Jane Fonda was once one of Americas most controversial antiwar activists, but shes cut a more striking figure in history wearing spandex and leg warmers than she did in Army fatigues. As a fitness-video pioneer, Fonda introduced aerobics to Americas living rooms, helping kick-start a massive, enduring, and deeply strange industry. My mom did Fondas workouts in our den in the 1980s and 90s; Id flop down on the floor next to her and mimic the moves in wild, obnoxious fashion. She eventually moved away from Fonda and cycled through dozens of video workouts Buns of Steel, various Denise Austin and Kathy Smith workouts, Pilates, and, ultimately, 30 Day Shred, a popular DVD from The Biggest Loser trainer Jillian Michaels. Come to think of it, workout videos soundtracked most of my formative years.

So it was natural that when I reluctantly decided that exercise should become a part of my adulthood, I turned to fitness videos. After college, I inherited my moms copy of 30 Day Shred and started doing the routine from my 13-inch laptop. I knew workout videos had once been wildly popular, but in the era of the $40 boutique fitness class and CrossFit fanaticism, exercising alone in front of a screen felt retrograde and embarrassing. Ive dealt with a lot of confused roommates boyfriends sheepishly tiptoeing around me and many incredulous reactions upon confessing my love of workout videos to friends. Ive annoyed downstairs neighbors with my banging and stomping. Ive felt like a freak, jumping around and gesticulating wildly, all alone, in spaces the size of prison cells.

I was surprised, then, to see the outpouring of enthusiasm for Fonda when she announced shed make her original workouts available digitally and on DVD at the beginning of this year. She went on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, explaining that her videos marked the beginning of women being OK with muscles. DeGeneres enthusiastically pulled up a recent clip of Portia de Rossi working out to a Fonda tape. Yall dont remember this probably, but back then, we [women] were not supposed to be strong and fit, Fonda said of the 80s. Solange Knowles confessed on Twitter: When I was a kid I did Jane Fonda workout videos. Im an adult, I do Jane Fonda workout videos. On The Cut, Rebecca Harrington revisited the Fonda videos for a magical week. Fondas return helped me realize that while Id technically been alone working out with videos, I was part of a bigger and more passionate community than Id suspected.

Illustration by Raphaelle Martin.

Having spent so many hours doing Michaels workout videos in recent years, I was curious about how theyd evolved from the feathered-hair Fonda era. Where did they come from? Why do people love them so much? Have they become more difficult over time, or has nothing changed? Are they a dying format? I took a tour through the last three decades of workout video phenomena, and what I found was a more absurd, sprawling history than I could have imagined.

While Fonda popularized at-home fitness on VHS, plenty of guided exercise predates her videos. I wanted to locate the inaugural fitness video, which proved more difficult than it sounds reaching back any earlier than the 90s quickly exposes the limits of the Internet. So I wrote to Aaron Valdez, a film historian and Internet buff who has a hobbyist obsession with workout videos. He admits its difficult to pinpoint a VHS workout that predates Fondas, but points out that instructional fitness had been televised for decades prior. (Theres even a film from 1928 called Exercise: A Film Lesson in Health and Hygiene.)

There are quite a few fitness records out there and they are all horrible, Valdez wrote me. They came with a fold-out poster of all the exercises and you just had to interpret the vocal instructions.

The person who popularized guided exercise on TV was Jack LaLanne, often described as The Godfather of Fitness. His black-and-white TV program began airing in the 1950s, when viewers, apparently, had to be begged to participate in the simplest of physical activity. Im here for one reason and one reason only: to show you how to feel better and look better so you can live longer, said LaLanne, a bit out-of-breath while introducing himself in Episode 1, and sporting a canvas jumpsuit stretched tightly over his 50s-buff bod. Please, keep your dial right where it is, because I want to become real good friends with you, he pleaded. Fitness is an objectively wholesome pursuit, but its obsessives always carry creepy cult-leader qualities. LaLanne, who had the demeanor of a lobotomized missionary or a door-to-door salesman, was no different, and by the end of his 24 minutes of simple, no-sweat leg lifts and face muscle movements all set to a carnival-esque organ soundtrack you half expect him to congratulate you for letting Jesus into your heart.

Like it did for Harrington, Fondas return propelled me to revisit the original video to see if it was really worth all the fuss (and the 17 million copies sold). Released in 1982, The Original Workout has a dramatized opening sequence that looks like an American Apparel ad. No sneakers or equipment, just lots of impractically high-cut leotards and ornamental leg warmers inside a staged ballet studio. I chose the advanced version of the workout, which by todays standards is still incredibly gentle. Backed by a diverse crew of fitness models including two token males and a woman who looks suspiciously similar to Taylor Swift Fonda cycles through a series of dance-like exercises broken down into categories with charmingly old-fashioned names: cardiovascular, arm, leg and hip, waist, abdominal.

Illustration by Raphaelle Martin.

Here is the original post:
Jane Fonda was once one of America's most controversial antiwar activists, but she's cut a more striking figure in ...