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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
By Jennifer Saranow
August, 2004
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Bonnie Hitchcock begins most days with a workout - in
her home office.
The 43-year-old potter in Greensboro, N.C., pushes aside her desk chair,
unrolls her yoga mat and logs on to the Web site of an online yoga studio. She
selects from a list of classes, and within seconds, an instructor appears on her
screen.
"I like the selection of videos available to watch instantly," says Hitchcock,
who began doing online yoga classes in January and hasn't touched her three
exercise videotapes since. "You get a little bit of everything...On a video, you
just get that one person's feel for yoga and that's it."
Forget about fitness videotapes and DVDs. The new at-home exercise class is on
your computer.
Thanks to the proliferation of broadband and advances in Internet video
technology, a number of companies are starting to offer online fitness classes
with the aim of providing exercisers with instant variety - and, sometimes, an
interactive experience.
The Yoga Learning Center (www.yogalearningcenter.com), where Hitchcock takes
her classes, offers about 50 online video and audio yoga practices and
meditations, double the amount it launched with in October 2003. Customers pay
$9.95 a month for unlimited access. The center is adding at least one new class
each month and, by next year, plans to expand into Pilates.
Beyond yoga, a new site called Daily Fitness (www.dailyfitness.net) is set to
launch later this summer with six streaming video classes, including kickboxing,
step aerobics and belly dancing. The site will also offer personal training and
nutrition sessions, via video teleconference. A base membership is expected to
cost about $14.95 a month and training sessions around $35 to $40 an hour.
Traditional at-home workout stars are also eyeing the online space. Exercise
guru Kathy Smith, who has nearly 40 exercise workouts available on VHS and DVD,
hopes to offer streaming-video workouts within a year, says Jackie Mendes, brand
manager for Kathy Smith Lifestyles Inc. of Los Angeles.
Likewise, popular at-home walking instructor Leslie Sansone, who came out with
a CD-ROM in October, hopes to offer a live online class in the next six months
to a year, says Michele Conti, spokeswoman.
"The past success of exercise video and DVD formats, which are watched on
television, shows that the time may be right for a new, online approach," says
Steven Taylor, a Web developer who founded the Yoga Learning Center as an option
for students who were finding it hard to get into his wife's popular Walnut
Creek, Calif., yoga class.
Cable companies are also getting into the mix. Last year, Comcast Corp.
(CMCSK, CMCSA) started offering yoga programming on demand to about half of its
21 million customers, and plans to expand its fitness offerings. Studio 4
Networks distributes its on-demand fitness programming to about 100,000
households in the Midwest and plans to expand its business, says Chief Executive
Ed Stansfield.
An Expanding Market
As people have ever busier schedules and work longer work days, the home
exercise market continues to expand. For many home exercisers, it is easier to
throw in a tape or DVD than to make it to scheduled classes at the gym. Unit
sales in the U.S. of exercise VHS tapes and DVDs hit 9.8 million in 2003, up
from 7.6 million in 2002, according to Alexander & Associates, a New York market
research firm that specializes in the home video market.
Now, experts say online workouts may be poised to take off because they get
closer to the ultimate of goal of instructed home exercise: simulating the gym
class experience. "Really what people are looking for is more interactivity, and
that's what they are finding," says Cedric Bryant, chief of exercise physiology
for the American Council of Exercise.
The last major advance in home-exercise instruction was the DVD, which allowed
viewers to quickly move between different exercise clips for variety. Still,
tapes and DVDs have been unable to simulate feedback from a class instructor.
Enter online workouts. In addition to the benefits of traditional fitness
tapes and DVDs such as privacy and any-time workouts, the online format can
offer more variety and thus less chance of getting sick of a workout.
Even more, some online classes offer ways for users to communicate with their
instructors. That can help a participant feel more plugged in to a class, and
also reduce the risk of injury since an instructor can steer a participant away
from an inappropriate exercise.
The Yoga Learning Center offers a message board where users can ask questions
of a community of instructors and practitioners about how to assume various yoga
poses, for instance. "You can't ask a question of a video you bring home," the
site's Taylor says.
When Daily Fitness launches, meanwhile, video conferencing users will be able
to directly talk with their instructors and get feedback, while all users will
be able to e-mail instructors questions such as, "Why does that make my shoulder
hurt when I do that," says founder Tobin Shaeffer.
Improved Technology
While Web video used to be characterized by small viewing screens and frequent
connection disruptions, analysts say the spread of broadband, better online
media players and more online video content has helped make consumers more
accustomed to watching online video. High-quality video can be viewed
full-screen, making it easier to watch from a distance. Users say the experience
of following a class on a computer is not that different from using a
television. Most online classes vary from 20 minutes to over an hour.
To be sure, online classes have their drawbacks. The computer may not be
located in the best room in the house for exercising, and small screens, such as
those on laptops, could be frustrating to follow.
What's more, the quality of streaming video, while significantly improved from
a few years ago, still can't compete with DVDs or even most VHS tapes. Quality
can also vary considerably from one provider to the next.
Still, some established players in the fitness business say that while they're
interested in online technology, they are hesitant to move to the Web, for now.
"We know that the future is in streaming video and video on demand and we're
definitely moving in that direction with our fitness lines," says Lee Eiland, a
brand manager at Lions Gate Home Entertainment, which distributes workouts from
aerobics guru Denise Austin.
Still, Eiland says any moves in those directions would be a couple years off
as users are just now starting to embrace DVDs for their home workouts. The
company is now selling an even split of DVDs and VHS tapes, up from about 30%
DVDs last year, as more people bring DVD players into their homes, Eiland says.
Some instructors prefer to use the Internet to market their lower-tech
offerings. Step N' Motion Videos, which offers more than 60 videos from
instructor Cathe Friedrich, plans to offer limited online classes this fall. But
the company says it is more focused on using the Web to offer clips of
Friedrich's DVD and VHS workouts to encourage visitors to buy the products.
"I don't see streaming media yet as being something people are going to be
doing" as part of a workout, says Chris Williams, chief financial officer of
Step N' Motion Videos.
- For continuously updated news from The Wall Street Journal, see WSJ.com at
http://wsj.com.
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