12/31/2022 0 Comments 1980s aerobic dance video![]() Here are some recommendations for working out, '80s style. For those days when you just want to get your heart pumping, and maybe have a laugh while you're at it, Jane Fonda or Richard Simmons might just be the quarantine teacher you're looking for. Luckily for us, a trove of retro workout videos live on YouTube. But they're still a means to an end, not an experience in and of themself. Yes, "fun" dance workouts like Zumba or hip hop exist on YouTube. The idea that an at-home workout could be fun is something some of us - missing the positive camaraderie of the gym or a workout class - might find desperately tantalizing. They accomplished this by featuring celebrities, upbeat music, and a laid-back, welcoming vibe that said 'look how much fun we’re having!'" "In the early 1980s, most women still didn't work out-for generations they had been told that vigorous exercise was 'unfeminine,'" Friedman said "Fitness gurus needed a way to make working out feel approachable, aspirational, and maybe even a little glamorous, since so many adult women had been raised to believe they weren’t physically gifted or natural athletes. While founder Judi Sheppard Missett leads her smiling class in box steps and knee kicks, the refrain sung over and over in the song is "Jazzercise it. One early Jazzercise video is set to a custom funky-meets-jazzy muzak-ish song. Watching retro workout videos today, the concept of "fun" stands out as alien almost as strongly as the neon leotards. "But as the science of exercise evolved, working out itself has become more of a science, and with that seriousness, it’s been stripped of some of the fun." "In these relatively early days of the fitness industry, most popular workouts were gentler and easier than what we see today," Danielle Friedman, a journalist currently working on a book about the history of women's fitness, told Mashable. More problematically, they were also unabashedly positioned as a way to lose fat and get slim. The bright leggings, celebrity hosts, and relentless positivity was a way to introduce a new legion of working women to the idea that being active was good for you. The workout videos of the '80s and early '90s that we would call "retro" today are mostly about getting your heart pumping, and maybe doing some light strength training while also having fun. Jazzercise back in the day was a colorful affair.
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