![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I've wanted to do this entry for MONTHS, but I never really found the time to sit down and do it. Then I was exposed to the first time and reading his pontifications on dead soda flavors made me realize that I TOO could blog about something nobody cares about but could be good for a few laughs: exercise videos circa the 1990s.
I've never been much for sports, but my mother got big into her diet and exercise craze when I was around 10-11 or so and my father and I kind of got dragged along by proxy. She bought a lot of exercise videos during this time, and I'd probably done most of them a countless number of times between the ages of 11 to 14, when I was finally allowed to go to my mother's women-only gym (which, despite my egalitarian "Is it right to have a women-only gym?" hand-wringing, I have to admit I liked quite a lot). There's a couple of things that stick with you after watching enough of one video so much that it would drive you crazy if you didn't have an ulterior motive. And I want to share them with you today.
Sweatin' to the Oldies
Yes. Yes we did. Multiple times. And we did all four videos. Well, we kind of petered out by the time we got to No. 4 (although it was marked on our video box as "Sweat and Shout"), but yeah ...
I want to get on my soapbox a bit about Richard Simmons. Yes, he's uncool and corny (although pretty much all exercise videos are, coolness I think inspires some sort of "Look at me, I'm so special!" quality that really shouldn't be there when you're trying to meet people on their level and make them try to get better) and as flamboyant as the combined cast of Queer Eye (not that the last part should matter, but to many dumb people it does). Yes, he's a walking joke. But you know what? He's offering a service that a lot of people couldn't give a shit about.
Richard Simmons' exercise videos are for fat people. Not "Oh my God, my BMI counter on my WiiFit says I'm obese but I can still fit into a size 16 jeans!" fat. I mean people in the 300- to 900-pounds range who you're more likely to see being picked on by the sub-humans on Something Awful and 4chan than at the gym. Some of you may be rolling your eyes at me, saying its a lack of encouragement and will that keeps fat people out of gyms. But come on, your average assisted pull-up machine only goes up to 200 pounds. There's a mentality where if you get to a certain weight you're considered a lost cause.
But not Richard Simmons. He's there for the people who in some cases literally cannot get out of bed, encouraging to move their arms along with his videos if it's too hard for them to stand up. Now I'm not saying he's some saint. His exercise programs don't always work for all of them. (Some of the people on this site had some successes and failures with Simmons' plan.) But he actually does care, and a lot of people don't.
His videos are not like typical exercise videos. Most videos run for an interrupted 30 minutes and have moderate-to-high impact exercises. (I don't actually know how that's measured, so I'm going to assume moderate exercises are most exercise videos and high are kick-your-ass-until-you-can't-sit videos like Billy Blanks' Tae-Bo tapes.) Simmons' videos run on for over an hour. The band in the back of the room plays an Oldies song TWICE while Richard Simmons and his motley crew do repetitive, simple movements. Then they all take a break and group hug. Then they do it again for the next song while Richard hams it up. This is great when you're 11 or just starting out exercising, but as you grow into a better exerciser, you'll move on to bigger, better, and less time-consuming things. Like letting Billy Blanks figuratively beat the shit out of you in a I-can't-believe-it's-not-literal way. Of course, I might just say that because I'm not pushing 400 pounds.
Oh, and two kind of neat things about Richard Simmons videos: 1.) at the end of each video every one of his class members dance down an aisle and have how much weight they lost listed at the bottom. 2.) he does crazy-ass FBI Warnings for his videos. YouTube has one here, but to be honest that one barely scratches the surface. On videos 2 and 4 he has a whole skit about the FBI Warning. In the first one, the judge puts Simmons (dressed in a suit and a straight-hair wig) in prison for copying No. 2 while an old lady screeches in horror. In the fourth one, he has the police arrest his own mother for copying the video. Considering we got No. 1 from my mother's friend, who copied it, it makes the whole thing kind of even more hilarious.
Buns of Steel Step 2000
Ah, Buns of Steel. This shit was HUGE for awhile, practically a catchphrase, but we only had one video tape. However, it was the super 2000 (IT'S THE FUTURE! IT WAS LESS THAN 10 YEARS AWAY!) video that came with the step. We probably still have the step somewhere. Possibly the attic. God, I hated that thing. Not because I hate step aerobics, but unlike the typical step with risers that you just placed under the step, the Buns of Steel step had some weird sort of hook-in-and-place system that neither me or my parents could get -- especially into the middle position, which was the ideal position perfectly between settings "wimp" (no riser) and "psychopath" (two risers) -- so usually we'd just say to hell with the risers and just place the purple part on the floor.
I don't really remember much about the choreographic stylings of Tamilee Webb. Or much about the video at all, other than it was where I got my painful education in the turn step, a supremely basic step move that took me forever to do. Yeah, it looks simple but for awhile it was MY HELL for awhile. I feel the same way about Downward Facing Dog in yoga.
Oh, and Tamilee Webb's minions wore the same outfit as her but the colors were inversed. It was kind of creepy. But not as creepy as the outfits in THE NEXT VIDEO ...
CherFitness: A New Attitude & Body Confidence
Ah, the celebrity vanity exercise side project. We had two other tapes like this, one of which is featured later in this essay and the other of which was Kathie Lee Gifford's, which I never did in its entirety because Kathie Lee got the whole video off on the wrong foot when she told me that "We can't start this video until you put down that donut" and I felt like I was being patronized. We never had Jane Fonda videos, in case you're wondering. I'm not sure why, because while my mother never approved of her Hanoi Jane period, she still respects her as an actress enough to have bought her recent memoir. Oh well.
I remember watching Cher's VH1 Behind the Music documentary and getting the impression that she did this because people accused her of being some sort of Frankenstein monster of plastic surgery. They're probably somewhat right (Cher has publicly admitted to having her teeth, breasts and nose done but I'd be really surprised if she hasn't had a couple of facelifts.) but she showed in this video she can work out ... and work out in really RIDICULOUS clothing, some of which looks like S&M exercise gear designed by Sigfried and Roy. You know her outfit in the "Turn Back Time" video? Well, take off the leather jacket and add more sparkles and that's REALLY close to the outfit she wears on the first workout of the second video. I remember being really FREAKED OUT when I saw her dancing around in that (AND HEELS!) when my parents first brought it home.
But after I got used to the exercising-with-no-stops aspect from the video and the crazy outfits I eventually graduated from the realm of Sweatin' to the Oldies to both of them. Overall, they remain one of my favorite videos. Cher doesn't teach any of the classes (Kathie Lee didn't either), although she does do the whole exercise as a student, goes into a "where's my fast-forward button?"-worthy multi-part speech at the beginning of each video, leads you through the heart rate check, throws out an occasional voiceover of encouragement and acts like a wiseass until the workout becomes too much for her about half-way through and she shuts up. She brings in Keli Roberts (who I just learned had her own videos) to teach the three classes on the first video and Dorian Sanchez (who seems to show up occasionally as an instructor on "So You Think You Can Dance" - look, my mom watches it, not me) and Karen Andes teach on the second video.
All of the five exercises were pretty unique and fun and actually a really good workout, so I'll go over each one.
Tape One: (A New Attitude, which makes it sound like it should be the second video, because it's new, but what can you do?)
Step Class - I liked this exercise the best. It was challenging but not to Blanks-mode. I also liked how the class was made up of people who were working on the step at all levels. One woman would have three risers. One woman would have no risers. One woman had weights. And Dorian Sanchez had no step throughout the whole thing, so I think she and Cher were picking on each other. Nobody gave Dorian a mic, so it's hard to know. The only thing I didn't like about this video is that Keli messes up the pattern at one point, which can confuse you on repeat viewings. I'm not sure why they didn't just re-film that part.
Abs Workout - This one is an ass-kicker, but it was 10 minutes long, so I ended up doing it quite a few times. Good stuff.
Lower Body Workout - This I only did a few times and I remember it being really hard, but since I only did it a few times I don't remember much. I DO remember thinking it weird at the time to focus so much on legs and not the upper body, but after awhile I just wanted to make the pain go away. That always took awhile though, because the video was 40 minutes long.
Tape Two: (Body Confidence)
Hot Dance - Dance aerobics for about 30 minutes. This was fun after you got over Cher's eye-bleeding outfit and this really stupid move called the pony. I'm not sure how to do it even today. I think you kind of just kick your feet while jogging in place or something. Oh, and remember to yell out "I pony! You pony! We all ... love to PONY!" a couple of times. Remember what I said about exercise videos being corny? Yeaaaah ...
Mighty Bands - This was the really unique part of the video because the video came with these green rubber bands that you were supposed to pull certain ways in lieu of weights. Yay free stuff in a video! It also had a number you could send away to for more difficult bands - blue being intermediate and white being hard. We never did this. I'm not sure anyone else did either. I've never seen any other video besides Cher's use the bands. Not like the Xertube, which I've seen in both a Jazzercise video which was too long for me to finish and some Billy Blanks videos and ACTUAL GYMS, although they're starting to go the way of Slide Aerobics (DO ANY OF YOU REMEMBER THAT?) The closest any came was a Yogalates video (see example here), but after one of my Cher bands felt too short and eventually snapped under the pressure while I tried to do the Yogalates moves on it, I figured the one in the Yogalates video had to be made of a different type.
Anyway, I did like the exercise because it basically allowed me to exercise and play with a free toy, and that's always great stuff.
Jazzercise: Funk Workout
Ah, Judy Sheppard Misset. I thought her time had passed, but since the local Jazzercise is still hopping I may have just thought that because my Mom stopped going to our local exercise. Jazzercise was a big part of my early life. As in, being dumped off in a little kiddie room where I would talk to the teenager working there and play with half-broken toys was a big part of my early life. It's OK. The teenagers were usually pretty nice.
There are a few things I remember about Funk Workout. One: the outfits. Picture that outfit up there. Picture it in multiple colors. Picture it on men. Yeah. It sticks. Judy also required you to do a complicated math problem to get your correct heart rate, so I never tried and just hoped I wasn't working myself out to the point of heart attack. Also, her daughter would occasionally take over the exercise and lead for awhile. I remember liking her a little better. Or maybe that was my Mom. I remember my Mom once saying about Judy Misset "When she says, 'Shake it, but don't you dare break it, baby!' I just want to slap her in the face." To this day I'm not sure why. If I asked my Mom probably wouldn't remember, either.
And finally, last, but certainly not least ...
THE MARKY MARK WORKOUT
Topical! YAY! Yes, Marky Mark put out a workout video. Unlike most of the videos here, which focus on aerobic exercise (exercise done for eight minutes without stopping -- this definition is THE ONLY THING I EVER REALLY LEARNED IN GYM CLASS), this video focuses on anaerobic exercise, namely weight-lifting.
This was my Dad's favorite video. I'm not sure if the reason why is because it's more manly or because Dad had the hots for Marky Mark or because Dad liked to tease my brother, named Mark, about the name of the video. (This is why my brother has a profile on Vampire Freaks). I was not really entranced by the Wahlberg, though. Partly because I hadn't left my latency period, partly because he's not my type, but mostly because I HATED THIS VIDEO.
This video started out with the equivalent of the rack. Flexibility has always been my weak point and the stretching exercises, unlike in the aerobic videos which were usually "raise your hands in the air" involved these weird contortions of lying down while pulling your leg behind your ass or laying your whole body down while you stretched. The fact that the girls (called "fly honeys" or "fly sisters" in the video) were so much better at this than the boys gave me a super inferiority complex. After the stretching, Marky Mark expected you to do push ups on top of THREE CHAIRS.
After that and my self-esteem was crushed, though, the video got a lot better. It teaches you a lot of different free weight muscles, a lot of which I've by this time memorized and still use in the gym to this day. So ... in reality I actually learned quite a bit from Mark Wahlberg. And that's pretty cool.
Oh, and in the second part of the video you could watch him demonstrate how to use gym equipment. Needless to say we never watched this part.
Well, that was ... three hours I spent talking about working out that I could have spent ... working out. I think I'll celebrate by going to the mall. :-P
I've never been much for sports, but my mother got big into her diet and exercise craze when I was around 10-11 or so and my father and I kind of got dragged along by proxy. She bought a lot of exercise videos during this time, and I'd probably done most of them a countless number of times between the ages of 11 to 14, when I was finally allowed to go to my mother's women-only gym (which, despite my egalitarian "Is it right to have a women-only gym?" hand-wringing, I have to admit I liked quite a lot). There's a couple of things that stick with you after watching enough of one video so much that it would drive you crazy if you didn't have an ulterior motive. And I want to share them with you today.
Sweatin' to the Oldies
Yes. Yes we did. Multiple times. And we did all four videos. Well, we kind of petered out by the time we got to No. 4 (although it was marked on our video box as "Sweat and Shout"), but yeah ...
I want to get on my soapbox a bit about Richard Simmons. Yes, he's uncool and corny (although pretty much all exercise videos are, coolness I think inspires some sort of "Look at me, I'm so special!" quality that really shouldn't be there when you're trying to meet people on their level and make them try to get better) and as flamboyant as the combined cast of Queer Eye (not that the last part should matter, but to many dumb people it does). Yes, he's a walking joke. But you know what? He's offering a service that a lot of people couldn't give a shit about.
Richard Simmons' exercise videos are for fat people. Not "Oh my God, my BMI counter on my WiiFit says I'm obese but I can still fit into a size 16 jeans!" fat. I mean people in the 300- to 900-pounds range who you're more likely to see being picked on by the sub-humans on Something Awful and 4chan than at the gym. Some of you may be rolling your eyes at me, saying its a lack of encouragement and will that keeps fat people out of gyms. But come on, your average assisted pull-up machine only goes up to 200 pounds. There's a mentality where if you get to a certain weight you're considered a lost cause.
But not Richard Simmons. He's there for the people who in some cases literally cannot get out of bed, encouraging to move their arms along with his videos if it's too hard for them to stand up. Now I'm not saying he's some saint. His exercise programs don't always work for all of them. (Some of the people on this site had some successes and failures with Simmons' plan.) But he actually does care, and a lot of people don't.
His videos are not like typical exercise videos. Most videos run for an interrupted 30 minutes and have moderate-to-high impact exercises. (I don't actually know how that's measured, so I'm going to assume moderate exercises are most exercise videos and high are kick-your-ass-until-you-can't-sit videos like Billy Blanks' Tae-Bo tapes.) Simmons' videos run on for over an hour. The band in the back of the room plays an Oldies song TWICE while Richard Simmons and his motley crew do repetitive, simple movements. Then they all take a break and group hug. Then they do it again for the next song while Richard hams it up. This is great when you're 11 or just starting out exercising, but as you grow into a better exerciser, you'll move on to bigger, better, and less time-consuming things. Like letting Billy Blanks figuratively beat the shit out of you in a I-can't-believe-it's-not-literal way. Of course, I might just say that because I'm not pushing 400 pounds.
Oh, and two kind of neat things about Richard Simmons videos: 1.) at the end of each video every one of his class members dance down an aisle and have how much weight they lost listed at the bottom. 2.) he does crazy-ass FBI Warnings for his videos. YouTube has one here, but to be honest that one barely scratches the surface. On videos 2 and 4 he has a whole skit about the FBI Warning. In the first one, the judge puts Simmons (dressed in a suit and a straight-hair wig) in prison for copying No. 2 while an old lady screeches in horror. In the fourth one, he has the police arrest his own mother for copying the video. Considering we got No. 1 from my mother's friend, who copied it, it makes the whole thing kind of even more hilarious.
Buns of Steel Step 2000
Ah, Buns of Steel. This shit was HUGE for awhile, practically a catchphrase, but we only had one video tape. However, it was the super 2000 (IT'S THE FUTURE! IT WAS LESS THAN 10 YEARS AWAY!) video that came with the step. We probably still have the step somewhere. Possibly the attic. God, I hated that thing. Not because I hate step aerobics, but unlike the typical step with risers that you just placed under the step, the Buns of Steel step had some weird sort of hook-in-and-place system that neither me or my parents could get -- especially into the middle position, which was the ideal position perfectly between settings "wimp" (no riser) and "psychopath" (two risers) -- so usually we'd just say to hell with the risers and just place the purple part on the floor.
I don't really remember much about the choreographic stylings of Tamilee Webb. Or much about the video at all, other than it was where I got my painful education in the turn step, a supremely basic step move that took me forever to do. Yeah, it looks simple but for awhile it was MY HELL for awhile. I feel the same way about Downward Facing Dog in yoga.
Oh, and Tamilee Webb's minions wore the same outfit as her but the colors were inversed. It was kind of creepy. But not as creepy as the outfits in THE NEXT VIDEO ...
CherFitness: A New Attitude & Body Confidence
Ah, the celebrity vanity exercise side project. We had two other tapes like this, one of which is featured later in this essay and the other of which was Kathie Lee Gifford's, which I never did in its entirety because Kathie Lee got the whole video off on the wrong foot when she told me that "We can't start this video until you put down that donut" and I felt like I was being patronized. We never had Jane Fonda videos, in case you're wondering. I'm not sure why, because while my mother never approved of her Hanoi Jane period, she still respects her as an actress enough to have bought her recent memoir. Oh well.
I remember watching Cher's VH1 Behind the Music documentary and getting the impression that she did this because people accused her of being some sort of Frankenstein monster of plastic surgery. They're probably somewhat right (Cher has publicly admitted to having her teeth, breasts and nose done but I'd be really surprised if she hasn't had a couple of facelifts.) but she showed in this video she can work out ... and work out in really RIDICULOUS clothing, some of which looks like S&M exercise gear designed by Sigfried and Roy. You know her outfit in the "Turn Back Time" video? Well, take off the leather jacket and add more sparkles and that's REALLY close to the outfit she wears on the first workout of the second video. I remember being really FREAKED OUT when I saw her dancing around in that (AND HEELS!) when my parents first brought it home.
But after I got used to the exercising-with-no-stops aspect from the video and the crazy outfits I eventually graduated from the realm of Sweatin' to the Oldies to both of them. Overall, they remain one of my favorite videos. Cher doesn't teach any of the classes (Kathie Lee didn't either), although she does do the whole exercise as a student, goes into a "where's my fast-forward button?"-worthy multi-part speech at the beginning of each video, leads you through the heart rate check, throws out an occasional voiceover of encouragement and acts like a wiseass until the workout becomes too much for her about half-way through and she shuts up. She brings in Keli Roberts (who I just learned had her own videos) to teach the three classes on the first video and Dorian Sanchez (who seems to show up occasionally as an instructor on "So You Think You Can Dance" - look, my mom watches it, not me) and Karen Andes teach on the second video.
All of the five exercises were pretty unique and fun and actually a really good workout, so I'll go over each one.
Tape One: (A New Attitude, which makes it sound like it should be the second video, because it's new, but what can you do?)
Step Class - I liked this exercise the best. It was challenging but not to Blanks-mode. I also liked how the class was made up of people who were working on the step at all levels. One woman would have three risers. One woman would have no risers. One woman had weights. And Dorian Sanchez had no step throughout the whole thing, so I think she and Cher were picking on each other. Nobody gave Dorian a mic, so it's hard to know. The only thing I didn't like about this video is that Keli messes up the pattern at one point, which can confuse you on repeat viewings. I'm not sure why they didn't just re-film that part.
Abs Workout - This one is an ass-kicker, but it was 10 minutes long, so I ended up doing it quite a few times. Good stuff.
Lower Body Workout - This I only did a few times and I remember it being really hard, but since I only did it a few times I don't remember much. I DO remember thinking it weird at the time to focus so much on legs and not the upper body, but after awhile I just wanted to make the pain go away. That always took awhile though, because the video was 40 minutes long.
Tape Two: (Body Confidence)
Hot Dance - Dance aerobics for about 30 minutes. This was fun after you got over Cher's eye-bleeding outfit and this really stupid move called the pony. I'm not sure how to do it even today. I think you kind of just kick your feet while jogging in place or something. Oh, and remember to yell out "I pony! You pony! We all ... love to PONY!" a couple of times. Remember what I said about exercise videos being corny? Yeaaaah ...
Mighty Bands - This was the really unique part of the video because the video came with these green rubber bands that you were supposed to pull certain ways in lieu of weights. Yay free stuff in a video! It also had a number you could send away to for more difficult bands - blue being intermediate and white being hard. We never did this. I'm not sure anyone else did either. I've never seen any other video besides Cher's use the bands. Not like the Xertube, which I've seen in both a Jazzercise video which was too long for me to finish and some Billy Blanks videos and ACTUAL GYMS, although they're starting to go the way of Slide Aerobics (DO ANY OF YOU REMEMBER THAT?) The closest any came was a Yogalates video (see example here), but after one of my Cher bands felt too short and eventually snapped under the pressure while I tried to do the Yogalates moves on it, I figured the one in the Yogalates video had to be made of a different type.
Anyway, I did like the exercise because it basically allowed me to exercise and play with a free toy, and that's always great stuff.
Jazzercise: Funk Workout
Ah, Judy Sheppard Misset. I thought her time had passed, but since the local Jazzercise is still hopping I may have just thought that because my Mom stopped going to our local exercise. Jazzercise was a big part of my early life. As in, being dumped off in a little kiddie room where I would talk to the teenager working there and play with half-broken toys was a big part of my early life. It's OK. The teenagers were usually pretty nice.
There are a few things I remember about Funk Workout. One: the outfits. Picture that outfit up there. Picture it in multiple colors. Picture it on men. Yeah. It sticks. Judy also required you to do a complicated math problem to get your correct heart rate, so I never tried and just hoped I wasn't working myself out to the point of heart attack. Also, her daughter would occasionally take over the exercise and lead for awhile. I remember liking her a little better. Or maybe that was my Mom. I remember my Mom once saying about Judy Misset "When she says, 'Shake it, but don't you dare break it, baby!' I just want to slap her in the face." To this day I'm not sure why. If I asked my Mom probably wouldn't remember, either.
And finally, last, but certainly not least ...
THE MARKY MARK WORKOUT
Topical! YAY! Yes, Marky Mark put out a workout video. Unlike most of the videos here, which focus on aerobic exercise (exercise done for eight minutes without stopping -- this definition is THE ONLY THING I EVER REALLY LEARNED IN GYM CLASS), this video focuses on anaerobic exercise, namely weight-lifting.
This was my Dad's favorite video. I'm not sure if the reason why is because it's more manly or because Dad had the hots for Marky Mark or because Dad liked to tease my brother, named Mark, about the name of the video. (This is why my brother has a profile on Vampire Freaks). I was not really entranced by the Wahlberg, though. Partly because I hadn't left my latency period, partly because he's not my type, but mostly because I HATED THIS VIDEO.
This video started out with the equivalent of the rack. Flexibility has always been my weak point and the stretching exercises, unlike in the aerobic videos which were usually "raise your hands in the air" involved these weird contortions of lying down while pulling your leg behind your ass or laying your whole body down while you stretched. The fact that the girls (called "fly honeys" or "fly sisters" in the video) were so much better at this than the boys gave me a super inferiority complex. After the stretching, Marky Mark expected you to do push ups on top of THREE CHAIRS.
After that and my self-esteem was crushed, though, the video got a lot better. It teaches you a lot of different free weight muscles, a lot of which I've by this time memorized and still use in the gym to this day. So ... in reality I actually learned quite a bit from Mark Wahlberg. And that's pretty cool.
Oh, and in the second part of the video you could watch him demonstrate how to use gym equipment. Needless to say we never watched this part.
Well, that was ... three hours I spent talking about working out that I could have spent ... working out. I think I'll celebrate by going to the mall. :-P
Tags:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
(basic moral I got out of this is that exercise is better taught on a daily televised program, not a tape that you watch ad infinitum 8| )
Just to *really* round out the era, I was trying to remember if there was a Fabio video and ...yup! there was! :D
From:
My heart rate is OVER NINE-THOU-SAAAAAAAAAAAND!!!
Hah. That page is great. I don't think I'll be touching any of those, although all of them seem better than Carmen Electra's Strip Aerobics.