By David Blackburn, Messenger-Inquirer, Owensboro, Ky.
Feb. 17–Aerobics was born in 1968 but grew up in the winter of 1981-82.
America wanted the infant MTV when it was still showing music videos like the one with “Grease” good girl Olivia Newton-John in a gym purring “Let’s Get Physical.”
The song, No. 1 from November 1981 to January 1982, and video didn’t just make headbands, tights and leg warmers fashionable.
They and the 1982 release of Jane Fonda’s workout tape created an aerobics explosion.
Twenty-five years later, group cardiovascular exercise has evolved beyond the term “aerobics,” a type of music, even the intent.
There are water and dance aerobics; martial arts-based exercises; and trunk muscles-centered yoga and Pilates classes.
They are done to jazz, techno, hip-hop, salsa and myriad combinations of those and other types of music.
What they have in common is interval training — combining heart-pumping, heavy-breathing movement with muscle-shaping strength training.
Doctors, sports therapists and physiologists say raising and lowering the heart rate strengthens and conditions heart muscles, said longtime fitness instructor Nancy Mollett.
“I think through studies … they have determined interval training is the best training for the heart,” said Mollett, 53, finance director at the Owensboro Family YMCA.
Mollett started teaching aerobics in 1988 but first took an aerobics class in 1985 while trying to lose the weight gained from having her second child.
She loved the classes but “it was just grueling,” Mollett said.
Classes followed Jane Fonda’s up-tempo, “no-pain, no-gain” mantra, got the heart rate way up there and left it there while trying to firm up tummies, thighs, rear ends and arms.
“Women wanted more than just weights. They wanted to get up and move around,” said Jan Young, Mollett’s mentor. Young is a longtime instructor and is considered the local aerobics guru.
Local instructors weren’t trained or certified, and the dancelike moves were rigid and tough to learn, said Young, 51, then Owensboro Catholic High School’s dance team choreographer.
“It was not about form,” the Apollo High School guidance counselor said. “It was more about being creative and sweating and pushing them to the limit.”
It was also about a look that included headband, brightly colored tights and leg warmers.
“The outfit was the thing,” Young said, laughing.
What aerobics was NOT about back then was comfort.
The high-impact workouts were sometimes done on unforgiving hardwood, tile or carpet-covered concrete floors that left exercisers sore.
Jane Noble, 65, of Halifax Drive, a former five-pack-a-day smoker, started taking aerobics after a 1984 throat cancer scare. She quit after two years because of knee and hip pain.
Patsy Shelton, 58, of Fern Hill Drive, also a former smoker, and Noble found they preferred the lower-impact classes.
“It wasn’t as hard on me. It seemed like it was easier on my body,” Shelton said after they finished Young’s recent Saturday morning classes.
“You could target your muscles,” Noble said.
Both women said they have learned about the different muscle groups and enjoy the variety of the workouts.
Back in the day, they said, routines were almost always the same, and each instructor had favorite areas of the body they liked to work on.
From the time the music begins, Jan Young’s feet never stop bouncing on the wood floor of the aerobics room during her aerobics class at the Owensboro Medical Health System HealthPark.
Now, it changes up and they have someone to teach them the proper techniques, which Young emphasizes frequently.
“You know what her nickname is?” Noble said, sweating through a set of partial squats with dumbbells. ” ‘G.I. Jane.’ She’s like a drill sergeant.”
“Technique is everything,” said Young, who walks through class adjusting students’ forms. An instructor’s role “is not to go into a class to stay fit. We’re supposed to be professionals.”
Young even teaches the proper way to walk — head up, arms in a controlled swing at 90-degree angles and hands unclenched.
Young also teaches not to stomp the boxes during step aerobics, which became popular in the mid-1980s and attracted male students when aerobics no longer looked like dancing, she said.
“I tell them, ‘We are not cows; we are women,’ ” she said.
Instructors also should encourage students to mix up their workouts, adding bicycling or running, Mollett said.
“I always encourage people, and still do, to cross train so they don’t burn out,” said Mollett, who augments her own workouts with light running.
Noble, who sometimes takes water aerobics, hates working out on machines.
Aerobics “is all I’ve ever done,” she said. “I need the commitment and motivation from other people. It makes it fun.”
“There is a very strong social aspect to it,” said Jaime Ford, YMCA fitness director who schedules its many types of group exercise programs.
“I think it’s popular because you always have an instructor. You’ve got that accountability,” Ford said. “Somebody’s going to miss you if you’re not there.”
There also are strong bonds between students and with instructors, said Ford, who once taught a workout class for mothers and infants.
“They are very loyal to their instructors,” Ford said. “It’s kind of like your hairdresser. You go with what works.”
For Noble and Shelton, that has meant aerobics and several of its evolutions.
“It helps me forget about work. I forget about all I do at the office,” said Noble, who owns a travel agency.
Shelton, who remembers doing step aerobics on handmade wooden boxes instead of molded plastic shells, takes classes even while on vacation.
“I feel good when I leave. I feel like I’ve done something,” Shelton said.
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Copyright (c) 2007, Messenger-Inquirer, Owensboro, Ky.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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