Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
Good graphic descriptions/inexpensive/clear to use |
| Disadvantages: |
sexist/heavy marketing of food supplements and associated diet books |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
yes |
Men's Health Personal Trainer is an on-line gym/fitness club for Men.
It is a branch of Men's Health magazine although the subscriptions are seperate.
You can join Men's Health through the magazine. It is marketed to men with the emphasis on muscle building and glossy pictures of super fit men. In fact once you join you will find the workouts are very basic and there is something to suit everyone. You can access the personal trainer website through the Mens Health Magazine website.
Subscriptions vary,you can get discounts if you subscribe to the magazine or if you buy some of the books or diet supplements on offer. I got a month's free trial with mine and 3 months for £16.95 but I was previously a member 6 months ago and was invited to rejoin.
The website is divided into 7 sections by tabs on the top of the page. They are Home, My Workouts, My Meals, My Progress, Fitness Wisdom, and Community. The culture of the website is American. The company is based in America and the trainers and advisors are American.
The My Workout section is the most extensive part of the website. This contains your daily workout schedule which you can also print out.
The workout is a list of exercises you have to do each day. The number of repititions(sets) you have to do is listed beside the weight you must use and the time you must do the exercise in. You must enter your daily results against what you were expected to do.Each exercise has a graphic or written description that appears in a pop up box when the exercise is clicked on. There are about 240 exercises. These are divided between arms,back,legs,chest ,abdominals and neck. The results of the workout are coallated to show you graphs of your progress. These do not work properly unless you use fill in your measurements and use the meal plan and workouts regularly.
The My Meals section gives you a list of diets you can use. For instance the Belly Off or Abs Diet. This section gives you the daily breakfast,lunch and dinner meals plus a shopping list.
The My progress section gives you all the statistics you need to show what you have been doing. This also gives you a strength quotient which shows how strong you are compared to other men.
You have to follow the programme to use it properly.
The Programme is the section that contains 10 different workout programmes you can join. There is something for everyone. There is a workout for Big Arms, Runners weight training, 2 x 15 minute workouts for people who do not have much time and a variety of power,weight loss and weight gain programmes. All of the programmes have a different trainer who you can write to for advice.
The trainers are all introduced to you with a short biography also.
Fitness Wisdom is a section full of articles from the magazine on subjects of health and nutrition. There are articles from past magazines and advice from the coaches.
Community is a section for you to use to stay in touch with the coaches and other users. You can find a "Buddy" to e-mail or just chat to other users.
My own experience of using the site is that a lot of committment is required to use it properly. Still I am a big fan and intend to use it for the forseeable future. The only thing I have to complain about is the mail order system of special offers for books which you have to be wary of. These come on 30 day free trial offers that can be returned.
Even though I returned a book they kept billing me for it but thankfully the problem has been resolved. All the same read the small print carefully as some offers can involve your acceptance of the next (buy one you have to buy another). The subscription fee is better value than any UK equivalent.
Doing the workouts was great fun but I have discovered that 1 hour at lunchtime is not really enough time as you need time to arrange weights, take breaks and also wait for other users to finish on machines. I have plans to sort this out as the workout schedule is very flexible I can change some days to work around this.
The website is targeted at Men and is not a unisex site so it may offend your girlfriend in parts as sex is frequently discussed.
Overall the site is not unlike e-diets or any other on line fitness club.
It is designed to be flexible around what you want to do and is very basic and down to earth despite the glossy masculine image it portrays.
