Once an iPod enters your life, podcasts are sure to follow.
Podcasts, audio programs with the potential to be produced and distributed by anyone, can be downloaded free from many individual websites. But they're most easily found warehoused in the podcast section of the iTunes store - although not always very well organized. Podcasts are available for everything from learning a language to inspiring you to complete a workout. Quality varies - a lot - since almost anyone can throw a podcast together. And as podcasts proliferate, it becomes more work to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Fitness, wellness, exercise, diet and alternative health are popular podcast topics. They're useful when squeezing in a home workout between trips to the gym or to expand your repertoire to include a new activity like rock climbing - yes, there are even rock climbing podcasts. Some podcasts are made to be used while at the gym, coaching you through a series of hills and valleys while on a Stairmaster or treadmill.
iTunes shows what the most popular podcasts on a given subject are, but the worthiness of that ranking system is hit-or-miss. Suddenly it's all Oprah podcasts at the top of the charts. Who knows why? Or perhaps your preferences aren't the same as those of the general population. I'm not one for a lot of inspiration when it comes to exercise, for instance - I'm the odd duck who doesn't find inspiration, well, inspiring. I prefer a no-nonsense, but well-produced, approach.
This hit list of fitness and wellness podcasts avoids excess chatter, inarticulate and wandering hosts, an overload of motivational speaking, ad-heavy content
and poor sound quality (banging microphones, background noise and sound that seems to have been recorded over a cellphone - or from Mars).
No-nonsense and well-produced
Series of short, two- to three-minute podcast slideshows that explain one yoga pose in detail.
Ever wonder where that techno-lite workout music comes from? Twenty-five-minute to an hour workout mixes with titles like "Plug in, turn up, work out," "Bump it up," "Step on the gas" and the more prosaic "Declare war on workout boredom" are found here. Sometimes there's somebody whispering in French in the background. That's always good for losing a couple of extra pounds.
