A YouTube for Fitness Videos?

Leonard Fitness has announced the launch of www.workoutz.com, a website featuring free exercise video demonstrations and workout programs. In a market saturated with websites trying to talk wary consumers into paying membership fees for video content, Justin Leonard is allowing users to view fitness videos free online, or download them to their iPod at no cost.

What does this mean for pay-for-access fitness training websites? Quite simply, you had better add some value to your members because nobody wants to pay for something that they can get for free elsewhere. And once people get used to the idea of getting something free online there is no going back. What that added value might be we will leave up to your imagination, but let’s just say it better be more than the typical “community” feature-set.

Currently, the content on Workoutz.com is sparse with only about 100 exercise videos in five categories, but Leonard Fitness plans to become the largest collection of exercise video content ever put together in one place. “You can think of workoutz.com as the YouTube of fitness videos,” says Justin Leonard.

However, a quick look at the site reveals they have a very long road ahead of them if they want people to think of their site in YouTube terms. Where is the comment section for each video? The discussion aspect is a major attraction to YouTube. Where are the user profile pages, user video blogs, and voting / rating features? To say that this site is anything at all like YouTube (other than being fee) is taking things a little too far at this point. But who knows what the future holds for Workoutz.com…