sore despite it supposedly to be a
relaxing class as well. Despite the soreness I actually liked this class as I
did not feel tired out from it and completely understand why it was slotted as
the final class of the day.
Before
I left Babel KLCC, I decided to utilize the Bad Lab products available in the
men’s locker room (Good Virtue’s Co products are featured in the women’s locker
room). It was not bad and made me feel pretty good for the trip home.
Words cannot express how much I love doing HIIT at Babel and my final HIIT30 class was scheduled at 6 pm. This time I had a new trainer – Jean K. It was a great experience as she’s quite energetic and she would be shouting words of encouragement at us so we would be able to keep up and moving.
However,
unlike the other HIIT30 classes I’ve attended, we didn’t have any simple warm
up at the beginning of the class. Jean began the class with a really
challenging warm up. Another difference is that there are eight of us in this
class. There were two to four people in the other HIIT30 classes I’ve attended.
This surely proves Jean’s effectiveness and popularity. I was seriously
exhausted in her class but keep moving as she constantly encourages us to not
give up.
Babel KLCC
Ok,
maybe I should’ve tried more classes but I got hooked on HIIT. But this is what
I have to say about Babel KLCC – you have to see and experience it for yourself.
At Babel KLCC, seeing is barely believing thus you would have to go for some
classes to fully immerse yourself with the Babel experience. I give them 10/10
for overall experience, classes offered, amenities and location.
They launched this earlier last month, and there will be new episodes each week – with guided meditations.
This episode embraces the topic on change as together with Karena, you can make positive changes! Start out by finding a quiet, comfortable space where there are no distractions. I always like to burn a candle or some sage. Begin by finding a comfortable position.You can sit cross-legged on the ground or lie down on your back, palms facing up. Gently close your eyes and start to focus on your breath. Let’s begin! ♥
Do your days fly by? Is it difficult to make time for a trip to the gym?
You’re in the right place.
These are the 50 best resources for free online workouts that make is easy for you to exercise at home. Whether you have just a few minutes for a quick core workout, or if you’d like to join a month-long daily yoga challenge, there is something in here for you.
There are a LOT of exercise videos online, especially on Youtube, but the ones that made this list are the very best when it comes to teaching you how to exercise at home. These workouts require little to no equipment and are taught by excellent fitness instructors who know their stuff.
So take a look through this amazing list and find the perfect fitness instructor who can help you get a great workout done at home.
Use These 50 Free Workout Resources To Exercise At Home
Daniel and Kelli are the husband and wife team behind Fitness Blender, a site that offers a huge selection of full-length video workouts of all different types. Here you will find fat-burning workouts, kickboxing routines, total body strength training, workouts for boosting metabolism, stretching sequences, and more.
This resource offers wonderful online fitness classes that everybody can easily do at home. Sweaty Betty provides yoga workouts, HIIT routines, and many other types for you to try. No matter whether you have experience doing fitness classes or are a complete beginner, Sweaty Betty has something that will get you working at an appropriate level.
Do you want to do bodyweight workouts at home? Craig Ballentyne of Turbulence Training provides a wonderful collection of no-equipment bodyweight workouts designed to help you burn fat and get lean. These instructional videos are mostly short ones (i.e. under 10 minutes) and can be used to create your own home workouts.
Jessica Smith TV shares a unique collection of videos with 7 minute, 10 minute and 30 minute workouts. She offers a really great variety of workout styles – Some focus on fat burning, others on cardio conditioning, workouts for beginners, kickboxing workouts and more. Jessica is an energetic instructor that will motivate you to join her.
Do Yoga with Me is one of my personal favourites. Many of their classes are filmed outdoors in beautiful British Columbia, Canada. The level of instruction is top-notch and there are videos that focus on pretty much every part of the body (e.g. hips, hamstrings, back, etc.), so you can target the area that you need to work on most.
I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t mention my own workouts that are available here at Make Your Body Work. Every single workout will challenge your entire body and will include elements of cardio, strength, and core conditioning. The uniqueness of these workouts are the “difficulty levels” that provide up to 4 distinct options for every single move. This makes each workout very accessible for newbies, yet challenging for super-fit users.
Karena and Katrina lead the workouts at Tone it Up. Their routines are aimed at helping you shed excess weight and transform your body through simple strengthening exercises. Their website provides specific workouts for arms, legs, abs, cardio, etc. and have attracted followers from around the world.
Adriene Mishler is a yogi with purpose. She wants to use her instructional classes to help people live life better. As she puts it, “Yoga offers up a way for us to see a world that is working for you instead of against you.” Try the following class when you’re feeling in a bad mood. (I tried it…and felt better afterwards!)
Spark People shares short videos for all different types of workouts. There are several categories – Abs, Cardio, Yoga and Pilates, as well as others that diver into healthy cooking and eating ideas. These workouts are great when you are pinched for time. Choose a 10-12 minute routine and squeeze in some activity where you normally would have skipped it altogether.
Enjoy doing yoga workouts with your favourite trainers such as Jillian Michaels, Jane Fonda, Billy Blanks Jr., Tara Stiles and many others. This channel might offer the best variety of any out there – It even includes meditations with Deepak Chopra (maybe a good way to relax AFTER your workout!)
Livestrong Woman is a video channel featuring professional fitness instructor, Natalie Jill. In addition to Natalie’s resistance training instructional videos, you will also find great yoga beginners videos taught by Tara Stiles. As an extra bonus, this channel also includes some great videos that discus healthy eating tips and recipes.
Diet Health is YouTube channel that shares great workout videos and simple health tips that can help you change your lifestyle and improve your overall health. Their workouts are mostly quick ones (under 10 minutes) and are led by experienced personal trainers.
Natalie Jill is a very popular fitness trainer who you will see guest starring on some of the other sites and channels found in this list. Her best videos can be found on her personal fitness blog which shares workouts for weight loss, exercise ball routines, jump rope workouts, booty belt workouts, body weight exercises and more. Natalie also shares great healthy recipes and useful nutrition tips on her site.
Yoga Journal is a wonderful YouTube channel worth following if you want to do yoga at home. Highly experienced yoga teachers will show you how to do poses for the most relaxation, flexibility, and strength benefits. These short videos can be done whenever you have a few minutes to spare during your day.
CafeMom Studios is a very popular YouTube channel that helps moms build their body back after pregnancy and childbirth. CafeMom Studios offers postnatal workout videos for cardio, pain-reduction, circuit training, and yoga exercises for strength and flexibility.
Anyone looking for yoga, Pilates, and gentle muscle strengthening workouts will love eFit30. These full-length (i.e. 20-40 minute) classes are perfect for days when you want to be active but don’t feel like making the trip to your gym.
Sarah is a well-known health and fitness blogger has made “enabling your passion for healthy living” her mission. She shares a lot of quick and simple core workouts, cardio routines, flexibility workouts, and more on her blog. Sarah is fun, energetic, and really likeable, which makes following along with her workouts quite easy.
Cassey Ho is is the energetic fitness instructor behind Blogilates. She shares a lot of videos with quick and fun bodyweight workouts that you can do at home in just a few minutes. Her workouts are themed for different objectives such as the “Swimsuit Slim-Down” series that you can see below.
Bodyrock.tv is one of the forerunners in online fitness. This popular health and exercise blog is dedicated to weight loss, fitness, beauty, food, love and relationships. “Bodyrockers” find daily workouts that are either laid out with descriptions and pictures, or that are instructed in video format. All of the workouts can be done at home with minimal equipment.
GymRa offers a excellent range of video workouts that are divided into different categories – 5 to 15 minutes workouts for beginners, abs workouts, dumbbell workouts, no-equipment workouts, total body routines and yoga sessions. There is really something for everyone at Gymra.
Shilpa Shetty Kundra is happy to share her yoga expertise on the Good Health 24by7 YouTube channel. Enjoy doing full-length yoga asanas, or simply learn proper form and technique from her quick tutorial videos.
Workouts provided on the Live Strong YouTube video channel will definitely help you improve your strength, flexibility and fitness. Celebrity trainer, Nicky Holender instructs most of the workouts you’ll find here. He knows his stuff and tailors these workouts for busy people who want a quick exercise fix.
Caroline Jordan Fitness is a great choice for quick core, flexibility, strength, and yoga videos. Caroline’s demonstrations are excellent and her instructions of each more are very clear. This is a good place to learn the basics of some foundational workout moves.
Rebekah Borucki provides people with an amazing collection of short workouts for weight loss and toning. Her focus really is on time-saving exercise, so she employs lots of interval training and HIIT series to make your workouts as efficient as possible.
Steady Health has a large collection of workout videos that include specific routines for pregnant women, office workers, those who are rehabilitating after injury, and for people who just need a little relaxation.
Pop Sugar is a popular fitness and beauty blog that offers just about anything you could want in a health blog. On the website you will find lots of workouts broken down with great written instructions and pictures. On the Pop Sugar Fitness Youtube channel you can enjoy a great range of quick workouts led by some fitness industry superstars.
Enjoy doing easy step aerobics and fitness cardio workouts led by super-stepper, Jenny Ford. Jenny does a great job of making step classes doable for beginners (like me) who might not be the most co-ordinated! You can certainly tell she loves what she does – Check out one of her free video classes.
Amanda Russell is a former Olympic-hopeful runner who suffered a career-ending injury before she got to compete at the world’s biggest stage. Now she has devoted her career to helping others safely stay in shape with workouts that can be done at home.
Tara Stiles is a yoga guru whose video classes will help you become strong, energized, and more flexible at the same time. Tara’s unique movement system is approachable for anyone. Be sure to try her 7-minute morning yoga routine (below) – it’s fantastic!
This is another excellent Youtube channel that is worth checking out, especially if you are new to yoga. It offers a series of six videos, each just 10 minutes long, which teach introductory yoga poses that most people would find quite approachable.
Lauren Hefez is a personal trainer and Pilates and barre instructor. She has a great fitness blog that includes recipes, product reviews, and of course there are workouts in there too! She does a great job of specifying workouts for target areas like your abs, arms and back, butt and legs, and other combinations.
Sadie Lincoln is an experienced fitness trainer and founder of Barre3. Barre workouts are based on a traditional ballet style of training that uses a bar (of course!). Sadie has taken this foundation and developed a unique training program that perfectly combines yoga, pilates, dance and bodyweight workouts.
Enjoy using Cosmo Body’s videos that include easy-to-follow full-length strength, dance, and cardio workouts. Astrid Swan, celebrity personal trainer, also provides many quickie workouts (10 minutes and less) that give you an express option when you’re crunched for time.
XHIT has put together an impressive library of video workouts that are free to use on their blog or Youtube Channel. Their followers, called “X-hitters”, enjoy the efficiency of their workouts (always under 20 minutes), as well as their exercise-specific instructional videos that teach just one or two moves in greater detail.
Yoga Online is the Youtube channel for Yogasync.tv and it is a great place to find home workouts for new yogis. If you have just started doing yoga, you will find it interesting to watch videos with breathing techniques, and instructions for mastering key yoga poses.
Movee is the place to go if you’re looking for quick, dance-based workouts that will get you sweating. It also provides videos with yoga workouts for beginners, pilates workouts for beginners, perfect leg workouts, easy back exercises, body stretches and amazing healthy raw food recipes.
The Body Project specializes in high-intensity fat-burning workouts that can be done from home. Their workouts have some creative moves that are fun and effective. The low-impact cardio workout found below is a great place to start.
Emily Skye has a Youtube channel complete with dozens of exercise tutorial videos that are mostly 1 minute or less. She has put together some interesting movement combinations that you can assemble into your own full-length home workout.
The eHowFitness YouTube channel provides specific workout ideas and health tips from leading fitness experts and popular celebrity trainers. Videos provided here focus on weight loss, breathing exercises, water workouts, stretching exercises and even workouts for kids. They also have niche exercise videos like this one for expectant mothers.
Leslie of Fightmaster Yoga teaches hatha yoga for beginners, yoga for energy, yoga for reducing stress, meditation yoga, yoga workouts for strength, yoga for office workers…in other words, she offers a BIG selection of yoga classes! She is a knowledgeable instructor and is an excellent communicator, which makes her classes especially easy for beginners to follow.
PsycheTruth is a holistic health channel on Youtube that discusses exercise, weight-loss, massage, pain relief, and many other health-related topics. Included are some amazing yoga sequences including this “10 days of flexibility” series that is worth checking out.
Do You Yoga offers amazing yoga video “challenges” for everybody. Providing a little more structure via their courses (a number of which are completely free), Do You Yoga can help you create a habit of daily yoga!
Sean Vigue is a really inspiring fitness trainer who Pilates, strength, cardio, weight-loss, core training, and yoga workouts on his Youtube channel. He also throws in some “fun” stuff like this 1-minute burpee challenge. (It only takes 1 minute…try it!)
Method Yoga explains their approach best: “Method Yoga offers the student a processes of development and transformation by uniting methodologies of old and new so one begins to experience true liberation, wholeness and actualization which is the definition and purpose of “yoga”. It’s hard to pass on that!
Upside-Down Pilates shares videos that will help you realize the many health benefits of Pilates. These aren’t “let’s get sweaty” types of workout – Instead, they are more suited for improving the way your body moves by training your pelvis, hips, knees, arms and shoulders for proper function.
Brittany, a certified Pilates instructor, created Fine Tune Pilates as a way to help people rediscover their bodies and to learn how they actually move throughout the day. Her gentle classes are a nice workout, without any of the pounding on the joints that come with some high-intensity exercise styles.
Amber Karnes offers “judgment-free” yoga classes that are perfect for beginners and for those with “big bodies” who might not feel comfortable with traditional yoga poses. Amber has used yoga to help her embrace her own body and she is an excellent teacher to help you do the same.
Susan’s Youtube channel has lots of workout instructional videos and tips, but none are better than her 30-Day Ab Challenge. These are quick but challenging core workouts that offer you something different each day for an entire month!
My Free Yoga is pretty much exactly as it sounds – if offers free yoga classes for you to enjoy! It is a little different than other yoga options on this list in that it is really a hub for yoga instructors to post their free yoga class videos. The video library is huge and you can search for classes that focus on your specific problem areas. For example, there is a category for those suffering from hip issues and another for those experiencing back pain.
Coach Joshua Kozak is the trainer behind HASFit, which gets its name because “every Heart and Soul deserves to be Fit!” These workouts are based primarily in bodyweight training, so they are nice for at-home or when travelling. Coach Kozak has prepared some unique workouts such as one specifically for seniors and a series for teenage weight-loss.
Often the way you act on your mat is the way you act off your mat. Or the things you struggle with on your mat are the things that, yes indeed, you struggle with off the mat.
So begins the intro for ‘Revolution: 31 Days of Yoga’ on the popular YouTube channel ‘Yoga with Adriene’. The voice and face behind the screen is that of Adriene Mishler. In her yoga videos, the native Texan invites the 2-million-strong yoga community to join the experience and cultivate a healthy relationship with oneself.
‘Experience’ is a key word in Adriene’s vocabulary. Following her varied videos, you feel free to create a yoga practice that’s unique to you. She has a way of forging an authentic presence through the looking glass – like she’s in the room with you.
The theater reference has relevance to Adriene who, as a trained actress, has managed to manifest two dream careers. Her professional theater background is what helps her communicate with confidence and intention to her yoga audience. On the set, she draws from the idea of being on stage, being present, and letting a great story unfold.
“Early on, I was introduced to a discipline called the ‘Actors’ Language’, which covers not only words, but tone of voice, gestures, and movements. Basically, it’s what we now refer to in the wellness world as positive affirmation, or conscious language. In yoga, I am also using my body to have a voice,” she tells, her hands drawing a slow circle as she speaks.
Translated to our everyday lives, conscious language helps us identify the beliefs that are holding us back and reframe them as positive affirmations, something that echoes throughout Adriene’s channel. Indeed, choosing and using words that are supportive of us and others would be a wise approach not only on the yoga mat, but off it, too.
One conscious phrase that pops up repeatedly is the community slogan and Adriene’s mantra, ‘Find What Feels Good’. It sounds like the perfect antidote for today’s high-performance culture – but what does it really mean?
“The mantra, oddly enough, doesn’t focus on the word ‘good’ – it focuses on the word ‘find’,” explains Adriene. “Finding What Feels Good is about you having an individual conversation with yourself on a daily basis. It’s a tool genuinely everyone can use.”
Yoga, as Adriene interprets it, inspires us to listen, especially to our bodies. “The more we delve into that, the more we are able to take a breath in the office, and listen and go, ‘How should I respond instead of justresponding?’”
Adriene knows you can’t do everything, reach every goal, at once. To really go for the gold, you need to tend to things one at a time.
Check yourself before you wreck yourself
Adriene seems like the epitome of calm, so who better to give advice on how to deal with negative emotions in the office and off the mat, in general.
“Whenever I feel anger or resentment creeping in, I check in and ask, ‘Okay, what do I really need today?’ Of course, the answer usually is yoga. But in essence, those negative emotions should be your trigger to pause before you react. We all want to be better communicators. We all want to be the best versions of ourselves.”
The practice and philosophy of yoga in our world right now couldn’t be more relevant. Just like Adriene says through the screen:
“Revolution is for all levels, all bodies, all types, all moods. It changes every day, just like we change every day. It’s asking you to really be present.”
