Jane Fonda promotes her exercise video Jane Fonda's Lean Routine in 1990. Photo / Getty Images
An array of workout videos from over the decades that you can enjoy even from (maybe especially from) the comfort of your couch.
Most of our workouts are at home now. Which is why it's an ideal time to get lost in the wild world of the vintage exercise video.
Beyond just titans of the genre like Jane Fonda (now leg lifting on TikTok) and Richard Simmons, there were so many celebrity or just sort of celebrity-ish workout videos in the 1980s and 1990s that going through them is a real tour of the era. Fabio. Dolph Lundgren. MTV's The Grind, Raquel Welch. Flexercise, Aerobicize, Jazzercise, Booty Ballet, Crunch, Tae Bo, Buns of Steel.
They feature so many things lost to time: striped leotards, elaborate pelvic thrusts, rainbow headbands, Reebok Steps.
Many have been posted to YouTube, and original VHS tapes can be found if you're really motivated. One could, in theory, do the workouts from home — and since the tapes were originally meant to be done at home, before gyms were everywhere, they don't usually involve much in the way of equipment.
But whether they work might almost be beside the point. Then and now, they entertain.
The year is 1992 and supermodel Cindy Crawford is in full bombshell hair and a black bustier leotard — or is it a bathing suit? — on a beach doing arm circles to a Primal Scream remix. Maybe I've been home for too long, but I felt glory for the first time in weeks. The model workout genre rose along with the influence of the supermodel in the 1990s (another is Karen Voight's the Body Workout With Elle Macpherson, which was also shot by the sea).
Crawford does side bends and notes "it's really good for tightening your waist" and later, of her modified "girl" push-ups, says, "you can do boy push-ups, but I can't." Mostly she doesn't speak and instead lets the disembodied voice of her trainer Radu shout out the names of the moves.
There's a chair workout in an industrial-style gym space (the '90s loved nothing more than a gritty-looking workout space). See also: Step Reebok: The Video.
A couple of years ago, Crawford said she still did the workout. I treated this video in the spirit that I believe it was made, which was to watch her doing a series of 50 butt squeezes while the camera zooms in on her pelvis. She doesn't break a sweat. From my seat on the couch, I didn't either.
The 1980s aerobic video is a wonderful genre. Many went for pep, like the Golden Door Aerobics Workout, in which a trio of blond women in candy-coloured leotards clap and jump to an instrumental version of the song Maniac.
But my preference is for a 1983 video starring actress Sandahl Bergman, of Conan the Barbarian and Xanadu fame. It's an aerobic video, stark and moody, even a little surreal, with the blond former Broadway dancer on sets that are just green or blue or black and white.
She wears a lot of headbands and tiny shorts and is almost always flanked by two beefcake backup dancers who are often wearing things like jeans and vests with bare chests. You couldn't really follow along even if you wanted to. There's a barre workout with no instruction and just an interlude of her dancing alone in a black room. It reminds us that movement can be dramatic and cathartic, not just chirpy.
Jayne Kennedy's 1983 video is a rare corrective to the very white (and so blond) world of the vintage workout video. Kennedy, a TV personality, pageant winner and actress, advises users to "establish a positive belief in yourself" and quickly gets down to business, pointing to Tom and Vicky in the back, who will be performing the aerobics exercises on an advanced level.
This has all the '80s hallmarks we have come to rely on, including striped leotards and suspenders. The music is mostly instrumental, including Michael Jackson's Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough and Diana Ross' Upside Down.
There's a bit of lightness when the whole crew laughs about how hard a leg routine is before doing floor slaps and toe raises to Rockin' After Midnight by Marvin Gaye. The cool-down moves the action to a beach — why so many beaches? — and Renaldo Nehemiah, a track-and-field and NFL star, pops in for a group hamstring workout at the end.
The Cherfitness oeuvre, which includes A New Attitude from 1991 and Body Confidence from 1992, is an odd, highly specific and black-clad universe. It is one in which our host Cher has chosen to wear a Bob Mackie body stocking (it appears to be the same one from the If I Could Turn Back Time video) while doing a routine to the 1960s-era dance the Pony.
She also wears a black leotard with a lace-up bodice and a tutu in a step aerobics sequence and wears a kind of corset belt in a rubber band resistance training video in which she brags that she's using harder bands than her trainer. Most of the background music is sort of lite rock covers of classic hits, like Dancing in the Street, that have not aged well.
If you care to get metaphorical, Cher's introduction to Body Confidence serves as a mantra for us all: "The thing about this tape is, it's challenging. It's not impossible and you don't have to start off perfect. You just have to start"
When this video came out in 1988, I was in grade school and thought that one day in the future, when I was a teenager, I too would be hosting bedroom workouts like sitcom star and activist Alyssa Milano. I blame '80s diet culture and a mother committed to Jazzercise. Who could blame me?
The video begins with a long introduction to set up the idea of Teen Steam with Milano in a large bedroom complete with a daybed (then de rigueur). It cuts to her singing an original song about her pent-up teenage stress that includes the lyrics "my parents want an angel, my teachers want a brain, my friends just want to party, and it's driving me insane."
The "steam" that she can feel "rising" is what she and two friends are going to burn off. Later there is a dance workout in a fake alley — yet another industrial setting! — with a lot of dry ice and ripped jeans.
By the time I graduated to being a real teenager, grunge had taken over, and the very idea of working out seemed laughable. I met my high school's physical education requirement by walking four laps around the track while gossiping with my friends, three times a week.
1983's Muscle Motion features the Men from Chippendales. Here's how the beginner's workout is explained: "Even the hottest romance starts out with something small, a gesture, a look. In aerobics, it's called the warm-up."
And then a shirtless man identified as Michael in extremely high-waisted bluejeans does a lot of pelvic thrusts and then a series of squats in a singlet. It's hard to follow along, but that was clearly not the point then or now. My core takeaway was that what we need right now is a Magic Mike workout, ideally starring Channing Tatum.
Unfortunately only snippets of the Muscle Motion workout can be found online, but Laura McLaws Helms, a fashion historian, posted a clip of the video to her Instagram account and added a gritty historical note: "Directed, produced and choreographed by Nick De Noia, the ex-husband of Jennifer O'Neill who was famously murdered in 1987 by a killer hired by Chippendales co-creator Steve Banerjee."
The plot thickens. And cares about slimming down slip away.
Written by: Marisa Meltzer
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