Fitness.com Reviews

Editor's Star Ratings:

Costs:

• Membership and access to most services FREE, except:
  • GetFit personalized health and fitness program - $10 per month ($2.50 per week)
  • GetFit fitness program AND Online Personal Coaching - $49 per month ($12.25 per week)

Features:

• 500+ exercises explained
• BMI (Body Mass Index) Calculator
• A treasury of health and fitness information
• General Fit-o-meter
• Hidden carb calculator
• A wealth of articles
• Featured exercises
• Daily tips
• Featured recipes
• Work out your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate)
• Polls
• Online forum

• In addition to these free services the site offers two additional paid services:

• “GetFit” Fitness System:
  • Creates comprehensive personalized diet and fitness program for you
  • Includes video demonstrations and instructions for all exercises
  • Suitable for all fitness members
  • No equipment necessary

• “GetFit” Online Coaching:
  • The “GetFit” Fitness System as above, plus:
  • Unlimited access to an online personal trainer via email and chat.
  • Qualified trainers work with you to help motivate and encourage you.

Editor's Verdict:

Fitness.com isn’t really a club or scheme in the way that many of the other entries in our top 10 list are. It’s more a library of health and fitness tools and information that aims to give you everything you need to enjoy a healthy life for free. Or at least the tools and information themselves are free: the site also offers a portal for two additional fee-based services which you can subscribe to if you wish.

The homepage is admittedly a little bland. The layout and colour scheme are very generic and feel like they could belong to almost any website. It is also marred by lots of adverts, which are easy enough to ignore, and pop-ups, which aren’t. Then again, this is a largely free website so all this has to be paid for somehow, and if the featured sponsors do maintain a heavy presence on the site at least their wares tend to be the kind of things fitness website users might want to read about.

Despite its generic feel, the homepage is very browsable, offering useful facts, exercises and dietary tips of the day, as well as tools like a BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) calculator. There is also a featured article and recipe of the day, so you can expect to find something new and interesting each time you visit the homepage. The usual BMI and general fitness calculators you’ll find on all the best workout websites are here too, along with some interesting extras, like a test that compares your proportions to the ideals defined by the ancient Greeks – are you the living reincarnation Hercules or Aphrodite? – and a hidden carb calculator which uses the nutritional information given on food labels to reveal how many hidden carbohydrates lurk within your meals, waiting to strangle your heart in their fatty fingers as you sleep.

There is also a strong online fitness community aspect to the website which you can participate in via forums and message boards. This online community also serves as a means to answer any fitness questions you may have, courtesy of other website users rather than staff members, which helps to make this a low-maintenance operation - another reason why it can be offered for free.

Well, I say “free”. All of this is indeed available no cost whatsoever, but Fitness.com also provides two additional services under the “GetFit” banner which you can purchase if you choose.

The first of these offers you a comprehensive and fully customized personal fitness and lifestyle program tailored to your current health level, desired fitness goals, available time and dietary preferences. Alternately, it also gives you the tools you will need to build your own program however you wish and to analyse your performance at every step. As always, the exercises that make up your program are all clearly demonstrated and explained.

The second additional service encompasses all of the above plus unlimited access to an online personal trainer, via email and chat, who will work actively with you to fully customize your fitness program and continually refine it as you go along.

Both these services are designed and administered by qualified fitness professionals drawing on a broad variety of knowledge bases. The benefits of a customized fitness programme and, even more so, personal coaching over the web, over simply learning some exercises under your own steam are many. These extras may be just what you need to avoid taking up an unrealistic or only half-thought-through workout program, letting it slip when it doesn’t deliver the results you wanted and eventually giving up on fitness entirely. The paid “GetFit” options are a surer route to improved fitness and wellbeing than just grazing the website because suddenly its not just about fitness in general its about YOUR fitness, which can be very motivating.

It’s this personalized aspect that you pay for, of course. How much you can expect to pay for it varies greatly across the internet, in fact you can find comparable levels of personal care to that offered by the two “GetFit” programs elsewhere online at much less cost. Fitness training is very much an online market that has yet to find its equilibrium, there’s no industry standard as to what you can expect to pay for what level of service, so you can save considerable money without compromising on quality by shopping around. In particular, check out the websites which grace the more prestigious end of our top 10 – they’re up there for a reason, you know.

Having said that, Fitness.com offers a huge amount of fitness information and expertise for free and if you do decide to shell out your $49 a month for a personal trainer and live a healthier, more enjoyable life as a result you’re unlikely to complain, even if you could have saved a few pennies elsewhere.

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