Start sweating--a new exercise video library is online

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As waistlines grow from stress eating, it’s time to chuck the cupcakes and do some exercises. What’s that you say? You don’t know how to do exercises properly and you have no budget for a trainer?

No worries. IDEA Health & Fitness Assn., a San Diego-based member organization of fitness and health professionals, has released 30 short fitness videos on its website that are free to the public (members can access all online videos).

Exercises include the usual suspects, such as bent-over alternate dumbbell rows and push-ups. But some unusual ones are in the mix, like the standing 3-plane active hip flexor stretch, a dynamic three-part stretch that involves the upper body. The split squat with crossover dumbbell reach is another dynamic move that combines a squat with upper body strength training using dumbbells that targets the lats. Even veteran fitness types will surely discover some new tricks.

Narrating the exercises are Keli Roberts and Anthony Carey; Roberts is a trainer at Equinox in Pasadena as well as an author and host of her own fitness videos. She was also the 2003 IDEA International Fitness Instructor of the Year. Carey is an author and owner of Function First, a pain relief-based exercise facility in San Diego.

In the videos, viewers are walked through each demonstrated exercise, and Roberts and Carey explain how to do the moves with proper form and what muscle groups are being used. Some routines are also modified to make them more difficult or easy. We appreciate the little twists, such as the use of paper plates to make feet slide more comfortably in the hamstring curl alt. Some light equipment, such as dumbbells, stability balls and bands, are incorporated on certain exercises.

IDEA plans to add more free and members-only videos to the site, so stay tuned.

-- Jeannine Stein