Ford Models Fitness Review: Remarkable Bodies of Work

It's no wonder none of us can keep our New Year's resolutions to hit the gym more often. It's a miserable experience those first few weeks of January.

I head to the gym pretty regularly, but it's always the worst during the first part of the new year. Dozens of new people are swarming around each time I go in, staring at the buttons on the treadmill with furrowed brows, sliding off stability balls and smacking their heads on concrete floors, and choking themselves with their iPod headphone wires while they work on cable exercises. It's not a pretty sight, and I'll be honest: I'm totally laughing at them, and not always on the inside.

Yep, January is when new people join gyms, and the veterans stay far, far away until mid-February, when the good intentions have worn off.

So what to do for those few weeks to replace all those machines I won't be able to access? Yep, I found a podcast to replace the gym. 

I've raved about Fat Free Fitness in the past, and it's great, especially if you're well acquainted with fitness basics. It doesn't quite fit the bill for me this time, though, since a lot of exercises require equipment that most people, including me, don't have at home. But another video podcast I love is Ford Models Fitness, where a slew of dreamy, peppy, and (of course) well-toned hosts offer up their best ideas for fitness. They strut their stuff in bright, airy studios which are a welcome switch from the gray and grungy gyms that serve as the setting for similar podcasts.

The 2-to 5-minute podcasts each offer several creative ways to adapt old fitness standbys, such as crunches, pushups, and jumping rope. Most, thankfully, require little if any equipment, and the models are exceptionally articulate about explaining how the exercises work. It's easy to take almost any exercise and incorporate it into your routine. (Though I found a recent podcast on nunchuck exercises a bit baffling. Really? Who has those just lying around, and are people who do have nunchucks the target audience for this podcast?)

I don't expect that this podcast will allow me to forgo my gym membership, but it will be handy for times when it's too tough to get to the gym, I'm traveling, or I've only got a few minutes to fit in a workout. And since my iPod small enough to keep in my pocket, I consider that to be a perfect fit.