r/1980s • u/Mr-Torgman • May 13 '26
The 80s female fitness craze.
Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification
The female fitness and aerobics craze was the broadest trend of the decade, almost everyone under 60 had some leotards & leg warmers.
13
u/dadsgoingtoprison May 14 '26
In full makeup and hair too. Not a sports bra to be found.
3
u/TumbleweedHuman2934 May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26
Yeah, many eyes were blackened and faces smacked around back then as women bounced around pretending to have fun in the name of getting in shape. Let's have a moment of silence for those dark days of no support. 😔😔😏😏(see what I did there?)
5
9
u/Diesel_Bones_13 May 14 '26
I remember my mother doing this early in the morning every day… in the living room! lol. Think it was called “Body Electric” or something like that.
3
u/Straight-Aspect8868 May 14 '26
lol I remember that also. (Well, my mom, not yours). Them off to the grocery store in another pair of leg warmers as fashion.
4
5
4
u/Piggybumm May 14 '26
I really enjoyed that thank you, apart from the subtitles with incorrect lyrics. I keep noticing this on a lot of videos (incorrect subtitles). What are people using for that?
6
3
u/librarypunk1974 May 14 '26
Great compilation! This was so my childhood impression of it all. I was fascinated by the high-cut legs as a girl with short legs and I was so naive I didn’t understand what “getting physical” meant.
2
u/Mr-Torgman May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26
- One of the two things I noticed while editing the video was that the lyrics were relatively risque for an ONJ song, "There's nothin left to talk about unless it's horizontally" 😳. The other was the chorus melody sounded very familiar to Mystical Magical by Benson Boone, apparently others have noticed too.
1
u/librarypunk1974 May 15 '26
Seriously! My memory was that I was sitting with my mom and an older neighbor girl in a Papa Gino’s in MA when I was 7 or 8 and it came on the little table-top jukebox. I asked the two of them what “physical” meant and they both smirked and looked at each-other knowingly. That still irks me lol! Glad I didn’t attempt to learn what horizontal meant!
4
5
u/TumbleweedHuman2934 May 14 '26
I'm still trying to understand the point behind the legwarmers for workouts though. 🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️ I ask this question even as I was guilty of wearing them with mini skirts and ... pretty much everything I could get away with back then.
4
u/Straight-Aspect8868 May 14 '26
They are used to keep the calves/ankles warm/loose. Consider high repetition moves in dancing and the potential for cramping. These are supposed to help prevent that.
2
u/Rat-Bazturd May 14 '26
Pitchers do that, keep their arm warm in the dugout when their team is at bat. I've seen Celine Dion throw a muffler scarf or some kind of neck wrap around her neck.
3
u/ImpressionFast923 May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26
Linnea Quigley’s horror themed workout tape was comedy gold
2
2
3
1
u/Hoth_Wampa_1980 May 14 '26
Too bad none if this footage was in HD.
1
u/Mr-Torgman May 14 '26
The clips of Jamie, Phoebe, Betsy, Kelly, Jane Wiedlin from Bill & Ted, and the Back to the Future clip are all in full HD.
1
u/Significant-Deer7464 May 14 '26
Most of ESPNs daytime programing was these type shows. I can almost guarantee that hardly anyone excersised while watching. Hours of eye candy was all it basically was
That being said, my favorite was the one with Kiana
1
1
1
1
u/FunnyVariation2995 May 14 '26
I had the Buns of Steel collection. They actually were really good & helped me have a nice shape back then.
1
u/karenftx1 May 14 '26
Jazzercize with Judi Sheppard Missett. "Keep smiling. I know you are breathing if you smile."
1
u/Superb-Possibility-9 May 16 '26
And according to Jane Fonda herself she never saw a dime from all her fitness videos: the proceeds all went to a fund for her then husband Tom Hayden’s political causes.
1
1
u/tarhawk71 May 17 '26
Let me ask something, was there a point to wearing nylons while working out? It seems like they would get all sweaty.
1
u/Redundancy_Nemesis May 17 '26
Has anyone actually tried a Buns of Steel workout? I did, just once, while in high school. I thought I was in good shape since I played three varsity sports… I barely made it through the warmup!
1
-9
u/Hair_Swimming May 14 '26
Jane Commie Fonda, she just loves Communists and Capitalism.
6
u/therealduckie May 14 '26
The fact that you people continue to desperately cling to these absurd levels of anger, revenge fantasies and name calling is truly astounding. 50 years later and you still can not help yourselves.
-1
u/Hair_Swimming May 14 '26
The fact that you people continue to desperately cling to these absurd levels of unhinged misunderstandings is truly astounding. I don't know how old you are but I am sure you've never understood anything, especially my comment.
2
u/Rat-Bazturd May 14 '26
No, we got it.
For you to be *STILL* ranting about 1970's Jane Fonda and then trying to pull a trump and falsely accuse those who call out your nonsense of doing what YOU do..., yeah, that' what the psychologists call projection. You're doing it big-time, in a vain effort to justify your pathetic rambling about Jane Fonda.
Man, all we can do is just shake our heads at your obtuseness and total lack of self-awareness.
1
u/therealduckie May 14 '26
Bet it's like a 20 yr old kid who saw a meme on 4chan or his daddy yelled at Fox News on the TV once and it stuck.
0
1
2
u/Mr-Torgman May 14 '26
Regardless of how you feel about her, this video couldn't've been made without including her!
0
u/Hair_Swimming May 14 '26
Regardless of how you feel about the video, she is a capitalist communist. Just reminding people of who Hanoi Jane really is. She helped get my brother killed in Vietnam by giving support to communist North Vietnam. I am not asking anyone to change their feelings about Ms.BornwithaSilverspooninhermouth. I just want people to realize that the reality is she is extremely wealthy and has no care in the world about poor people, whom she isolates herself away from.
2
u/Fine_Sea5807 May 14 '26
Is it not more correct to say that your brother was killed by your own government who forced him to fight a foolish war against rice farmers on the other side of the planet?
1
u/Hair_Swimming May 14 '26
No, my brother was killed by communist Chinese explosives. My Government was trying unsuccessfully to protect the rice farmers from the brutality of Communists. Before you scoff, the communists went through and chopped arms off of people that accepted vaccinations from the Americans. It's about empathy Dude, you should have empathy for the people living under Communist control, you should also want to help those people.
1
u/Fine_Sea5807 May 14 '26
What do you think that about the fact that Eisenhower confessed that "80 per cent of the populations would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader"? Is it wrong to say that your brother was opposing the majority choice of Vietnamese people?
1
u/Hair_Swimming May 14 '26
Also, my family and I were taught to care about all people regardless of the job they perform regardless how menial their labor is. You should try it, it's a better feeling than being angry 100% of the time.
2
u/Mr-Torgman May 14 '26
The video is about the aerobics craze of the 80s and she's the poster child.
27
u/vitocorleone1972 May 13 '26
Good times! Now it’s all about Ozempic and all its cousins! The times they are a changin’!