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The Semi-Recent History of Exercise · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and Chuck's
0:14
Speaker 2: here too, and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff
0:16
Speaker 2: you should know about the history of exercising.
0:21
Speaker 3: Yes, I found this super fascinating.
0:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is pretty fascinating.
0:26
Speaker 3: I don't know. I it just grabbed me.
0:28
Speaker 4: And I guess it grabbed me earlier because it was
0:32
Speaker 4: my idea because I think, I don't know, maybe i'd
0:34
Speaker 4: seen Anchorman and they made the yogging joke, and then
0:38
Speaker 4: I remembered hearing that, you know, exercises sort of new, right,
0:42
Speaker 4: if you look at not only the history of humans,
0:45
Speaker 4: but the history of America, it's only been around for
0:49
Speaker 4: you know, you know, fifty ish years, sixty maybe.
0:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean in ancient times they were pretty into fitness,
0:56
Speaker 2: but then it kind of dropped off for a couple
0:58
Speaker 2: thousand years, and we picked it up again in nineteen
1:01
Speaker 2: sixty roughly at very least the decade of the sixties.
1:05
Speaker 2: And like you said, specifically in America in the United States,
1:08
Speaker 2: I should.
1:09
Speaker 3: Say, yeah, so should we do it?
1:11
Speaker 2: Yeah. The whole thing is that the first half of
1:14
Speaker 2: the twentieth century It's not like there weren't people exercising, right,
1:19
Speaker 2: they were out there, they were just considered weirdos or possibly.
1:23
Speaker 4: Gay, exactly. They didn't even really use the word exercise much.
1:27
Speaker 4: It was called physical culture, and like you said, it
1:30
Speaker 4: was a real niche thing. The obviously there were you know,
1:34
Speaker 4: sports and athletes and people like that were doing physical training,
1:39
Speaker 4: and the military did stuff like that, and there was bodybuilding,
1:42
Speaker 4: but that was super niche too, But as far as
1:44
Speaker 4: like your regular average American walking around, they were just
1:50
Speaker 4: walking around or sitting in chairs.
1:52
Speaker 2: They were walking around, eating a steak while they walked around.
1:55
Speaker 4: That's what they were doing with the martini, and you
1:59
Speaker 4: did mention, you know, possibly gay, and that was a
2:02
Speaker 4: characteristic early on. Is like, if you are a man
2:06
Speaker 4: and it's nineteen forty something or fifty something and you
2:10
Speaker 4: want to have like a nice body and you want muscles,
2:14
Speaker 4: people might say, well, you're probably gay or you're probably
2:17
Speaker 4: a narcissist, because gems are for gay men to meet
2:20
Speaker 4: each other.
2:21
Speaker 3: And that was just sort of the perception at the time, exactly.
2:24
Speaker 2: And then women didn't have it much better. They were
2:26
Speaker 2: almost culturally forbidden from exercising it in the first place,
2:31
Speaker 2: it was unlady like to engage in exercise, or typically
2:35
Speaker 2: considered that. On top of that, exercises, you're exercising for yourself.
2:42
Speaker 2: It's kind of the basis of exercise, and that also
2:44
Speaker 2: seemed unseemly for women to engage in such a self
2:48
Speaker 2: indulgent pursuit, right. And then on top of that, there
2:54
Speaker 2: was a general idea that your uterus might fall out
2:57
Speaker 2: if you exercise too vigorously.
3:00
Speaker 4: Yeah, or just you know, you may not be able
3:02
Speaker 4: to get pregnant if you exercise, So just don't do that.
3:06
Speaker 3: Just stay on your feet all day and do the housework.
3:08
Speaker 2: Right exactly, which, as we'll see, is actually an example
3:11
Speaker 2: of moderate physical activity.
3:14
Speaker 3: That's right. It's better than sitting down.
3:15
Speaker 2: So in about nineteen sixty, if you asked Americans, hey,
3:21
Speaker 2: do you exercise regularly? I'm surprised with this, about a
3:24
Speaker 2: quarter of Americans would have.
3:25
Speaker 3: Said, yes, that seemed high.
3:28
Speaker 2: It does. It seems high to me too. In nineteen
3:30
Speaker 2: eighty seven, less than thirty years later, that answer to
3:33
Speaker 2: that question was yes from almost seventy percent of people.
3:37
Speaker 2: So in those three decades from nineteen sixty till the
3:41
Speaker 2: eighties through the eighties, exercise came on the scene and
3:45
Speaker 2: just jelled with the world. In the United States in particular.
3:51
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would be curious to see that poll and
3:53
Speaker 4: see exactly how it was worded and defined, right, because
3:57
Speaker 4: that twenty four percent seems high. I could see people
4:00
Speaker 4: just being like, well, sure I cut the lawn, right,
4:03
Speaker 4: you know that kind of.
4:04
Speaker 2: Thing, and regularly was once within the last three years.
4:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, you cut the lawn once every three years.
4:10
Speaker 2: Right. So again, it wasn't just women who were considered
4:14
Speaker 2: at risk health wise from exercise. Everybody was considered at risk.
4:19
Speaker 2: If you exercise too much, you were probably over taxing
4:23
Speaker 2: your heart and you're probably gonna die young. They actually
4:27
Speaker 2: thought athletes were at risk of dying young from over
4:30
Speaker 2: exerting themselves. And then it was finally, I think about
4:34
Speaker 2: in the late forties when a British epidemiologist named Jeremy N.
4:38
Speaker 2: Morris and that and and the Morris makes me want
4:41
Speaker 2: to say Norris so bad. I mean, it's a real
4:44
Speaker 2: it's a weird combination. But he said, you know what,
4:47
Speaker 2: I like to jog, and I liked exercise, and I
4:51
Speaker 2: think that this is wrong. So I'm going to go
4:52
Speaker 2: about studying it in the most clever way possible.
4:55
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a pretty interesting study. And by the way,
4:58
Speaker 4: Livia put this together for us, and as usual.
5:02
Speaker 2: I think she crushed it, knocked it out of the park.
5:04
Speaker 3: I had no notes. Not that we're usually noddy, No,
5:08
Speaker 3: you know what I mean.
5:09
Speaker 2: No, we're not very nody.
5:10
Speaker 4: I like to just a gold star, right, But yeah,
5:14
Speaker 4: he had a really ingenious and sort of contained way
5:17
Speaker 4: to study this. He did lots of other studies, but
5:20
Speaker 4: one of the ways he did it was he said,
5:21
Speaker 4: you know, we got these big double decker buses in England.
5:24
Speaker 2: Everybody's seen those.
5:26
Speaker 4: Everyone's seen those, and there's there's two people who work
5:28
Speaker 4: on those. There's the guy who drives them, and then
5:31
Speaker 4: there's the guy who is the bus conductor. And he's
5:33
Speaker 4: always huffing it up and down those stairs. And you know,
5:37
Speaker 4: granted it's not like forty stairs or anything, but they're
5:40
Speaker 4: steep and you're climbing those things all day long, back
5:42
Speaker 4: and forth. So he was like, I got a nice
5:44
Speaker 4: little captive audience of of people who are pretty similar
5:48
Speaker 4: probably in lifestyle and in age and stuff like that,
5:51
Speaker 4: and one of them exercises one of them doesn't. And
5:54
Speaker 4: he found that drivers had twice more than twice as
5:57
Speaker 4: many heart attacks as conductors. And he was like, wait
6:00
Speaker 4: a minute, did some more studying and said, hey, everybody,
6:03
Speaker 4: I think exercising is good for your heart.
6:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, and other people were like, wait a minute, let
6:08
Speaker 2: us check it out. Well, wha, it's true. Study after
6:12
Speaker 2: studies started coming in saying like, not only does exercise
6:15
Speaker 2: not put you in an early grave, it actually probably
6:18
Speaker 2: prevents you from an early grave. So maybe we should
6:21
Speaker 2: all start exercising. So this was so in the fifties.
6:25
Speaker 2: This was the era of proving that exercise was good
6:28
Speaker 2: for you, and then by the time the sixties rolled around,
6:30
Speaker 2: people were ready to start getting into it. And at
6:33
Speaker 2: first it seems like they were. They were more hardcore,
6:40
Speaker 2: surprisingly enough at first than we are today because you
6:43
Speaker 2: look around and like so many people exercise today, especially
6:46
Speaker 2: in comparison to like the sixties and seventies at the
6:48
Speaker 2: beginning of the boom. But people have just kind of
6:51
Speaker 2: mellowed out a little bit. Before it was just like
6:54
Speaker 2: as intense as you could you could possibly get in
6:57
Speaker 2: every single way.
6:58
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, these are the people that drank three
7:00
Speaker 3: martinis at lunch.
7:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they did not want hardcore.
7:03
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, you're just going to do something, You're going
7:05
Speaker 3: to do it hard.
7:06
Speaker 4: So in fact, we were talking about those people because
7:09
Speaker 4: the culture of work really changed since about the mid
7:13
Speaker 4: nineteenth century when people moved away, not entirely, obviously we
7:17
Speaker 4: still had farmers and stuff, but you know, mainstream America
7:21
Speaker 4: moved away from hard labor jobs into desk jobs, and
7:25
Speaker 4: they started to worry that the sedentary lifestyle wasn't good
7:28
Speaker 4: for them. In the mid seventies is when corporate America
7:33
Speaker 4: started tuning in because Fortune magazine wrote an article that
7:37
Speaker 4: basically said, Hey, all these CEOs and board members that
7:40
Speaker 4: we have are just a bunch of and this is
7:42
Speaker 4: of course in the mid seventies. There are a bunch
7:44
Speaker 4: of old, sort of overweight, white fat cats, and they're
7:48
Speaker 4: all having heart attacks and it's costing our firms and
7:51
Speaker 4: corporations about seven hundred million bucks a year. And this
7:54
Speaker 4: is mid seventies numbers. And so it was them who
7:58
Speaker 4: started the health boom. It was sort of like corporate CEOs,
8:02
Speaker 4: I think in the sixties and seventies, Livia found some
8:05
Speaker 4: research that found that generally, like the people that started
8:08
Speaker 4: this whole thing were college educated, they had some money,
8:12
Speaker 4: and they were generally white people.
8:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's who kicked off the boom. Today, the differential
8:20
Speaker 2: in race is pretty much erased, but there's still a
8:24
Speaker 2: gap in education where if you have college or some
8:28
Speaker 2: college or a bachelor's degree, you're about twice as likely
8:33
Speaker 2: to exercise on an average day as somebody who just
8:36
Speaker 2: has a degree from high school. Really interesting, it is interesting.
8:40
Speaker 2: Another thing that happened too, not just the health aspect,
8:42
Speaker 2: but in the twentieth century, because of that increasing sedentariness,
8:48
Speaker 2: Americans became a lot more fixated on how you looked physically,
8:56
Speaker 2: especially weight, whether you were overweight or not, and there
8:58
Speaker 2: became a much greater emphasis on not being overweight, and
9:02
Speaker 2: that really dovetailed with the idea of taking care of
9:08
Speaker 2: your insides while also taking care of your outsides, and
9:11
Speaker 2: that really kind of provided the foundation for kind of
9:15
Speaker 2: funneling people into the exercise boom of the sixties and seventies.
9:19
Speaker 2: You could live longer, you could look better, so just
9:22
Speaker 2: go exercise. Let's all give it a try.
9:24
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure. And into the eighties is when you
9:27
Speaker 4: really saw a boom and women exercising more and more.
9:32
Speaker 4: The whole fitness movement was almost geared toward women at
9:35
Speaker 4: that point for a number of reasons. One was, you know,
9:40
Speaker 4: women trying to become more empowered, women gaining power and empowerment.
9:44
Speaker 4: The feminist movement that said, all right, if you're you're
9:47
Speaker 4: gonna do that in the workplace, why not be strong
9:49
Speaker 4: in your personal life, physically strong, strong like bull Yeah, exactly,
9:53
Speaker 4: and so be strong and your work life, be strong
9:57
Speaker 4: in your physical life. Title nine, of course, really helped
10:01
Speaker 4: things out because all of a sudden, girls sports were
10:03
Speaker 4: getting more funding and more attention. And then, like you said,
10:06
Speaker 4: the standards for physical attractiveness changing was for men and
10:10
Speaker 4: women and everyone across the gender spectrum exactly.
10:13
Speaker 2: So the first thing that really caught everybody's attention was jogging.
10:18
Speaker 2: That was the one that really laid the groundwork, and
10:21
Speaker 2: jogging grew out of legitimate running like it came most
10:26
Speaker 2: people peg. A New Zealand Olympic track coach named Arthur
10:31
Speaker 2: Lydiard as the guy who if he wasn't interested or
10:35
Speaker 2: involved in bringing jogging to the masses, he still was
10:40
Speaker 2: kind of like the inadvertent father of the whole thing,
10:44
Speaker 2: because in the sixties, he came up with training techniques
10:48
Speaker 2: for marathon runners that people still use today. It's really simple,
10:52
Speaker 2: really basic, but it's really effective. It's things like on
10:54
Speaker 2: a Monday, you run ten miles a half effort over
10:59
Speaker 2: hills and roads, and then Tuesday you do you know,
11:02
Speaker 2: flat fifteen mile run or something like that. I don't
11:05
Speaker 2: think that's exactly it, but people use it today. And
11:09
Speaker 2: the fact that there was now a framework that anybody
11:12
Speaker 2: could just buy this book or buy this pamphlet and
11:16
Speaker 2: approach jogging that really kind of helped usher people in.
11:21
Speaker 2: But again, bear in mind, this is an Olympic level
11:24
Speaker 2: track coach who's establishing this stuff, and this was people's
11:28
Speaker 2: first entree into jogging. So the earliest joggers were hard core,
11:34
Speaker 2: like scary. I'm a little nervous about them. And we're
11:37
Speaker 2: talking about people who are running around in the sixties
11:39
Speaker 2: and seventies.
11:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think they.
11:42
Speaker 4: I think they like to be called runners, those types. Sure,
11:45
Speaker 4: they're like, you're a jogger, Chuck, Actually not even.
11:47
Speaker 2: That speed walker like Chris Paul, I should do speed
11:52
Speaker 2: walking to me, Jim, I'm sorry, speedwalking is way harder
11:56
Speaker 2: than jogging.
11:57
Speaker 4: Oh do you mean like on your cardio or just
11:59
Speaker 4: your body. Yeah, well cardio, yes, intent to look cool?
12:03
Speaker 2: Okay. Well, but.
12:06
Speaker 4: So in the mid nineteen sixties, a guy you may
12:09
Speaker 4: have heard of named Bill Bowerman. He was a running
12:11
Speaker 4: coach from the University of Oregon, Go Ducks and co
12:15
Speaker 4: founder of a little company called Nike. He published a
12:18
Speaker 4: pamphlet kind of based on stuff Arthur Lydiard had been
12:21
Speaker 4: talking about, and then eventually wrote this book that I
12:24
Speaker 4: remember seeing on in houses of like friends of mine.
12:27
Speaker 3: Really for sure it was. It was a very big book.
12:30
Speaker 4: It was called Jogging Colon even back then, a physical
12:35
Speaker 4: fitness program for all ages. He co wrote it with
12:38
Speaker 4: a cardiologist named W. E. Harris, talked about all the
12:41
Speaker 4: health benefits of running, and it really caught on. It's
12:46
Speaker 4: really funny though, like people still like it caught on,
12:49
Speaker 4: but it was still.
12:50
Speaker 3: Sort of a new thing.
12:51
Speaker 4: So The New York Times wrote an article that demonstrated
12:54
Speaker 4: and this was in April of nineteen sixty eight that
12:56
Speaker 4: like when people were running like co occasionally they had
13:01
Speaker 4: real stories, like a cop would stop and say like
13:04
Speaker 4: why are you running?
13:05
Speaker 3: What are you running from? Or what did you do?
13:08
Speaker 3: Or people that were.
13:09
Speaker 4: Runners and joggers said, you know, I like to run
13:11
Speaker 4: at night because people don't stare at me.
13:13
Speaker 3: It don't feel as weird. So it's just so funny
13:16
Speaker 3: to look back at, you know. And this was in
13:18
Speaker 3: the late sixties, that people jogging on the streets where
13:20
Speaker 3: you were like, what's up on that person? Why are
13:22
Speaker 3: they running?
13:22
Speaker 2: Right? And at night they like to run in all
13:24
Speaker 2: black with a black watch cap and black mask covering
13:28
Speaker 2: their eyes.
13:28
Speaker 3: Yes, very safe.
13:29
Speaker 2: There was another guy who really brought jogging to the masses.
13:33
Speaker 2: His name was Jim Fix. He wrote the Complete Book
13:36
Speaker 2: of Running, released in nineteen seventy seven, and he I
13:39
Speaker 2: remember there was a proselytizer for running, if there ever
13:42
Speaker 2: was one, it was him Fix. Yeah, And he ironically
13:46
Speaker 2: died while jogging. He ran himself to death. He had
13:49
Speaker 2: a massive heart attack while jogging. But he's still I mean,
13:54
Speaker 2: it doesn't really undo what he did, which was, Hey, everybody,
13:57
Speaker 2: let's let's go jog. And that's what Anchorman was referring to.
14:00
Speaker 2: Was that, right, the jogging trend that Jim Fix helped
14:04
Speaker 2: usher in in the late seventies.
14:06
Speaker 3: But there was another gym in the seventies. A man
14:09
Speaker 3: by the name of president Jim Carter, it'd be weird.
14:14
Speaker 2: So weird does sound weird? He's such a Jimmy, He
14:17
Speaker 2: totally is Jim. It seems like you'd have an overly
14:20
Speaker 2: strong handshake.
14:22
Speaker 3: Right, Jim Carter.
14:23
Speaker 2: Jim Carter, good to meet you. Yeah, what have you
14:26
Speaker 2: done for me lately?
14:27
Speaker 3: He high five.
14:29
Speaker 4: But this was at a time in the seventies when
14:31
Speaker 4: the president of the United States had influence on popular culture.
14:36
Speaker 4: Like I don't feel like presidents really have that much anymore. No, No,
14:42
Speaker 4: it's dying fast at least. And he was a jogger
14:46
Speaker 4: from the White House. This is the late seventies. He
14:48
Speaker 4: would jog sometimes ten twelve miles at a time, really
14:51
Speaker 4: got into it.
14:52
Speaker 3: And The New York Times wrote about this, of course.
14:55
Speaker 4: And you know, if if someone's in the White House
14:57
Speaker 4: jogging and running, then that normalizes it for a lot
15:01
Speaker 4: of America.
15:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, I read an article about that. I don't know
15:05
Speaker 2: if it was the New York Times one or not,
15:06
Speaker 2: but he yeah, it wasn't New York Times. It chronicled
15:11
Speaker 2: him going on this run like he held like a
15:14
Speaker 2: fun run basically at Camp David, and he almost collapsed
15:19
Speaker 2: on one of the hills and had to be ushered
15:20
Speaker 2: off and taken to the hospital. Oh really, yeah, And
15:23
Speaker 2: he was like running with you know, dozens, scores, if
15:26
Speaker 2: not hundreds of other people on this fun run, and
15:28
Speaker 2: they were running with the president, and he had Secret
15:31
Speaker 2: Service guys running with them keeping pace. But he he
15:34
Speaker 2: had to leave the race that he helped organize because
15:38
Speaker 2: he just went too hard. That was how they used
15:41
Speaker 2: to do it.
15:42
Speaker 4: Did they say over a bullhorn now dropping out a
15:46
Speaker 4: runner of thirty two jim Carter?
15:48
Speaker 2: Shame, shame. That's how they used to.
15:51
Speaker 3: Do would you. Oh was that Sean Connery?
15:56
Speaker 2: No, I didn't mean it, but sure, I'll take that. Yeah,
15:59
Speaker 2: that was Sean Henri shaming Jimmy Carter on that run
16:02
Speaker 2: in the late seventies.
16:03
Speaker 3: It sounded like Sean you doing Sean Connery saying same.
16:08
Speaker 3: That's how it heard in my.
16:11
Speaker 4: Yes, shame traback so speaking of the New York Times,
16:17
Speaker 4: and I guess we'll take a break after this. But
16:19
Speaker 4: in the late nineties ninety seven they wrote an article
16:22
Speaker 4: kind of looking back on running and jogging, and they
16:25
Speaker 4: were keen to point out that, like even into the seventies, zho,
16:28
Speaker 4: it was still a bit of a subculture. Like you said,
16:32
Speaker 4: they were like running and jogging enthusiasts, But it wasn't
16:35
Speaker 4: like tons of mainstream Americans were running. It was still
16:38
Speaker 4: like what are those people doing? Like should I do that?
16:40
Speaker 2: Right?
16:41
Speaker 3: All right? Okay, break time?
16:43
Speaker 2: I think it is break time.
16:45
Speaker 1: All right, we'll be right back with aerobics.
17:06
Speaker 2: Okay. So you've got jogging that's on the scene, then
17:10
Speaker 2: you have aerobics too. This was the one that was
17:13
Speaker 2: like probably the most popular thing of the eighties. If
17:17
Speaker 2: you ask me, I think I think aerobics dominated the eighties.
17:20
Speaker 2: Jogging the seventies, and aerobics was around a lot longer
17:25
Speaker 2: than just the eighties. It was one of those things where,
17:28
Speaker 2: you know, some people who were kind of into exercising
17:32
Speaker 2: kind of developed it on their own separately, and then
17:35
Speaker 2: it just took a little while to get more and
17:37
Speaker 2: more popular as word of mouth spread. But there's a
17:39
Speaker 2: guy named Kenneth Cooper who started it all again in
17:42
Speaker 2: the sixties. He was a US Air Force surgeon and
17:45
Speaker 2: he was like, you know those that weightlifting, the calisthetics
17:49
Speaker 2: that the military uses for training. It's all well and good,
17:53
Speaker 2: but these guys are like like dying on these these
17:57
Speaker 2: runs and jogs and hikes.
17:58
Speaker 3: They've got no aerobic stamina.
18:01
Speaker 2: Stamina exactly. So he started looking into it and he
18:05
Speaker 2: was like, I think we need to start using what
18:08
Speaker 2: we call now cardio. But Jack then it was aerobic exercise.
18:13
Speaker 4: Yeah, he was a jogger. He said, I think aerobics
18:16
Speaker 4: is being sold short. So he wrote a book in
18:18
Speaker 4: nineteen sixty eight called Aerobics, and he said, you know,
18:23
Speaker 4: running and walking and biking is what people should be doing.
18:26
Speaker 4: And that was his idea of aerobics at the time,
18:29
Speaker 4: was just getting that heart rate up sustaining it for
18:32
Speaker 4: an extended period of time. He had a pretty clever
18:35
Speaker 4: test where he could basically tell you in about twelve
18:37
Speaker 4: minutes what kind of like how good of shape you
18:40
Speaker 4: were in. But then what happened was really really awesome.
18:44
Speaker 4: Like I really love this section because my mom figures
18:47
Speaker 4: into this, which I'll get to as we as we go.
18:49
Speaker 4: But women in the United States said, you know, what
18:54
Speaker 4: they're talking about running and biking and walking, but what
18:58
Speaker 4: they're really talking about is getting your heart rate up
19:00
Speaker 4: for an extended period of time. So I'm going to
19:03
Speaker 4: make that my own. And there was one woman in particular,
19:07
Speaker 4: very early on, there were some real trailblazers here. She
19:09
Speaker 4: was a dance teacher, also an Air Force wife, no coincidence,
19:13
Speaker 4: by the name of Jackie Sorenson. She read that book,
19:16
Speaker 4: she took that fitness test and found out she was
19:18
Speaker 4: in really good shape. And she was like, but wait
19:21
Speaker 4: a minute, I don't run. How can I be in
19:23
Speaker 4: this good of shape. She was like, I'm a dancer.
19:25
Speaker 4: I'm getting my heart rate up. And so she in
19:28
Speaker 4: nineteen sixty nine came up with a danced base exercise
19:31
Speaker 4: class on the Air Force base in Puerto Rico where
19:35
Speaker 4: they were stationed, and the Air Force said, we should
19:38
Speaker 4: produce this as a TV show, which is really weird,
19:41
Speaker 4: and they did. It was called Aerobic Dancing, and eventually
19:44
Speaker 4: she published a book as well in the late seventies,
19:46
Speaker 4: but she I think was.
19:47
Speaker 3: One of the first ones. It really was like, you
19:49
Speaker 3: don't have to run.
19:50
Speaker 4: You can be in a room and do this as
19:52
Speaker 4: long as you get that heart rate up exactly.
19:54
Speaker 2: And also it just is much more engaging and fun.
20:00
Speaker 2: No too, you know, biking and jogging those are very
20:03
Speaker 2: frequently solitary pursuits. Aerobics was a bunch of people getting
20:07
Speaker 2: together in a room and having fun together to like
20:09
Speaker 2: popular music.
20:10
Speaker 3: Right yeah, clapping in, yelling and doing all that.
20:13
Speaker 2: Exactly and encouraging one another. So this was really attractive
20:18
Speaker 2: to women at the time because this was you know,
20:21
Speaker 2: they were still coming out of this social expectation that
20:23
Speaker 2: they shouldn't really be exercising, and now they were saying,
20:26
Speaker 2: you know, to heck with you guys, We're gonna do
20:29
Speaker 2: this anyway. And this was it was almost like there
20:31
Speaker 2: was strength in numbers, but there was also there was
20:33
Speaker 2: a social component to it as well. There was another
20:37
Speaker 2: woman named Judy Shepherd. She started out in the sixties
20:40
Speaker 2: as well, but she became the founder of jazzer Size.
20:45
Speaker 2: That's my mom used to jazzer size. I remember. She
20:48
Speaker 2: even had a poster of Judy Shepherd doing different moves
20:52
Speaker 2: that came with her record, like record, vinyl record. I
20:55
Speaker 2: should say, oh yeah, so my mom would do jazzer
20:57
Speaker 2: size at home. She went to jesuitize class, so she
21:00
Speaker 2: was into it for sure.
21:02
Speaker 4: It was originally called jazz and Dance for fun and fitness.
21:05
Speaker 4: Jazzer Size is way more marketable, and this to me,
21:09
Speaker 4: maybe the fact of the podcast it was a Jazzer Size,
21:13
Speaker 4: you know, was a copywritten or whatever, an owned title
21:18
Speaker 4: I hope by Judy Shepherd. I didn't look that up,
21:21
Speaker 4: but it ended up being a franchise, and in nineteen
21:24
Speaker 4: eighty four, Jazzer Size was the second biggest franchise company
21:29
Speaker 4: in the United States behind Domino's Pizza.
21:31
Speaker 2: That's really something because that was at the time when
21:34
Speaker 2: Dominoes is like, we're going to get your pizza in
21:36
Speaker 2: thirty minutes or lesser. It's free. So everybody was into
21:39
Speaker 2: Dominoes at the time.
21:40
Speaker 3: Is right before the NOID, I think right like two.
21:42
Speaker 2: Years before the NOID. I looked it up. So Judy
21:45
Speaker 2: Shepherd created what's known as the boutique fitness franchise model,
21:49
Speaker 2: where it was a specific kind of exercise, usually some
21:54
Speaker 2: sort of branded exercise like Jazzer Size, that you could
21:56
Speaker 2: go set up in a strip mall for a minimal
22:00
Speaker 2: initial output and people would come flock to your Jazzer
22:03
Speaker 2: Size studio. And you still see that today in certain
22:06
Speaker 2: places like Bar has a lot of like franchises, different
22:10
Speaker 2: kinds of franchises, curves, which we'll talk about later. That's
22:13
Speaker 2: a franchise. But Judy Shepherd started that with jazzer science.
22:17
Speaker 4: Yeah, very big deal. Then there was a woman named
22:19
Speaker 4: Gilda Marx, married into the Marx brothers family had taken
22:25
Speaker 4: when growing up. Apparently was a dancer and even worked
22:28
Speaker 4: out with weights, which was very unusual at the time
22:31
Speaker 4: because that would have been in I guess the thirties
22:33
Speaker 4: and forties. And in nineteen sixty or thereabouts, she was
22:38
Speaker 4: choreographing a show, a charity show in Los Angeles, created
22:42
Speaker 4: an exercise routine so all the dancers could you know,
22:46
Speaker 4: get in better shape, and everyone loved it. Everyone's like,
22:48
Speaker 4: this is awesome. And she said, wait a minute, I'm
22:50
Speaker 4: onto something here. So she in her backyard started aerobics classes,
22:56
Speaker 4: then rented studios, and then eventually and it became a
23:00
Speaker 4: very big and as you'll see, sort of when something
23:02
Speaker 4: becomes like a big Hollywood thing and celebrities do it,
23:05
Speaker 4: it becomes a popular thing everywhere, of course, and it
23:08
Speaker 4: was gonna Yes, that's surprising.
23:10
Speaker 3: And it was called Body by Gilda.
23:12
Speaker 4: And it was not only a big deal because Body
23:16
Speaker 4: by Gilda was a big deal, but it was a
23:18
Speaker 4: big deal because she ended up having two clients by
23:22
Speaker 4: the name of Jane Fonda and Richard Simmons.
23:24
Speaker 2: Yes, huge, like so so. Gilda Marx essentially created the
23:32
Speaker 2: popularity of aeroba and it's like jazzer size was there.
23:35
Speaker 2: It was very popular. The like aerobic dancing that was
23:39
Speaker 2: very popular too, But it was like celebrities like Jane
23:42
Speaker 2: Fonda and Richard Simmons who became a celebrity just for
23:45
Speaker 2: getting into exercise that really really increased it in popularity.
23:50
Speaker 2: And Jane Fonda just straight up ripped off Gilda Marx.
23:54
Speaker 2: She took a couple of her classes at a Body
23:56
Speaker 2: by Gilda in Century City and the next year she
23:59
Speaker 2: set up her own I think a couple of years later,
24:02
Speaker 2: she published Jane Fonda's Workout Book, which became an extremely
24:06
Speaker 2: popular bestseller. It was number one on the nonfiction list
24:10
Speaker 2: and stayed there for six months.
24:12
Speaker 3: By the way, two million books.
24:13
Speaker 2: That's amazing. We're almost there. We're getting there with our book, right,
24:17
Speaker 2: we're gnawing away at her record. But she also released
24:21
Speaker 2: a VHS tape that was wildly popular too. And that's why,
24:26
Speaker 2: I mean, people of a certain age today still associate
24:29
Speaker 2: Jane Fonda with exercise and aerobics, and then the people
24:35
Speaker 2: of a certain age parents associate her with funneling money
24:38
Speaker 2: to the Viet Cong, Right, still do for sure? Yeah,
24:42
Speaker 2: they're still mad about it.
24:44
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, still mad. Here's another stat for you. The
24:47
Speaker 4: Jane Fonda Workout Tape was the first non movie VHS
24:52
Speaker 4: tape to top the sales chart, and it was number
24:56
Speaker 4: one as far as VHS sales go for six years
25:00
Speaker 4: and the whole run of them.
25:02
Speaker 3: She ended up making.
25:03
Speaker 4: Follow up tapes, but the whole collected Jane fond of
25:06
Speaker 4: Workout Tape set has sold I'm sorry, between eighty two
25:10
Speaker 4: and ninety five sold seventeen million days.
25:13
Speaker 2: Wow.
25:14
Speaker 3: Wow, that's fun.
25:16
Speaker 4: I mean, numbers like that are amazing, she'd be. I
25:19
Speaker 4: don't even what that translates to and record sales, but
25:22
Speaker 4: it's what's the biggest platinum sellar?
25:24
Speaker 2: Double plat platinum's a million?
25:27
Speaker 3: Oh really, what's the best platinum or what's the high?
25:30
Speaker 2: I think they just keep going like triple platinum, quadruple platinum.
25:33
Speaker 1: That kind.
25:34
Speaker 3: So she was seventeen platinum.
25:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is extraordinarily impressive, and that really does put
25:38
Speaker 2: it into perspective because not a lot of records go platinum,
25:42
Speaker 2: especially not think of times over. Yeah exactly, Although I
25:46
Speaker 2: will say she didn't have that much competition back then.
25:49
Speaker 2: The only other two movies on VHS were Beverly Hills
25:51
Speaker 2: Cop and The Empire Strikes Back.
25:54
Speaker 3: Very nice.
25:55
Speaker 2: So the other person that was a body by Gilda
25:59
Speaker 2: graduate after just one class, it turned out, yeah, sort
26:02
Speaker 2: of was one of the greatest people ever to run
26:05
Speaker 2: around planet Earth. Richard Simmons. He if you're not familiar
26:11
Speaker 2: with Richard Simmons, or if you just know him from
26:13
Speaker 2: finding Richard Simmons podcast, even if you're just tangentially familiar
26:18
Speaker 2: with him from you know, living through the era where
26:20
Speaker 2: he was on TV everywhere all the time, go check
26:24
Speaker 2: out Richard Simmons' testimony before Congress. He span has a
26:29
Speaker 2: clip of it when he went and testified before Congress
26:32
Speaker 2: I think of the nineties, maybe early nineties, I think,
26:35
Speaker 2: And he gives it's Richard Simmons in a suit and tie,
26:38
Speaker 2: so just that is worth going to see. It's bizarre
26:42
Speaker 2: to see. But then he opens his mouth and it's
26:44
Speaker 2: just the same old Richard Simmons, and he gives this
26:46
Speaker 2: impassioned speech that like will kind of make you tear
26:49
Speaker 2: up a little bit and give you chills. And then
26:52
Speaker 2: he also had some laughs in there. He's just great,
26:55
Speaker 2: just a great person. And this guy everyone at the
26:58
Speaker 2: time thought he was just totally No one ever thought
27:01
Speaker 2: Richard Simmons was like he was never normal, right, but
27:04
Speaker 2: he was so himself that he just sucked people into
27:08
Speaker 2: his orbit and he became like a really really popular star,
27:12
Speaker 2: I would guess, one of the most famous people in
27:14
Speaker 2: the world for a brief period in the early eighties.
27:17
Speaker 4: Absolutely like you said, he got kicked out of body
27:21
Speaker 4: by Gilda and the one class that he went to
27:24
Speaker 4: by being Richard Simmons basically, and then eventually founded a business.
27:30
Speaker 4: At first it was an exercise studio slash salad bar.
27:36
Speaker 4: I get what he's trying to do there. It was
27:37
Speaker 4: called Roughage an anatomy asylum. And then eventually he was like,
27:42
Speaker 4: you know, let's drop the salad bar. Let's just make
27:45
Speaker 4: it a fitness center. Then obviously had the Richard Simmons
27:48
Speaker 4: Show in nineteen eighty, started putting out those VHS tapes
27:52
Speaker 4: in eighty three, and then in the late eighties. It's
27:55
Speaker 4: all leading to this moment he puts out Sweating to
27:59
Speaker 4: the Oldies, which I believe to date has grossed over
28:02
Speaker 4: two hundred million dollars.
28:03
Speaker 2: Amazing. It became the best selling home fitness video ever,
28:07
Speaker 2: not Jane Fonda.
28:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, to the top of the heap, take that Pink Floyd.
28:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, and don't forget deal a Meal. Remember that was
28:14
Speaker 2: wildly successful too.
28:16
Speaker 3: Oh, that's right, that was it.
28:17
Speaker 2: Yeah. It was like some color coded cards and you
28:20
Speaker 2: could put different color coded cards together in your little
28:23
Speaker 2: Dealer meal portfolio and that would be your meal for
28:26
Speaker 2: the day. And if you followed these the instructions, you
28:29
Speaker 2: would be able to lose weight. And he was really
28:31
Speaker 2: into losing weight because he had been very overweight as
28:35
Speaker 2: a child, and he was dedicated to making sure that
28:39
Speaker 2: other people didn't suffer the way that he suffered. Yeah,
28:43
Speaker 2: and he was very much dedicated, very sweet. He he
28:47
Speaker 2: wasn't a phony, I guess. No.
28:50
Speaker 3: He was true to himself. He wanted to have fun
28:52
Speaker 3: while he worked out. I love the guy. I know
28:55
Speaker 3: you do too. He's just he's just one of the
28:57
Speaker 3: great humans.
28:57
Speaker 2: Yeah. He was also on a letterman a lot like
29:00
Speaker 2: frequently great for sure, because he had a sense of
29:04
Speaker 2: humor about himself. He wasn't like unaware of what people
29:08
Speaker 2: how people looked at him.
29:09
Speaker 4: He just didn't care, and they both played their part.
29:12
Speaker 4: I think Letterman he wasn't. I don't think, honestly, don't
29:15
Speaker 4: think Letterman was as genuinely freaked out and turned off
29:19
Speaker 4: by Richard Simmons in real life. I think it was
29:21
Speaker 4: all just a bit and he's great. And you know,
29:25
Speaker 4: I didn't follow the I didn't listen to h finding
29:29
Speaker 4: Richard Simmons, but I did sort of follow the story
29:31
Speaker 4: a little bit, and like my big takeaway was, and
29:34
Speaker 4: I know they may have meant well because they thought
29:36
Speaker 4: he was being held against his will, but I love
29:40
Speaker 4: that the end result was like Richard Simmons is fine,
29:42
Speaker 4: leave him alone, he doesn't want to be bothered anymore.
29:46
Speaker 4: Just him, let him live his life, you know. So
29:52
Speaker 4: winding down the talk of aerobics is when I want
29:54
Speaker 4: to talk about my mom for a minute, because Lyvia
29:57
Speaker 4: points out that, you know, it was marketed to women
30:02
Speaker 4: as a way to like get in shape and lose weight,
30:04
Speaker 4: but also to empower yourselves and to have some time
30:08
Speaker 4: with other women. And my mom was like, and it
30:12
Speaker 4: sounds like your mom to a certain degree, but my
30:14
Speaker 4: mom specifically was sort of ideally in all the wrong ways,
30:20
Speaker 4: situated to really get into this because she was. It
30:24
Speaker 4: was in the eighties. She was in a very unhappy marriage.
30:29
Speaker 4: Without getting into a lot of specifics, it was it
30:33
Speaker 4: was not a good scene in my house, and my
30:38
Speaker 4: parents didn't like each other much. My dad wasn't a
30:40
Speaker 4: supportive good guy, and my mom dove into aerobics at
30:45
Speaker 4: the American Fitness Center like I'd never seen anyone dive
30:49
Speaker 4: into something.
30:50
Speaker 3: Before, become an instructor. She became an instructor.
30:53
Speaker 4: She later became a spinning instructor into her seventies I think,
30:57
Speaker 4: or at least late sixties.
30:59
Speaker 3: And my dad was and I didn't.
31:02
Speaker 4: Really realize this at the time, but this is all
31:04
Speaker 4: what was sort of just coming into my eyeballs and
31:06
Speaker 4: my ear holes as a kid. He was not supportive
31:09
Speaker 4: of it. He was threatened by it. He was a
31:11
Speaker 4: I wish I could cuss. He was a real jerk
31:12
Speaker 4: about it.
31:14
Speaker 3: Uh.
31:15
Speaker 4: It's just interesting to look back at, like there were
31:18
Speaker 4: a lot of women like my mom, I think in
31:20
Speaker 4: the eighties.
31:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, I could see him like talking her down about
31:23
Speaker 2: it and her just being like, I can't hear you.
31:25
Speaker 2: I'm empowering myself right now.
31:28
Speaker 4: Did your mom do this like would she just sit
31:30
Speaker 4: around while the TV was on and do like leglists
31:31
Speaker 4: and stuff.
31:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was into all sorts of stuff like that,
31:35
Speaker 2: like just had any like made for TV, not made
31:38
Speaker 2: for TVs as seen on TV. Like exercise item we
31:41
Speaker 2: probably had, remember the thigh master, Oh sure, and that
31:45
Speaker 2: one thing It was like kind of a weird metal
31:47
Speaker 2: cradle that helped you do sit ups and crunches better.
31:51
Speaker 2: You just kind of rock back and forth on. We
31:52
Speaker 2: had one of those. Had the mini trampolines. We had
31:55
Speaker 2: all that.
31:55
Speaker 3: I remember it was called the something Rocker. I think,
31:57
Speaker 3: actually I do remember.
31:58
Speaker 2: Probably it had to have been not that was a
32:00
Speaker 2: real miss.
32:02
Speaker 4: Yeah, But just to cherry on top of this with
32:05
Speaker 4: my mom, I think not only was it empowering for her,
32:07
Speaker 4: but I think it was also I think she was
32:09
Speaker 4: totally sticking it to my dad At.
32:10
Speaker 2: The same time. I don't think my mom was trying
32:14
Speaker 2: to stick it to my dad. But yeah, she sure
32:17
Speaker 2: liked aerobics. Yeah, I'm sure it was empowering for her too,
32:21
Speaker 2: definitely for sure.
32:22
Speaker 3: Yeah.
32:23
Speaker 5: All right, so second break, second break starting now, all right,
32:47
Speaker 5: so we need to talk about gems and gym culture.
32:51
Speaker 5: The word gymnasium comes from the Greek gymns for naked
32:56
Speaker 5: They in Germany. I think in the eighteen hundreds that's all.
32:59
Speaker 5: They got real into gyms for a while and exercising,
33:02
Speaker 5: but it was very spotty and obviously not a very
33:05
Speaker 5: big thing at all culturally in the world for the
33:09
Speaker 5: most part. But gyms were known, you know, like YMCA's
33:13
Speaker 5: in the sixties and seventies were around.
33:15
Speaker 4: They were kind of not great. They kind of were stinky,
33:18
Speaker 4: like any gym back then just wasn't like an awesome
33:20
Speaker 4: place to go, Like, you didn't feel great walking into
33:24
Speaker 4: one usually. But in nineteen thirty nine, a couple of
33:27
Speaker 4: gyms opened that were that really changed the game. This
33:31
Speaker 4: is nineteen thirty nine. Jack Lalane, health guru legend, opened
33:38
Speaker 4: what's looked at as the very first health club in
33:40
Speaker 4: the United States in Oakland, California, And that same year
33:44
Speaker 4: a guy named Vic Tanny opened up a gym his
33:47
Speaker 4: first gym in Santa Monica and Your Muscle Beach, both
33:50
Speaker 4: in nineteen thirty nine.
33:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jack Lalane became kind of like that generation's well
33:57
Speaker 2: I was gonna say Charles Atlas, but they kind of
33:59
Speaker 2: overlapped its same time. I saw him on a nineteen
34:03
Speaker 2: eighty something episode of The Richard Simmons Show as like
34:06
Speaker 2: a special cast. But he was like a big proselytizer
34:09
Speaker 2: and he told everybody to go work out because they're
34:12
Speaker 2: getting pudgy, that kind of stuff. Vic Tanny he went
34:15
Speaker 2: a different way. He, from what I can tell, established
34:18
Speaker 2: the health club, which was huge in the seventies and eighties.
34:23
Speaker 2: Health clubs where it was a place where you could
34:25
Speaker 2: go not just work out with weights or whatever, but
34:28
Speaker 2: they might have a pool, they probably had a racketball court.
34:32
Speaker 2: A few of us for sure, they might have Apparently
34:36
Speaker 2: some Vic Tanny clubs had ice skating rinks. I mean
34:40
Speaker 2: like it was like you would go and you could
34:42
Speaker 2: spend hours there and they were really nice. But vic
34:47
Speaker 2: Tanny's whole model, I guess he overspent because they went
34:52
Speaker 2: out of business I think in the sixties. But they
34:56
Speaker 2: were so so beloved that other owners, local owners and
35:02
Speaker 2: sometimes regional owners would just start buying them up and
35:05
Speaker 2: just turn them into something else, which is still a
35:06
Speaker 2: model that gets followed today.
35:09
Speaker 4: Yeah, like if you like to go to a gym
35:12
Speaker 4: that has a whirlpool at a sauna and a steam
35:17
Speaker 4: room and like you said, a racketball court. Like you
35:20
Speaker 4: can thank Vic Tanny for that. He was the guy
35:22
Speaker 4: that came up with this sort of all encompassing really
35:27
Speaker 4: like something for everyone and also a place that you
35:29
Speaker 4: want to go to that's not smelly and gross.
35:31
Speaker 3: Right, I mean, they're always a little bit smelly, It depends.
35:35
Speaker 2: It depends. We used to go to one called Urban
35:38
Speaker 2: Active and it did not smell, and Urban hold out
35:41
Speaker 2: to La Fitness and it began to smell. Yeah, it
35:45
Speaker 2: was very disappointing. Man, I'm telling you. The men's sauna
35:48
Speaker 2: totally fine, and then within weeks it was like this
35:51
Speaker 2: smells like button here. I can't even say in ten minutes.
35:54
Speaker 3: Did the rules change or the cleaning methods?
35:57
Speaker 2: Like the cleaning methods, it's the explanation.
36:01
Speaker 3: Did everyone never mind?
36:03
Speaker 2: Yeah? I don't know, because I don't think the clientele
36:05
Speaker 2: changed that quickly. You know, everybody's membership got transferred over.
36:09
Speaker 2: It's just I think they stopped cleaning the butt smell
36:11
Speaker 2: out of this aunus, which is what you want to
36:14
Speaker 2: do if you have a public sawn.
36:15
Speaker 4: Okay, So now the health club is established in the
36:20
Speaker 4: sort of mid early to mid nineteen sixties, like you said,
36:24
Speaker 4: people jumped in there when Vic Tanny's chain went out
36:27
Speaker 4: of business.
36:27
Speaker 3: Some were mom and pops.
36:29
Speaker 4: Sometimes companies would come in to start their own new
36:32
Speaker 4: jam and buy up a bunch of them. Nautilus was
36:35
Speaker 4: one of those that bought up a bunch of Victanny's
36:38
Speaker 4: closed stores or what are we calling fitness centers stores,
36:43
Speaker 4: And Nautilus was a big deal because it's like, hey,
36:45
Speaker 4: like free weights can be intimidating for some people, and
36:48
Speaker 4: like at Nautilus you can just change the setting and
36:51
Speaker 4: it's a big machine and it's the same as freeweights.
36:54
Speaker 4: I don't really know if it's the actual same or not,
36:56
Speaker 4: but they marketed it as like you're still lifting weights.
37:00
Speaker 2: No, it's true, you definitely are. And it allowed people
37:04
Speaker 2: a lot more entry into it. Like today, like you
37:07
Speaker 2: go into a gym, there's so many machines there. That's
37:10
Speaker 2: directly from Arthur Jones and his Nautilus machines that he
37:14
Speaker 2: he started creating by hand. Basically he was like a
37:16
Speaker 2: Kellogg brother.
37:18
Speaker 3: Oh wow, I like those things.
37:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. His whole thing was you you can
37:23
Speaker 2: also exercise, get a full exercise or full workout and
37:26
Speaker 2: much shorter amount of time than you could with weights,
37:30
Speaker 2: and he basically emphasized working out until you just you
37:35
Speaker 2: you had a temporary muscle failure and then you knew
37:37
Speaker 2: you were done with your workout for the day. Right,
37:40
Speaker 2: So seriously, that's what he encouraged.
37:42
Speaker 3: Muscle failure. Yeah.
37:44
Speaker 4: Uh So by the seventies when these clubs were opening up,
37:47
Speaker 4: there were there were a couple of different models. One
37:49
Speaker 4: was sort of the country club style that was probably
37:53
Speaker 4: a country club and also had like racket sports and
37:55
Speaker 4: all that other stuff, whirlpool and steam room. And then
37:59
Speaker 4: there was the ones that my mom went to and
38:01
Speaker 4: probably your mom went to that was probably in a
38:03
Speaker 4: shopping center. Some of those could be really good and
38:07
Speaker 4: some of them were pretty CREDI like anything else. If
38:09
Speaker 4: it's just sort of not some huge chain, you know,
38:12
Speaker 4: some are gonna be awesome, some aren't.
38:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, my family went belonged to several different racket clubs
38:17
Speaker 2: in Toledo, And the reason why so many is because
38:20
Speaker 2: we had a long string of getting like your multi
38:25
Speaker 2: year memberships at a racquet club and then within a
38:27
Speaker 2: few months it would just go under. So we'd move
38:29
Speaker 2: on to the next racket club and they'd take a
38:31
Speaker 2: lot of our money too. So I think we did
38:33
Speaker 2: this at least three times that I was aware of
38:35
Speaker 2: when I was a kid. But we always had a
38:38
Speaker 2: racket club membership somewhere.
38:40
Speaker 4: I fully thought you were gonna say, because you had
38:41
Speaker 4: a run of getting expelled as a family went around.
38:45
Speaker 2: Luckily not, No, we knew how to am in.
38:48
Speaker 3: Okay, I wish that would have been the case. That
38:49
Speaker 3: would have been a good time.
38:50
Speaker 2: I can lie if you want to go back and
38:52
Speaker 2: re record that part.
38:54
Speaker 3: No, that's right.
38:55
Speaker 2: So I think one of the gyms that people associate
38:58
Speaker 2: with gyms in general is Gold Gym, And even still
39:01
Speaker 2: to this day, that's like if you if you want
39:03
Speaker 2: serious training and you're going to like you're not messing around,
39:07
Speaker 2: You're not there to meet anybody except maybe a mentor
39:10
Speaker 2: who's going to teach you how to get even more buff.
39:12
Speaker 3: That's where you would go as a Golds gym for sure.
39:16
Speaker 4: That was started by a bodybuilder named Joe Gold. And yeah,
39:19
Speaker 4: you're totally right. I mean since the sixties it has
39:21
Speaker 4: that rep. Is like a sort of serious weightlifters gym
39:26
Speaker 4: Bally Total Bally Total Fitness, which if I'm not mistaken,
39:30
Speaker 4: there may still be some independent American fitness centers, but
39:34
Speaker 4: the ones that we belonged to, I believe Bally bought
39:37
Speaker 4: them out and took them over.
39:38
Speaker 3: If I'm not mistaken, Well, Bally's gone now.
39:40
Speaker 2: I saw a twenty fifteen article there were five left
39:43
Speaker 2: in the world.
39:44
Speaker 3: Really well this is a name.
39:46
Speaker 2: Ok.
39:47
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was during the boom Sure and that was
39:50
Speaker 4: founded by a former employee of Vic Tanny named Donna
39:54
Speaker 4: Hugh Wildman, and like you said, was huge and then
39:59
Speaker 4: sort of gave way to a their places like La
40:01
Speaker 4: Fitness and twenty four hour Fittes.
40:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that whole reputation of gyms and health clubs
40:06
Speaker 2: being impossible to cancel your membership and taking advantage of you,
40:11
Speaker 2: that model was paided by Ballytotal Fitness. They were the ones. Yeah,
40:14
Speaker 2: like they would you signed up for a three year contract,
40:17
Speaker 2: but they didn't tell you that when you were signing up,
40:19
Speaker 2: like business tactics like that. I wrote a story about
40:22
Speaker 2: a woman who signed up for a lifetime contract in
40:24
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty seven, paid fifty three dollars I think a
40:27
Speaker 2: year and was still getting billed after Ballytotal Fitness went
40:32
Speaker 2: like bankrupt, Like that's how much of it like shady
40:36
Speaker 2: they were. They could still bill you even though they
40:38
Speaker 2: weren't around any longer.
40:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was. It was the cell phone contract of.
40:41
Speaker 2: The exactly exactly, but that came from Ballytotal Fitness and
40:44
Speaker 2: then twenty four hour Fitness actually won a different way.
40:47
Speaker 2: A guy named Mark Mastrov was the first one to
40:50
Speaker 2: institute monthly memberships rather than the standard annual ones.
40:54
Speaker 3: Great ideeah for sure.
40:56
Speaker 4: Yeah, people loved it and they got that name after
41:00
Speaker 4: Mastroff realized it was originally six am to eleven, but
41:03
Speaker 4: he was like, people are out here waiting for this
41:05
Speaker 4: place to open. They don't want to leave at the
41:07
Speaker 4: end of the night, So screw it, I'm taking the
41:09
Speaker 4: locks off the door exactly.
41:10
Speaker 2: Let yourselves in have a great time.
41:13
Speaker 4: What else, So you mentioned Curves, That is a huge thing.
41:18
Speaker 4: There were women centric or women only fitness clubs like
41:22
Speaker 4: as early as the nineteen sixties, but Curves is the
41:25
Speaker 4: first one that was really like, you know what, if
41:28
Speaker 4: you're over forty five and you're a woman and you
41:32
Speaker 4: don't want to go to the gym to get hit
41:34
Speaker 4: on by these gross guys and get galcked at or
41:36
Speaker 4: laughed at or whatever, come to curves, we got a
41:39
Speaker 4: program for you. It was started by a husband and
41:42
Speaker 4: wife team, Gary and Diane Heaven with an Eye, and
41:47
Speaker 4: I believe at one point or maybe still, it's the
41:49
Speaker 4: largest fitness franchise in the world.
41:52
Speaker 2: They had like one hundred thousand different one hundred thousand locations,
41:57
Speaker 2: ten thousand Oh was it okay? Still?
42:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that's still a lot.
42:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, And again it was all over the world,
42:05
Speaker 2: so it was pretty cool. Also, by the way, I
42:08
Speaker 2: to myself pronounced their last name he even, but I
42:11
Speaker 2: like your interpretation much more really, Yeah, okay, so Chuck.
42:16
Speaker 2: There's still plenty of fitness clubs around. I think LA
42:19
Speaker 2: Fitness is the leader, with more than two billion in
42:22
Speaker 2: revenue a year. But one of the things that really
42:27
Speaker 2: kind of happened starting in the nineties was that the
42:32
Speaker 2: kind of fitness crazy just spread out. There was jogging, aerobics,
42:39
Speaker 2: and maybe going to the gym, and then health clubs
42:42
Speaker 2: kind of started. And then finally people are like, we've
42:45
Speaker 2: done all this for a decade or so, now we
42:47
Speaker 2: need some other stuff. So in a few cases they
42:50
Speaker 2: actually went back to the future and grabbed some established
42:55
Speaker 2: means of working out or exercising and revamped it for
42:59
Speaker 2: the for the new millennium.
43:01
Speaker 4: Yeah, and yoga was certainly one of those. I just
43:04
Speaker 4: started yoga two weeks ago, by the way, Yeah, for
43:07
Speaker 4: the first time.
43:07
Speaker 2: In the last month or so. It's kind of gotten
43:09
Speaker 2: under my skin. It's really awesome, isn't it.
43:12
Speaker 4: Yeah, And it's kicking my butt too. And I didn't underestimate.
43:16
Speaker 4: I wasn't like, oh, you're just stretching and you're on
43:18
Speaker 4: the floor and doing stuff like posing and stuff. It
43:21
Speaker 4: wasn't like I thought it was going to be easy.
43:23
Speaker 4: But it's kicking my butt and I'm like more sore
43:26
Speaker 4: than I've been doing almost anything else.
43:29
Speaker 2: It's awesome. You also gained strength very quickly, though, like surprisingly.
43:32
Speaker 4: Quickly, and balance, and yoga is a great thing to
43:36
Speaker 4: pick up at any time, but especially like you know,
43:39
Speaker 4: in your fifties, because balance and core strength and all
43:43
Speaker 4: that stuff as you age is really super important.
43:45
Speaker 3: For sure, It's always important. Yeah, well, yeah, flexibility.
43:49
Speaker 4: But yoga started, you know, in the nineteenth century and
43:52
Speaker 4: in the sixties and then seventies or a couple of
43:55
Speaker 4: really big PBS shows that grabbed the attention of a
43:59
Speaker 4: lot of people and it's just always been pretty popular
44:02
Speaker 4: and has never been more popular than it is now.
44:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, the nineteenth century is when it first was introduced
44:07
Speaker 2: to the United States.
44:09
Speaker 3: I think, oh, is it like an ancient practice? Probably?
44:12
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it goes way back, way back.
44:15
Speaker 3: I think that's what I meant.
44:16
Speaker 2: And there's where my one hundred thousand came from that
44:18
Speaker 2: I was confused about curves. There's at least one hundred
44:22
Speaker 2: thousand yoga studios in the United States alone, and one
44:25
Speaker 2: thing that's cool about yoga in particular is there are
44:29
Speaker 2: some franchises, which is fine, but most yoga studios are
44:33
Speaker 2: independently owned. They're just somebody who loves yoga so much
44:36
Speaker 2: they opened up their own studio and you can come
44:39
Speaker 2: to yoga there.
44:41
Speaker 3: Yeah.
44:41
Speaker 4: And that's kind of the same with our next not
44:45
Speaker 4: fad because it's been around for a while, but pilates.
44:48
Speaker 4: It's kind of similar in that people will a lot
44:51
Speaker 4: of mom and pop pilates places like for instance, the
44:57
Speaker 4: person I dated in New Jersey, she ended up after
45:01
Speaker 4: I left and we broke up and stuff. She moved
45:03
Speaker 4: to Savannah, Georgia from New Jersey and started up her
45:06
Speaker 4: own plate studio and This wasn't something that she did
45:10
Speaker 4: at all when I was there, So it's definitely something
45:12
Speaker 4: I think that, like yoga, people can get into it
45:16
Speaker 4: and really get into it such that either I want
45:19
Speaker 4: to be an instructor or I want to open up
45:20
Speaker 4: my own business around it.
45:22
Speaker 2: Sure, and plates was named after Joseph Platts. I think
45:25
Speaker 2: you said.
45:26
Speaker 3: I didn't say that, Oh, okay, So it is.
45:28
Speaker 2: Named after Joseph Platts. He was a German circus performer
45:31
Speaker 2: and his circus happened to be in the UK when
45:33
Speaker 2: World War One broke out and they said, oh you're German,
45:36
Speaker 2: We're going to lock you up for four years while
45:38
Speaker 2: the war goes on. So he and his whole troop
45:42
Speaker 2: spent World War One locked up in the UK. And
45:45
Speaker 2: while he was there, he started developing an exercise regimen
45:50
Speaker 2: based on stretching that apparently saw cats chasing mice and
45:54
Speaker 2: birds around the prison, and so he came up with
45:57
Speaker 2: these exercises that imitated that. He claimed that when the
46:02
Speaker 2: nineteen eighteen flu epidemic came to the island that he
46:04
Speaker 2: was imprisoned on, not one person who followed his exercise
46:09
Speaker 2: regimen got sick from it. Whether that's true or not,
46:13
Speaker 2: it's a pretty great story. And then one other great
46:15
Speaker 2: story about him is that he smoked fifteen cigars and
46:18
Speaker 2: drank a leader of booze every day.
46:21
Speaker 3: What a guy.
46:23
Speaker 2: And he was like one of the gurus of fitness
46:26
Speaker 2: from I mean we're talking back in the teens in
46:28
Speaker 2: nineteen twenties.
46:30
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's amazing. I should probably plug Carol's studio. Oh yeah,
46:35
Speaker 4: it's a Momentum Pilate studio and Samannah and I haven't
46:40
Speaker 4: been in touch with her since then, So go to
46:42
Speaker 4: Momentum and tell him.
46:44
Speaker 3: Tell her Chuck sent't you and she'll I'm.
46:45
Speaker 4: Sure she'll say like, oh, yeah, whatever happened to that guy?
46:49
Speaker 2: Nice? Very nice. And the people who come will say, oh,
46:53
Speaker 2: let us tell you.
46:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, she'd be like a pod what.
46:56
Speaker 2: So Bars another one. They were definitely worth mentioning because
47:01
Speaker 2: it incorporates elements of ballet, yoga, pilates and it's named
47:05
Speaker 2: after the bar that well basically the handrail that runs
47:09
Speaker 2: across the length of a wall that ballerinas frequently used.
47:13
Speaker 2: But it was created by a German ballerina in the
47:17
Speaker 2: forties or fifties now the fifties who fled to England.
47:21
Speaker 2: She was her name was Lottie Burke, and she was
47:24
Speaker 2: a free love advocate and so when she established bar
47:28
Speaker 2: in the Bar exercises, she also coupled it with not
47:32
Speaker 2: only is this going to make you feel great, it's
47:34
Speaker 2: going to help your sex life. And that was an
47:36
Speaker 2: overt message of taking bar from this through the sixties
47:40
Speaker 2: and the seventies.
47:42
Speaker 3: I would have pronounced that, by the way, Lota.
47:46
Speaker 2: Well, unlucky for you, I said it.
47:49
Speaker 4: First, you gather a very like Wisconsin e lotty ring
47:53
Speaker 4: to it, Lotti, give me a lotty lotty. Burke boot
47:56
Speaker 4: camp workouts became very popular in the nineties. Obviously took
48:00
Speaker 4: on that sort of military style training where you didn't
48:03
Speaker 4: need a lot of stuff, You just needed to meet
48:05
Speaker 4: a bunch of strangers in a city park and have
48:09
Speaker 4: someone yell at you for an hour for sure.
48:12
Speaker 3: What about Tybo?
48:13
Speaker 2: Tybo was created by Billy Blanks, who was legit. He
48:17
Speaker 2: was the US Karate team captain for US Karate and
48:21
Speaker 2: the US Olympic Karate team, so he was I mean,
48:25
Speaker 2: he knew what he was doing, and he created Tybo,
48:27
Speaker 2: which kind of incorporated kickboxing aerobics. If you've ever seen
48:34
Speaker 2: if you were alive. I guess in probably the nineties
48:36
Speaker 2: you saw the Billy Blanks Tybo infomercial and he managed
48:40
Speaker 2: to sell a ton of tapes from that infomercial. It
48:45
Speaker 2: was a very successful infomercial. I'm not sure how much
48:48
Speaker 2: tibo is done still today, but I looked it up
48:51
Speaker 2: to see if it was, you know, is it legit?
48:53
Speaker 2: And it definitely is a legit workout.
48:55
Speaker 4: Oh sure, it's a butt kicker. I tried it once
48:58
Speaker 4: and I was like, I can't do this. Yeah, but
49:01
Speaker 4: it was another example of one of those that really
49:02
Speaker 4: caught on in Hollywood in LA and so it had
49:06
Speaker 4: a short, short ish life. I'm sure people still do it,
49:10
Speaker 4: but the big Tybo craze.
49:11
Speaker 3: Was a few years for sure.
49:14
Speaker 4: What about high intensity interval training hitt hit. I know
49:20
Speaker 4: this as Toabada because I was seeing a trainer for
49:25
Speaker 4: a while and we did. She put me through Toabada
49:28
Speaker 4: basically every time. And that was named after a sports
49:31
Speaker 4: scientist's named Izumi Tabata who in the mid nineties was
49:36
Speaker 4: working with Olympic speed skating coaches to create what was
49:41
Speaker 4: a form of high intensity interval training.
49:44
Speaker 2: Right where you do something like pushups or burpies or
49:48
Speaker 2: mountain climbers or something like that for maybe twenty seconds,
49:51
Speaker 2: rest for ten seconds, and then you're immediately off into
49:54
Speaker 2: the next exercise for twenty seconds, and sometimes after four
49:58
Speaker 2: minutes you might get a minute of rest. It depends
50:00
Speaker 2: on how long the Tobata workout is. Like a twelve
50:04
Speaker 2: minute one, you would not get any rest in between.
50:06
Speaker 2: Certainly not a minute, I should say. But the point
50:09
Speaker 2: is you're getting a high intensity workout in a very
50:14
Speaker 2: short amount of time. So you're doing like a twelve
50:17
Speaker 2: to twenty minute workout and you're getting the same impact
50:23
Speaker 2: that you would have gotten from say like a thirty
50:25
Speaker 2: to forty minute workout of lower intensity, but still not
50:28
Speaker 2: low intensity, I mean moderate intensity training. This is just
50:32
Speaker 2: super duper intensity, high intensity training, and Tabata definitely established that.
50:37
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's great if you're short on time. Obviously, I
50:40
Speaker 4: think our workouts were thirty minutes, and you know, they
50:44
Speaker 4: were great.
50:44
Speaker 3: I enjoyed it. There were butt kickers, but I liked.
50:46
Speaker 2: It, yeah, I should say. Speaking of Toabada Japanese guy,
50:50
Speaker 2: you reminded me that like exercise is really really big
50:56
Speaker 2: in Japan, so much so that people have or definitely
51:00
Speaker 2: had loud speakers in their house and like in their
51:04
Speaker 2: local community or maybe even their region. Every morning they
51:07
Speaker 2: would be like, good morning, it's time to do exercises,
51:10
Speaker 2: and everybody would do the same exercises in their house
51:13
Speaker 2: to the voice over the loud speakers called radio taiso.
51:17
Speaker 3: Oh interesting. And they also did like corporate calisthenics and stuff.
51:20
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, they were just into like collective exercise for
51:24
Speaker 2: a long time.
51:25
Speaker 3: That's great.
51:27
Speaker 4: And then the last couple we'll talk about are zumba
51:30
Speaker 4: and CrossFit. Zumba very popular, still popular. Apparently was created
51:37
Speaker 4: by accident in the mid nineties by Alberto Beto Perez
51:43
Speaker 4: and he was a sixteen year old aerobics teacher in Colombia. Apparently,
51:46
Speaker 4: as the story goes, at least forgot the usual music
51:49
Speaker 4: and said, I'll just play the music that I have
51:52
Speaker 4: and it turned into sort of a fun Latin dance
51:55
Speaker 4: exercise class.
51:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just took off like a rocket. I think
52:00
Speaker 2: he was on the cover of Ink magazine once. I
52:04
Speaker 2: mean like he just like it was just crazy how
52:07
Speaker 2: how much it took off. And it's still huge. Soom
52:09
Speaker 2: was still very much popular a couple of decades later.
52:12
Speaker 2: And then CrossFit is wildly popular too, not among everybody,
52:16
Speaker 2: but the people that it's popular with. It's wildly popular,
52:20
Speaker 2: so much so that it's commonly referred to as like
52:22
Speaker 2: a cult or something like that, because people love talking
52:26
Speaker 2: about CrossFit and proselytizing for it. But the point of
52:29
Speaker 2: CrossFit is kind of like what Arthur Jones, the Nautilus creator,
52:34
Speaker 2: was talking about, where you work out until you are
52:37
Speaker 2: you like just short of injuring yourself, essentially, where you
52:40
Speaker 2: feel like you want to throw up and like you
52:42
Speaker 2: can't do anymore. And it combines weightlifting, gymnastics, a bunch
52:48
Speaker 2: of different stuff, but it's a really really intense workout
52:52
Speaker 2: that you really have to work your way up to.
52:54
Speaker 2: You shouldn't just jump into a CrossFit class. And if
52:57
Speaker 2: you go to a good CrossFit boxes what the studio
53:00
Speaker 2: are called, they're not going to just let you jump
53:02
Speaker 2: into it, right, because you can really hurt yourself.
53:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm CrossFit. Doesn't interesting you know me either.
53:09
Speaker 2: We've done it before and it's not fun.
53:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm making yoga though Emily and are doing it together.
53:14
Speaker 3: It's fun. Yeah.
53:15
Speaker 2: And if you like CrossFit, hey man, we're not yucking
53:17
Speaker 2: your young well, of course our own personal experience, so
53:20
Speaker 2: settle down.
53:21
Speaker 3: No, I don't want to work out until I throw up.
53:23
Speaker 3: That's me. Yeah, for sure, this is a good one.
53:26
Speaker 2: It was a good one. I hope we inspired you
53:29
Speaker 2: to do some exercise because it's good for you. I
53:32
Speaker 2: don't care what anybody says. It's good for you. And
53:34
Speaker 2: even if it's not good for weight loss, which we
53:36
Speaker 2: found over the years, definitely not, it's good for mental health.
53:40
Speaker 2: I think we've said plenty of times. So just that alone.
53:43
Speaker 3: Makes it worthwhile, very worthwhile.
53:46
Speaker 2: If you want to know more about exercising, then just start.
53:49
Speaker 2: It's really easy these days. And since I said that,
53:52
Speaker 2: it's time for listener.
53:53
Speaker 3: Mail, I'm going to call this coliseum follow up.
53:58
Speaker 4: Hey, guys, quick note about the how do we pronounce
54:02
Speaker 4: it hippogium or hypogem?
54:04
Speaker 3: I don't remember.
54:05
Speaker 2: I think I called it a hypogium.
54:07
Speaker 3: Hypogum, all right.
54:08
Speaker 4: Quick note about the Hypogeum and the mock naval battles
54:11
Speaker 4: that were reportedly held inside the Colosseum. As you noted,
54:14
Speaker 4: the Hypogeum was created after the Amphitheater was built. The
54:17
Speaker 4: flooding of the floor of the Colosseum only happened in
54:19
Speaker 4: the first decade of the structure and before the hypogm
54:24
Speaker 4: Hypogeum sorry was dug and created. Once the Hypogeum was constructed,
54:29
Speaker 4: it was no longer possible to flood and drain the Colosseum.
54:33
Speaker 3: That makes sense, and that is from Dave Stemble.
54:38
Speaker 2: Dave those great, to the point authoritative, like a shake
54:43
Speaker 2: from Jim Carter.
54:44
Speaker 3: That's right.
54:45
Speaker 2: If you want to get in touch with this like
54:48
Speaker 2: Dave Dave did, Dave's got a great handshake too, I'm
54:51
Speaker 2: sure you can send us an email. Send it off
54:54
Speaker 2: to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should
55:01
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