I’m not known for my athletic ability. In fact, just the opposite is the case. I can—and have—injured myself just by getting out of a chair. As you might imagine, this has left me feeling less than confident about trying out new workout routines. The only way I’ll even consider it is if a personal trainer guides me through a new exercise. However, personal trainers aren’t cheap. If you have an existing gym membership (which I don't) you can check to see if you get one or a few free personal training sessions as a part of the annual fee. Otherwise, depending on a personal trainer's certification, you can expect to spend anywhere from $25 upwards per half hour of training time.

But here’s another option. If you want to experience what it might be like working one-on-one with a personal trainer, there are plenty of great, free resources on the Internet to help you do just that. Try these out—if you find you especially like one, please consider sharing your experiences for other KCLs (aka me) to benefit from as well!

1. Free Trainers

Free Trainers is an online resource that provides free customized workouts by category. For instance, if you have a gym membership, you can access free custom workouts you can do in a gym. You can also access workouts for exercise bands, cardio, strength training, at home fitness and first-timers.

Free Trainers also provides general information about diet and exercise, and their community forums allow you to interact with other members. All of this is absolutely free!

2. Traineo 

Traineo takes a different approach from Free Trainers. On this site, users upload their own favorite workout routines, and you can find routines that are designed to achieve goals similar to your own.

The site advertises that more than 200 thousand members have joined, so you’ll be in good company with folks at all stages of their journey towards health and fitness.

3. Do Yoga With Me

Physicians and fitness trainers alike agree—yoga is one of the best overall exercises to enhance mind-body health, increase strength, coordination, balance, focus and body confidence. But best of all, yoga is such a vast field that there are workouts for every goal—from rehabilitation after surgery to relaxation to deep breathing to intense workouts for "power yogis." And yoga comes well equipped with a range of props so you can customize the poses to your range of motion.

Do Yoga With Me's list of yoga classes comes with drop-down menus so you can choose by length, difficulty level, style and even teacher.

4. Fitness Blender

Fitness Blender offers workouts, meal plans and fitness tips. When you click on each video, it will tell you the goal of the workout, the duration, the focus and the difficulty level.

You can also save your favorites to a personal folder to access again later.

5. HasFit 

HasFit boasts over 20 million users and a robust fan following on Facebook. In addition to customized workouts for home or gym, you can access nutrition and recipe information tailored to various weight loss or maintenance goals.

The website also has a handy guide to help you decide which program is right for you.

6. Body Rock TV / The Daily Hiit

These two sites are joined at the hip, literally (and yes, Daily Hiit really does have two i’s in its title)! Both sites offer a wide selection of highly entertaining and motivating workout videos.

Daily Hiit serves as a companion to Body Rock TV by providing links to the newest workouts and an interactive user community that posts recipes, motivational tools and more. Best of all, both sites are free!

 

For similar articles, check out:

5 Free Fitness Apps to Help You Meet Your 2014 Goals

Virtual Fitness Coaching for Free (or Almost Free)

Daily Deal Sites for Fitness Fanatics

 

Work Out with a Personal Trainer—Absolutely FREE