My Experience with Beachbody on Demand

Back in February, a family member and his girlfriend were talking about how they do Beachbody on Demand.  We're no strangers to Beachbody as we've been doing Power 90, Turbo Jam, T25 Focus, and Turbo Fire for years.  I considered purchasing a newer program, but for $99/year, we could have access to all of their programs new and old.  There are 65 programs as of the writing of this post.  We figured we'd give it a shot and see what we were missing.

Since we now had access to a ton of new to us programs as well as some old favorites, I made a sample month trying out all kinds of different workouts.

(Click to enlarge)

There were some we really liked, and some we immediately said: "we're never doing that again."  It was usually because the instructor wasn't someone we connected with, or we didn't feel we were getting a good burn from it.  I did two months of samples, and we crossed anything with the Brazilian Butt Lift dude off because we just weren't jibing with him.  We also found a few of Tony Horton's things were not up our alley.    Funnily enough, the Mes de Mas, which is completely in Spanish, were good workouts; we just had to pay attention, which is never a bad thing.  We liked Core de Force but were frustrated by the lack of balance in quite a few of them.  In most of them, they don't even out the other side, so it's up to us to do that, and it can get a little confusing until you get into a rhythm.  We did like Joel, though, so his LIIFT 4 weight program has been a major component of our time.  In May, when we were on vacation, it made it much easier to have access to workouts though we do download the workouts before we go.  We always tend to stay in rentals with spotty wifi, if any, so it's nice to have the option to download to the tablet.

In April, we saw Joel Freeman (LIIFT 4) and Shaun T (T25 Focus, Insanity, etc.) were doing a hybrid calendar with Shaun's newer to Beachbody on Demand (BOD), Transform 20.  It's 20 minutes of intense step aerobics coupled with Joel's strength routine.  We decided that would be the perfect thing to do when we got back from vacation.  We ended up doing it all summer!  June through August.  We really enjoyed the first month, which was the calendar they created.  The other two months, I made my own calendar for us, and I have to say by August, we were ready to move on.  The Transform 20 workout is really good, but if anyone knows Shaun T workouts, he's a gabber.  You pile that one with this kind of grating soundtrack of his voice mixed in with the music, and you've got a double dose of Shaun that we were done with.  A great program but not three months in a row to keep your sanity.

In September and some of October, we really just kind of winged it cardio wise but always went back to LIIFT 4.  There is a new strength program coming to BOD soon called 6 Weeks of the Work and the Mr, and I will likely start that for November and December  (see cons section) and give our boy Joel a little break.  We know we need to keep the muscles guessing and it looks HARD.

But let me show you with screenshots from my BOD account how it's set up.

(All info and pictures below are copyright Beachbody.com and are screenshots for informational purposes.  The opinions expressed here are completely my own and I have no affiliation with BeachbodyonDemand.)

Okay, so when I log in, this shows me that I have averaged 6 workouts per week since February 20th and have done 205 workouts through BOD.

A closer look at the last two workouts I did will show you some info about them like how long the program is on the whole, how many minutes the workouts typically are per day, the trainer as well as difficulty scale.

You can also search by what you're looking for, whether it's cardio, strength, for kids, etc.  So if you chose LIIFT 4, this is what you'd see.

The icons show you how long the video is, and the little weight symbol will tell you if you'll need dumbbells/weights for your workout.

When you click details, it gives you more information. like this version of Chest and Tri's has a HIIT component.  It's 39 minutes long, requires light, medium, and heavy weights and recommends you have a mat, water, and towel available because he's going to hand you your ass.

If you look at the program materials, you have options available to you like a formal calendar to follow, a progression tracker so you can see how your strength has increased as you move through the program as well as a program and nutrition guide for meat-eaters and veggiesaurases.

Before you get started, if you want some music chosen by the instructor, click the playlist option and you can find that and stream it at the same time.  I'm gonna tell ya now...Joel is all metal, so get ready to get hulky.

Now you've got your playlist rarin', your weights set up runway style so you can easily access them during quick, superset transitions, and you're ready to make up new swear words.

We really like BOD and will likely renew when our year is up in February.  It's nice that if you're trying a new to you workout and it's not meshing with your mood that you can go to something else relatively quickly.  I've had a few sessions where two and three workouts haven't done it, and then we just switch to Turbo Fire or something we're sure of and get to it.  This is where making your own calendar comes in handy.

You'll have some collabs with trainers like the LIIFTformation that Joel and Shaun T did that tortured us all summer.  Joel and Autumn Calabrese did a hybrid calendar for September since it was their birthday month.  I don't know if those are regular things or not, but it shows you how easy it is to combine multiple programs to switch things up.
I'm looking forward to doing more programs and combining some for other hybrids.  If I do, I will post them on here so other BOD peeps can see what we're up to.

My personal pros and cons:

PROS:

65 programs to choose from with varying lengths, meaning you could potentially do one new workout every single day for 7 YEARS and not repeat one!  Pretty sweet.

Usually, a new program or two per year with access to all of your old favorites.

Access to trainer picked playlists, nutrition guides, and program features in PDF form.

Ability to stream anywhere with wifi access and/or download workouts if you don't trust the wifi if you're traveling.

There's a 14-day free trial and then you can be billed how you prefer, quarterly, every 6 months or pay yearly for the biggest savings.  Pricing is here.


CONS:  

Ability to mute trainer but still hear the program music is not available like it is on the DVD's which is a bummer when it comes to Tony.  No offense, dude.

Streaming is not a perfect science and sometimes mid-workout, it might poop out on you on occasion.  I've been able to grab the DVD's we have if we're doing ones we already owned but can be frustrating.  (Doesn't happen often.)

New programs come to the BOD members many months after they're available for "VIP access."  For example, 6 Weeks of the Work became available Sept 30th for VIP access.  What that means is if I want the access, I'd need to pay $49.99 for that ONE workout.  That is half the price of the yearly membership to 65 programs...for ONE program.  If I don't want to pay that, I'm going to have to wait until April 21, 2020!!!  That's almost 7 months later.  That sucks a bag of you know whats.  So yeah, that's a major downer for me and others, I'm sure, but I can go through another few rounds of what I choose from them and supplement with other workout sources until then.

Overall, I would absolutely recommend BeachbodyOnDemand to anyone who is looking to shake up their current routine.  There are lots of different programs for different fitness levels, and I think all of them have modifiers for low impact options.   That means if your strength and endurance progresses, the harder versions will be there to challenge you if you are able to do more impact making it feel like a whole new workout.   There are good amounts of all components for a healthy lifestyle from strength training to cardio to flexibility/yoga.  Don't let the term "Beachbody" deter you either...pictures on social media that pop up on their dashboard show you people of all shapes and sizes are getting their workouts on.  It's not about getting a beach body, it's about getting a strong one.

Our personal favorite programs:
LIIFT 4
Joel's Exclusives
Turbo Fire
Focus T25
Insanity Max 30
Shaun Week
80 Day Obsession
22 Minutes Hard Corps (sometimes muted)
Tai Cheng (the Mr)
ChaLean Extreme
Transform 20 (sometimes muted)


Do you/have you used Beachbody programs?

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