NextFitness - Formerly known as Podfitness.com

If you have a love affair with your MP3 player and want to use it for customized workouts, NextFitness (formerly known as Podfitness.com) is a great choice for you. This site offers customized workouts based on your fitness level, goals and equipment and then goes one further and mixes these workouts with your own music. Even better, you can get new workouts anytime you like and it works with just about any MP3 player, you just have to have iTunes installed on your computer and the NextFitness software. The result is an ingenius system with the motivation of your own trainer and your favorite workout music.

NextFitness, formerly known as Podfitness, is easy to use and sign up is simple. You fill out information about your schedule, fitness level and available equipment and the system assigns a trainer and workout for you. You can keep the suggestion or choose your own based on the trainer or the activity. Each trainer has a different approach and style, so the list you see is based on who best matches your goals and fitness level. You can also choose by activity and the system will match you with the appropriate trainer. The different activities to choose from include: combined workouts, elliptical, stretching, stairs, cardio, pregnancy, weights, walking, running and cycling.

From there, you're taken to your dashboard, a page which details your trainer, the workout, a training summary, a calendar and the controls you need to mix the workout with your music.

To mix your workouts, you can choose one of your playlists from the dropdown list or click on the 'mix' button to choose individual songs. One note: this only works with songs you've uploaded, not songs you've purchased and downloaded. When choosing the songs, a message at the bottom will show you how long the workout is and your playlist length so you can continue adding songs. When you're done, NextFitness mixes the workout and adds a playlist in iTunes called 'NextFitness' where you can access the workout.

When I originally reviewed NextFitness, they offered a monthly subscription for $19.95. Their subscription service has now changed to a quarterly service that costs $59.85.

The workout you get depends on the trainer and there's no way to preview them beforehand, although this may be a future addition. All the workouts include a warm up and the trainer tells you exactly what you'll be doing while giving detailed instructions for each exercise. The training summary on the Dashboard offers suggestions for how often to do the assigned workout. While this isn't made very clear (a problem that will be fixed in future updates), users download updated versions of the workout to get new exercises. For example, I chose a workout that was suggested for 7 days week. Once I completed the first workout, I mixed a new version the next day that covered different exercises.

During the cardio workouts, you use a perceived exertion scale of 1-10 with cues from the trainer to speed up, slow down and focus on good form. The workout you get depends on the trainer but, as an example, I chose a treadmill workout and got a 35 minute pyramid routine broken down into 5-minute increments where the intensity continually went up as high as level 7-8.

For the strength workouts, the trainer tells you what exercise you'll be doing (e.g., leg press), gives you time to get into position and offers instructions for how to do the exercise. The trainer then counts each rep, offering form tips. Most strength workouts offered 3 sets of each exercise with a slow (sometimes very slow) rep count but, again, what you get depends on the trainer. Though you can't view the exercises, the instructions are very clear and most people won't have a problem following the workouts.

Overall, I think NextFitness has more pros than cons, but the cons are something to be aware of. A few that stand out are:

• You can't use music purchased from digital download stores. If you bought and downloaded most of your music (rather than uploading from your CDs) this may be a problem. This is because many of these songs are protected under Digital Rights Management, though Podfitness does offer music you can download.
• You can't review the workouts. There's no preview function now but, in speaking with Alan Winters, Executive Vice President of Podfitness, he mentioned this may be a future addition to the site.
• There's not much guidance in how to use the workouts or how often to update your chosen workouts. But, again, Alan assured me this was also being changed with more detailed guidance.

On the other hand, NextFitness does have plenty of advantages:

• An innovative site and the only one (that I know of) that allows you to mix workouts with your own music.
• Unlimited workouts for the monthly subscription. Another great feature is the ability to download as many workouts as you like anytime you want.
• Great workouts. The workouts I downloaded fit my fitness level and included a wide variety of moves. For example, one strength workout included one-legged squats with a ball as well as planks with a leg lift...not the usual types of exercises you get from online training.
• Great trainers. Many of the trainers work with celebrities (which is kind of cool) and there are some famous ones in there such as Kathy Smith and Danny Bonaduce, if you can believe that.

Overall, NextFitness has a lot to offer for the price. I think NextFitness would work best for experienced exercisers who know the moves, but want new workouts on a regular basis and people for whom music is an essential part of their workouts. There is no database of exercises and, although the trainer's cueing and instructions are quite clear, some folks still may need a visual if they haven't tried strength training before. Still, if you have a little knowledge of exercise, you shouldn't have any problem following the workouts.

The process is actually quite innovative and matches your fitness level and equipment as well as where you exercise perfectly. The software seamlessly mixes in the exercises with your music. There's no jarring pauses or stops...when the trainer talks, the volume of the music drops a bit so you can hear the instructions. Overall, a great experience and it will be even better as time goes on and they make new and improved updates.