Workout Wednesday: The Yoga Collective Review & GIVEAWAY

Happy Hump Day!

It’s Wednesday, which means I’m just FOUR DAYS away from my first ever 10-mile race! Aghhh!

To relax my mind and body a little this week, I have been doing a little bit of yoga, and a lot of stretching. Fortunately, I haven’t had to go to my gym to get some yoga in because: 1) My schedule has been a little unorthodox lately, and 2) Sometimes I just don’t want to brush my hair. #noshame
That’s where The Yoga Collective comes in. The Yoga Collective is an new online yoga studio with classes an tutorials, which also has a real life studio in Venice, California. The Yoga Collective offers a number of online classes for different levels of yoga experience. It is not a free service; however, you can do a trial period and decide whether you’re interested in paying for a regular subscription to the service. 50% of the proceeds go their charity fund, which divides the funds between five organizations. The cost for a membership is $12/month, or $130/year.

When I first logged in to the website, and looked at the categories, I thought they were catered to me! Hip Opening Flow? Happy Hamstrings? Back to the Basics? Did these people read my mind?! I got to taking a few of the classes for a test drive, and my lower back and hips definitely appreciated my efforts.

Photo courtesy of The Yoga Collective

I don’t consider myself a yoga beginner, but I sometimes find that even beginner’s classes can be more difficult than anticipated. I tried a couple of the 1+ level classes, and they were kind of difficult. I think that my main issue was that I wasn’t able to recall the poses by name right away, and it led to me having to pause the video to readjust. Fortunately, The Yoga Collective has a Yoga Pose Instruction page, where you can learn the correct form for a large variety of poses. I highly recommend watching the tutorials before giving it a try, or at least test yourself on the names of the poses. This will come in handy with some of the classes.

You can search for online yoga videos on the site by class level, duration (which really comes in handy if you just want to get a quick class in), teacher, style, and focus. One thing I will say is that I wish the class descriptions on the Just For You page actually had descriptions. I think this might be a minor glitch, however, because the descriptions do appear for the different classes when you are on the regular search page (just click “View Class).

Photo courtesy of The Yoga Collective

I really appreciate that they film each online yoga class and tutorial in their actual brick-and-mortar studio, because I have watched some online yoga videos where they are outdoors somewhere, and there is something distracting in the background. It was especially cool because I felt like I was actually in the class. Not all of the students do the advanced poses, which is great for someone like me who isn’t as super at yoga as she sometimes thinks. I’ve always liked videos that offer a number of alternative routes to achieving the same outcome, so I was digging this.

The instructors are great! I really enjoyed the Yin Deep Stretch class with Laura Eckstrom. She didn’t speak so much that it was distracting, and was really good on keeping me focused, which is no small feat! She has such positive energy, plus she wears these really cool leg warmers in some of the videos (which is totally unrelated to anything). I watched one of Tony Giuliano’s videos, but he spoke so fast, and I’m such a noob, that I got discouraged. One day, Tony. One day! I also think Kristina Macias is pretty cool, mostly because her shoulder are amazing, and her Instagram is pretty dope. In fact, The Yoga Collective has a pretty sweet Instagram page. Check it out! Not for nothing, but I love a good yoga-infused Instagram. (Gratuitous inversions and random splits on Instagram drive me up the wall!)

As I mentioned earlier in the post, I have been doing yoga and stretching in preparation for my big race on Sunday. The folks at The Yoga Collective have informed me that the most popular videos for their runner students are the cardio and flexibility videos, so be sure to check those out, runner friends!

Now, a treat! The wonderful folks at The Yoga Collective have agreed to give away TWO annual memberships to Flecks of Lex readers! Aren’t they just awesome!? To enter, complete the tasks in the Rafflecopter widget below. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Disclosure: I was offered a free annual membership to The Yoga Collective in exchange for my honest review of the site. 


Note: Gotta show love to the Workout Wednesday #WOWlinkup ladies! Make sure you check out the other posts this week!