Energetic friends revive '80s aerobics craze

12:19pm Friday 30th August 2013 in News By Angela Kelly

GET out your leg-warmers and leotards and fluff out your frizzy perm the aerobics of the eighties are coming back to Bolton.

Twenty five years after Hi-NRG Fitness classes launched a craze that swept the region, it returns to the town. Fitness instructors Belinda Beaver and Tom Henderson started their first class at Horwich Leisure Centre and were supported by the Bolton Evening News which ran regular HiNRG promotions.

It captured the imagination of women and men keen to copy Hollywood star Jane Fonda and her going for the burn exercise ethos. The sessions were a hit because they not only lived up to the high-energy of the title but offered a less strenuous, lower energy, series of moves to set to some classic 1980s tunes.

In a short space of time there were HiNRG classes in several local sports centres and clubs and in Stockport, Oldham, Tameside and Knutsford.

They boasted weekly attendances of up to 350.

Ms Beaver said: Coming to the classes was like going to a pop concert. We had music and lights. There was nothing else like it then.

HiNRG also launched the first aqua exercise class at The Water Place and the first step class at Silverwell Street Leisure centre.

Ms Beaver and Mr Henderson branched out into fitness training and they organised the World Aerobic Challenge at G-Mex in 1993 which attracted 3,500 people.

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Energetic friends revive '80s aerobics craze