The Decade That Changed Fitness Forever (2025)

Take a moment to imagine what it was like to work out in 1972. There weren’t many gyms, and they rarely allowed women, except on “ladies’ days.” Running shoes were barely cushioned, the sports bra hadn’t been invented and yoga mats were usually just blankets.

People who exercised for fun were often seen as kooky. At the same time, heart disease had become prevalent and diabetes and other illnesses were on the rise as Americans were driving more, walking less and watching plenty of television.

But over the course of a decade, everything changed. In the years between the passing of Title IX in 1972 and the Jane Fonda Workout video in 1982, exercise evolved from a fringe pastime to something half of Americans at least claimed to do regularly.

How did culture pivot so radically? The answer lies in five trends that changed how we look, feel and move forever.

Jogging

Like running. Only slower.

Before the 1970s, few people ran for the sake of running. You either ran to train for a sport or to escape danger. The few oddballs who jogged in public often faced jeering or puzzled looks.

“Cars would go by, windows would roll down and either taunts or empty beer cans would come flying out,” said Amby Burfoot, who won the 1968 Boston Marathon and later became an editor at Runner’s World. “There was no respect.”

That had begun to change in the late 1960s, when the future Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman and cardiologist Dr. Waldo Harris published “Jogging,” which touted the health benefits of running slowly, based on a trend Mr. Bowerman had observed in New Zealand. It became a best seller and inspired legions of everyday athletes to lace up and hit the road.

In 1972, the Boston Marathon allowed female competitors for the first time and New York City hosted the first all-women’s road race in Central Park.

By 1975, as America’s fascination with psychedelic drugs was waning, joggers popularized the term “runner’s high.” And in 1978, the first sports bra, called the Jogbra, hit shelves.

Jogbra, Inc. Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, AC1315-0000026. © Smithsonian Institution

Hollywood celebrities got in on the trend, with Farrah Fawcett and Lee Majors pounding the pavement on a 1977 cover of People magazine announcing that “everybody’s doing it.”

“Media stars of every stripe are now falling for the jogging craze,” motivated by “vanity, sanity, even higher consciousness,” the magazine noted. Shirley MacLaine said she jogged to lose weight, and Tom Brokaw said, “it’s as much a spiritual and psychological help as it is a physical help.” Even President Jimmy Carter ran laps around the White House.

“Suddenly, we would go to cocktail parties,” Mr. Burfoot said, “and everyone was talking about running.”

Along the way, joggers also helped fuel the sneaker industry, as looking sporty became chic. By 1982, Nike had grown into a behemoth, with $694 million in annual sales, up from only around $2 million a decade earlier.

Jazzercise

Cardio, with a beat.

For most of the 20th century, women were discouraged from doing vigorous exercise. Sweating was considered unfeminine, and many people believed that pushing yourself too hard could make your uterus fall out, writes the historian Natalia Mehlman Petrzela in “Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession.”

But in the ’70s, as feminists urged women to embrace their physical strength and women’s magazines promoted exercise to trim your figure, more women started working out.

At the same time, Americans were also enamored with dance, packing theaters for movies like “Saturday Night Fever” and the Broadway smash “A Chorus Line.” Jazzercise — a dance-based aerobic workout class set to pop music — was created in 1969 by a professional dancer named Judi Sheppard Missett, as part of a larger national trend of aerobic dancing that took off in the ’70s.

At the time, the whole concept of aerobic exercise was still new to science and culture. For much of the 20th century, many doctors believed that strenuous exercise would more likely cause heart attacks than prevent them. But in the late ’60s, a former Air Force physician wrote a book, called “Aerobics,” arguing that strategically stressing your heart and lungs was good for you.

Before Jazzercise, most adult dance classes were for aspiring professionals like Ms. Sheppard Missett, but she persuaded women to take classes simply to become fit — to look like dancers. All jazz hands and big smiles, Ms. Sheppard Missett soon became a national personality, writing books and boogieing on the sets of morning shows.

Sonny Figueroa/The New York Times

While cynics may write off Jazzercise as corny, historians say it not only popularized group fitness, it created the blueprint for the modern workout class. Jazzercise studios were among the first fitness spaces to offer babysitting and the first in which fitness instructors wore headset microphones (after Ms. Sheppard Missett lost her voice one day).

From her home base in San Diego, Ms. Sheppard Missett grew Jazzercise into a global business by allowing her instructors — often military spouses — to open their own studios. By 1982, Jazzercise was the country’s second fastest growing franchise (just behind Domino’s Pizza). Two years later, Ms. Sheppard Missett was invited to carry the torch and perform at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

More than 55 years after it was created, Jazzercise is still taught at more than 7,200 franchises worldwide. Today, the dance workout also incorporates strength work and high intensity interval training.

Yoga

Bending and stretching — with a side of spiritual enlightenment.

Yoga wasn’t new to the American public in 1972. Devotees of the Indian spiritual practice had been trying to sell Westerners on its health and beauty benefits for decades through books and small group classes. And yet, even when the Beatles retreated to an ashram in the late ’60s seeking transcendence, most Americans still saw yoga as something for hippies and Eastern mystics.

But thanks in part to photos of the Fab Four in Nehru jackets, many Americans started getting into Indian spiritual practices — and moved from yoga as an exercise for the soul to one primarily for the body. In 1974, a Time magazine story declared yoga “as much a part of American life as organic apple pie.”

Yoga found its way into homes across Middle America thanks to an unlikely source: a low-budget PBS show called “Lilias, Yoga and You” that aired right before “Sesame Street.” The show was hosted by a Cincinnati housewife named Lilias Folan, who credited yoga with curing her depression and helping her lose weight.

Imagine a more flexible Mr. Rogers, wearing spandex instead of sweaters, speaking directly to the camera in calm, reassuring tones and checking in on viewers’ mental state like a caring Sunday school teacher.

“Hello, class. Namaste. Hello, and how are you today?” she says at the top of one 1974 episode. “You don’t necessarily have to be terribly happy even to come to class, but as long as you’re here, that’s marvelous.” The show ran on and off for more than 25 years, led to several books and demystified yoga for millions of Americans.

Sonny Figueroa/The New York Times

In 1975, a group of Northern Californians founded Yoga Journal to serve the growing community of devotees. In 1982, a British instructor brought the first contemporary yoga mats into stores. Some saw this Westernization of yoga as modernizing it; others have criticized it as cultural appropriation.

Bodybuilding

Pumping iron on beaches and in the gym.

There was a time, not long ago, when men who lifted weights for fun were seen as either thugs or narcissists. In the 1950s, some professional football and baseball coaches actually forbade their athletes from heavy lifting. And women who tried to build muscle were seen as manly or unnatural.

Enter the impish, shaggy-haired son of an Austrian police officer. In 1977, the documentary “Pumping Iron” introduced the world to Arnold Schwarzenegger, a charming, handsome bodybuilder who made huge muscles sexy.

“He really was the person who changes the paradigm,” said Jan Todd, a powerlifting champion, historian and director of kinesiology at the University of Texas at Austin. Schwarzenegger showed that you could have bulging biceps and “still be intelligent and charming.”

Soon, Schwarzenegger-like muscles began appearing in blockbuster films like “Rambo,” on TV shows like “The Incredible Hulk” and on toys like He-Man. Women began venturing into weight rooms, too, thanks to pioneering bodybuilders like Lisa Lyon and Carla Dunlap.

Sonny Figueroa/The New York Times

Having a hard body suddenly signaled that you had a strong work ethic and willpower, Dr. Petrzela writes in “Fit Nation.” The late ’70s also saw the rise of big — and for the first time, coed — gyms, which eventually became “the new singles bars” according to a 1980s Rolling Stone cover story with the headline “Looking for Mr. Goodbody.”

These gyms made lifting more accessible and aspirational, offering barbells, dumbbells and weight machines, as well as personal trainers. Before long, exercise scientists began to discover that strength training is beneficial for just about all measures of physical fitness.

Jane Fonda’s Workout

Feel the burn — in your living room.

When Jane Fonda got into the fitness business at 41, she was beloved for her films and reviled by many for her stance against the Vietnam War. But no one could have predicted that she would become best known for leg lifts and pelvic tilts — and for bringing VCRs into living rooms across America.

Exercise gurus had been around for decades, but Ms. Fonda was the first big Hollywood celebrity to create and sell a specialized fitness program. The promise was simple: Do like me and you can be like me.

“I think of women’s fitness history as B.J. and A.J. — Before Jane and After Jane,” Ken Alan, a kinesiologist who taught aerobics in the 1970s, said in a 2020 interview.

Ms. Fonda initially entered the exercise business to raise money for her husband, the progressive activist Tom Hayden, who had dreams of running for local office. In 1979, she opened her first studio, Jane Fonda’s Workout Studio in Beverly Hills. Its exercise classes — taught to Top 40 hits and sometimes led by Ms. Fonda herself — were packed with locals, tourists and the occasional A-list celebrity. Her signature class was a cardio and resistance routine set to the Jacksons or REO Speedwagon that worked all the major muscle groups.

The studio’s success soon led to “Jane Fonda’s Workout Book” in 1981, which sold two million hardcover copies, hit the top of the New York Times best-seller list and prompted the biggest royalty check Simon & Schuster had ever signed.

Thanks largely to Ms. Fonda’s influence, America’s obsession with Lycra, leotards and getting fit transcended the gym and seeped into pop culture. That same year, Olivia Newton John released “Physical,” an ode to exercise that became the country’s number one single.

But the real revolution was still to come. In May 1982, Ms. Fonda released the “Jane Fonda Workout” on a still-niche VHS tape, featuring her signature workout routine.

In its first three years, the tape sold 850,000 copies — more than “Alien” or “Jaws” — and became the best-selling home video up to that point, despite costing $59.95 (the equivalent of $190 today).

Some credit the video with helping to launch the entire VHS industry. In 1980, about two and a half percent of households owned a VCR; by 1985, about a third did. Ms. Fonda would eventually release 22 workout videos, collectively selling more than 17 million copies.

The workout fads of the ’70s and early ’80s created a new ideal of beauty for both men and women and cemented the idea that exercise was fundamental to healthy living. Magazines, films and TV shows began featuring more muscled (though still thin) physiques. By the end of 1982, Ms. Fonda — standing on the toned shoulders of early joggers, Jazzercisers, yogis and weight lifters — had ushered in the fitness culture we know today.

More than 40 years later, when we sign up for a road race or go to a CrossFit gym, lift a kettlebell or do a downward dog, we are still sweating in the world they built.