Illustration by Maria Carlos Cardeiro. Courtesy of Unsplash.
Spandex fabric, disco music, Reebok sneakers, and celebrities like Jane Fonda. Each of these points back to a time, a sound, and a distinct cultural moment: the aerobics craze of the 1980s. But what was the aerobics craze? What was its music and how did it sound?
Aerobics was a dance-based workout with a set number of moves meant to improve cardiovascular fitness. In the 1980s, aerobics captivated US popular culture. By the end of the decade, millions of US Americans were working out and buying products—records, equipment, clothing—related to the activity. Good examples are Richard Simmons’s Sweatin’ to the Oldies and the Crystal Light National Aerobics Championship. Yet the history of aerobics runs deeper.
Aerobic exercise was invented by military physician Kenneth H. Cooper in the mid-1960s. Cooper designed the program to get pilots and astronauts at Texas’s Lackland Air Force Base in good physical shape for missions. In 1968, he published a book about his regimen, which ordinary citizens could use to determine their own fitness levels. The book was marketed as “the most effective physical fitness plan ever! Scientifically developed and tested! No diets! No calisthenics! No will-power tests!”
Cooper’s aerobics had no music, celebrities, or special equipment. Dance instructor Jacki Sorensen introduced these elements in the late 1960s. Then, aerobics started to look and sound distinct. Sorensen used Cooper’s book to develop exercises based on dance choreography to encourage women, specifically, to increase their movement. Dancers in Sorensen’s classes listened to a variety of music. Selections included classical works by composer Sergei Rachmaninoff and early twentieth-century popular songs like Euday Bowman’s “Twelfth Street Rag.” In the 1970s, Sorensen and other dance instructors selected contemporary songs in classes, like music by Diana Ross.
Students following an instructor in an aerobics class at North Carolina State University. Source: University Archives Photograph Collection, Special Collections Research Center at North Carolina State University Libraries.
Early on, aerobics took place in person at local gyms and health spas. However, aerobics soon left public locations and entered the private space of the home. Modern sound and video technologies made this transition possible.
One important technology was the LP record, through which instructors produced exercise albums. Albums in the 1960s primarily used piano or orchestral accompaniment to back their spoken instruction. Later recordings, like Jacki Sorensen’s classes, relied on popular music. Carol Hensel’s 1980 Dancersize album was an early adopter of this method. The recording featured music by McFadden & Whitehead, The Doobie Brothers, Gloria Gaynor, and more. Hensel’s Dancersize was the first exercise recording to chart on Billboard and Cash Box. Listen to Hensel’s aerobics routine with McFadden & Whitehead’s 1979 disco hit “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now.”
“Ain’t No Stoppin Us Now” from Carol Hensel’s Dancercize album (1980)
Following Hensel’s Dancersize, fitness instructors and celebrities released many more workout records. In 1981, Judi Sheppard Missett released the first workout record to be certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). But no workout record became as famous as Jane Fonda’s Workout Record.
With Fonda’s record, audiences could exercise along to music by artists like The Jacksons, The Brothers Johnson, and Jimmy Buffett. However, Fonda kept the existing format of speaking over the background tracks to help listeners learn the workouts.
This audio recording formed the basis of Jane Fonda’s Original Workout, a Video Home System (VHS) tape. Fonda’s tape revolutionized the home-video market. By 1985, it sold over two million dollars in copies. It inspired homages by popular figures of the period, like Miss Piggy from The Muppet Show and Muppet movies.
After Jane Fonda’s Original Workout, celebrities and amateur practitioners produced more vinyl, home-video, and audio-cassette workouts on the commercial market. By the end of the 1980s, US Americans could choose to work out from several genres of music. These included country, polka, and Christian contemporary genres. Audiences could exercise in their homes, their friends’ homes, or gyms—and to many styles of music. The aerobics craze provided US Americans more choice for their exercise experience.
By the early 2010s, aerobics largely disappeared from the spotlight. A variety of other exercise programs took its place. But remnants of aerobics remain in new formats, boutique fitness studios, and apps. Take, for instance, the movement and music combination of the popular Zumba format! The new workouts recall the many fitness sounds produced during aerobics’s history. The aerobics craze allowed celebrities and ordinary people to redefine their bodies’ relationship to sound. It shifted how we choose to “get physical” for good.
Music video for “Physical,” Olivia Newton-John (1981)
Destiny Meadows (she/her) is a PhD candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her current research examines sound and body politics in the United States during the latter half of the Cold War.
Learn more about this topic:
Listen to the Unsung History podcast about the aerobics craze of the 1980s.
Read this short article on History.com about the release of Jane Fonda’s first workout video.
Explore Kenneth H. Cooper’s book, Aerobics, from 1968.