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Fitness
Exercise Scientist Critiques 1980s Fitness Trends | BOXROX
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The 1980s were an era of groundbreaking fitness enthusiasm. People were ecstatic about new ways to get in shape, but not every trend stood the test of time. From flashy gym commercials to peculiar home workout equipment, the decade brought with it an abundance of both beneficial and questionable fitness practices. Dr. Mike Israetel, an exercise scientist and longtime professor, reminisces about the highs and lows of 1980s fitness with a humorous, critical eye. Whether discussing questionable fitness tech or odd spa routines, his insights reveal how far fitness has come and what can be learned from this unforgettable period.
Dr Mike Israetel, PhD in Sport Physiology and co-founder of Renaissance Periodization, is a well-respected professor in the bodybuilding community. He doesn’t only talk about workouts and fitness tips, he often dives deep into health and nutrition.
The fitness landscape of the 80s was littered with peculiar commercials promoting high-end gym facilities. These ads often made working out seem like the next frontier, as if stepping into a futuristic spaceship rather than a gym. The trend of circuit training in gyms was sold as revolutionary, though today it’s a staple in most fitness centers. Not to mention the emergence of hybrid equipment, designed to deliver full-body workouts but often causing more harm than good. While some of the training concepts were on point, others, as Dr. Mike points out, were downright risky and gimmicky.
In this article, we delve into the highs and lows of 1980s fitness trends, through the lens of modern exercise science. We critique not only the effectiveness of the workouts but also their lasting impact on fitness culture today. Through this analysis, we hope to understand which aspects of 80s fitness should remain in the past and which are still relevant today.
Related: The Biggest Mistakes Made By Personal Trainers
The 1980s Fitness Boom: A Cultural Phenomenon
Fitness in the 1980s was an exciting new frontier for many. Exercise and gym memberships became widely popular, largely due to a combination of media influence and the emergence of corporate fitness centres. High-tech gyms were marketed as must-have memberships, and fitness became synonymous with being fashionable and trendy.
Commercials for gyms like the “Bally Matrix Fitness Center” sold the idea of sleek, futuristic workouts with promises of sculpting perfect bodies. These gyms had everything from running tracks to swimming pools, which for the time, seemed cutting-edge. However, as Dr. Mike humorously points out, these advertisements often took themselves a little too seriously, presenting suburban gym facilities as high-tech health clubs straight out of a science fiction movie. What was particularly interesting about these commercials was their heavy focus on serious weightlifting alongside cardiovascular training—something that remains a staple in modern fitness programs.
Source: Max Vakhtbovych on Pexels
The Rise of Home Workout Equipment: Innovation or Hazard?
With the surge in fitness enthusiasm, home workout equipment started to explode in popularity. This is where things started to take a dangerous turn. Many people were ill-equipped to use these new devices correctly, leading to a spike in workout-related injuries. Dr. Mike explains that while lifting weights can be incredibly beneficial for health and longevity, improper use of exercise equipment, especially at home, can be deadly. The lack of instruction and improper set-up of home gyms often resulted in severe injuries—some fatal.
The Only 8 Bodyweight Exercises You Need to Build Muscle Fast
As he mentions, one of the most common causes of death related to lifting involved home bench presses where individuals would staple their necks with the barbell. With no spotter or safety mechanism in place, tragedies ensued. Despite the perceived convenience of home workouts, without proper safety precautions and guidance, home equipment posed significant risks.
The Jane Fonda Influence: A Step in the Right Direction?
No discussion of 80s fitness is complete without mentioning Jane Fonda and her revolutionary home workout videos. Fonda’s workout tapes became cultural icons, and her emphasis on aerobic fitness was a major influence on the exercise trends of the time. She encouraged cardiovascular exercise and body sculpting, two aspects of fitness that remain important today.
While Dr. Mike acknowledges the value of Fonda’s focus on technique, such as proper form during dumbbell exercises, he also critiques the light weights and repetitive movements as insufficient for anyone serious about building strength. The aerobic fitness revolution spearheaded by Fonda encouraged millions to work out, but as Dr. Mike suggests, the workout routines were often more geared toward getting people off the couch rather than building a truly functional and strong physique.
When to Switch Exercises for Maximum Muscle Growth
Exercise Machines and Gadgets: Where Did They Go Wrong?
A peculiar aspect of 1980s fitness was the prevalence of specialized machines that promised to target specific muscle groups. One of the most common sights in 80s gyms was the leg extension machine. While such machines were popular, they often focused on isolating muscles at the expense of overall functional movement. Dr. Mike advocates for compound exercises that engage multiple muscle groups simultaneously, such as squats or deadlifts, over single-joint isolation exercises.
By contrast, the technology used in fitness equipment back then was often gimmicky, trying to sell a “quick fix” rather than a sustainable fitness program. For example, the Smith machine, which was touted as a safer option for squats and bench presses, often created more problems than it solved. As Dr. Mike explains, the Smith machine locks you into a single plane of motion, which can lead to poor movement patterns and injuries if not used properly.
Dangerous Spa Routines: More Than Just Relaxation
The wellness spa trend of the 1980s took fitness to new levels of exclusivity and expense. Some spas charged exorbitant fees for clients to be subjected to extreme diets and caloric restrictions that would now be considered unethical and even dangerous. One notable example highlighted by Dr. Mike is the infamous “Golden Door” spa, where guests were fed a meager 700 calories per day—barely enough to sustain basic bodily functions, let alone fuel an active lifestyle.
The extreme diets and routines offered by these high-end spas were less about health and more about catering to an aesthetic ideal. Dr. Mike humorously compares the $10,000 spa fees (adjusted for inflation) to modern-day cults, where participants were stripped of their individuality and forced into restrictive regimes under the guise of achieving inner tranquility.
Exercise Scientist Critiques 1980s Fitness Trends
Fitness in the 2020s: What Have We Learned?
The 1980s may have been an exciting time for fitness enthusiasts, but it also serves as a reminder of the importance of balance, science, and safety in exercise. Today, the lessons learned from the excesses and errors of 80s fitness have shaped more effective, sustainable approaches to working out. Compound movements, proper technique, and a focus on overall functional fitness have become the gold standards of training.
While the flashy outfits and enthusiasm for exercise should be celebrated, the poorly constructed machines, dangerous fad diets, and unsafe home equipment are better left in the past. Dr. Mike’s humorous yet insightful critique serves as a reminder that fitness is a lifelong journey, and the best practices are rooted in science, safety, and sustainability.
Key Takeaways
Key Aspect | 80s Fitness Trend | Modern Perspective |
---|---|---|
Gym Commercials | Serious, futuristic tone | Lighthearted, realistic fitness marketing |
Home Workout Equipment | High injury risk due to improper use | Safer, well-designed equipment with better guidance |
Jane Fonda’s Workouts | Focus on aerobic fitness, light weights | Cardiovascular fitness still important, but strength training necessary |
Exercise Machines | Isolated muscle movements | Preference for compound exercises, functional fitness |
Spa Diets | Extremely low-calorie, restrictive diets | Balanced nutrition focused on health and performance |
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Fitness
How Kamala Harris Trains To Run For President: The Workouts She Does ‘Every Day’
![How Kamala Harris Trains To Run For President: The Workouts She Does ‘Every Day’ How Kamala Harris Trains To Run For President: The Workouts She Does ‘Every Day’](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/vice-president-kamala-harris-speaks-at-a-moderated-news-photo-1721659179.jpg?crop=1.00xw:0.738xh;0,0.0542xh&resize=1200:*)
This week, Kamala Harris is hitting Chicago for the Democratic National Convention, along with lots of party leaders and her vice presidential pick Tim Walz. But the 59-year-old has made it clear that she’ll be sure to squeeze in a workout or two along the way.
Over the years, the California native has made it clear that staying healthy is a priority for her. So, what does Harris do for wellness? Here’s everything she’s publicly shared about her routine.
Kamala Harris works out every single day.
Exercise is super important to Harris—so she’ll work up a sweat, even when she’s wiped.
“I work out every morning, regardless of how much sleep I’ve had,” she told former President Barack Obama in a 2020 interview. “It’s just the best way to start the day.”
But Harris’ workouts aren’t only for her physical health—she does them to focus up, too. “It’s about your mind,” she told Elle in 2015. “It gets your blood flowing. It gets your adrenaline flowing.”
“I fight for [time for myself],” she continued. “You got to take care of yourself. If I exercise or I eat proper foods, am I indulging myself? That’s called feeding your body… that is not about image or luxury.”
She starts her day off with fiber.
Harris tends to eat breakfast after she works out. “I usually stand at my kitchen counter eating some kind of Raisin Bran in almond milk while I look at my schedule for the day,” she told The Cut in 2018. “It’s the generic Raisin Bran that I get from the grocery store—I try to not have a lot of sugar in it.”
The VP also said that she likes to have tea with honey and lemon, too. “Then, I’m out the door,” she added.
She’s passionate about cooking.
While Harris has a quick breakfast, she’s much more interested in cooking something complex for lunch and dinner. In fact, she’s so passionate about it that she once had a cooking series on her YouTube channel called Cooking With Kamala, where she whipped up bacon-fried apples, masala dosa with Mindy Kaling, and more.
“My mother said to me, ‘Honey, you like to eat good food. You better learn how to cook,’” she recalled in one episode.
Cooking makes Harris feel “normal,” she told The Cut. “Everything else can be crazy, I can be on six planes in one week, and what makes me feel normal is making Sunday-night family dinner,” she said. “If I’m cooking, I feel like I’m in control of my life.”
Harris has also been known to buy her produce from local farmers’ markets, having frequently been spotted at the DuPont Circle one in Washington, D.C.
She’s a fan of Soul Cycle on the weekends.
Harris seems to focus on low-impact workouts. Each morning, she usually will do 30 minutes on the elliptical or SoulCycle, telling The Cut, “sometimes I swim if it’s not going to create an issue with my hair.”
On the weekend, she likes to do Soul Survivor, which is a longer and more intense SoulCycle class. Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff has shared that the couple also like taking six- or seven-mile walks together, per Men’s Health.
She used homemade weights during the pandemic.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when people were snapping up home exercise equipment, Harris got creative with her sweat sessions. “I had liter water bottles that I filled, of course, with water to use them as hand weights,” she told Obama during their 2020 interview.
Emhoff also got ahold of a stationary bike that he put together for her, he told Men’s Health in 2020. “She’d be watching the news, getting ready for her day, lifting a pair of weights made of water bottles and biking on a bike I put together,” he said.
Harris and Doug Emhoff work out together.
Harris is workouts buddies with Emhoff. “I don’t know if we talked about that on our first date, but if came up when we started spending time together, I realized I had to up my game,” Emhoff told Men’s Health. “It’s not like I can sit around and eat a bowl of cereal while she works out.”
Emhoff said his wife inspired him to work out more. “Every morning [she] works out, by hook or by crook,” he continued. “It got me into the same groove she’s in. I’m in way better shape now than I was 10 years ago.”
The couple were even spotted in 2021 running up and down the steps of the Lincoln Memorial together.
Korin Miller is a freelance writer specializing in general wellness, sexual health and relationships, and lifestyle trends, with work appearing in Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Self, Glamour, and more. She has a master’s degree from American University, lives by the beach, and hopes to own a teacup pig and taco truck one day.
Fitness
The best fitness trackers in 2024 to help you stay active
![The best fitness trackers in 2024 to help you stay active The best fitness trackers in 2024 to help you stay active](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/recommended/2024/08/22/TELEMMGLPICT000390802901_17243386766200-xlarge_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.jpeg?imwidth=1200)
- Battery life up to 7 days, charge time 20-80 minutes
- Water resistant to 100 metres
- GPS
- Tracks sleep quality, blood oxygen (SpO2), heart rate, HRV, activity levels, training frequency, body temperature, menstrual cycle.
I’m constantly testing smartwatches, but I’ve never experienced such intense curiosity as when I’m wearing an Oura Ring. “Is that one of those rings that tracks everything?” people ask. I can’t blame them. How exactly can something so small offer all the same tracking features as a smartwatch?
When you order an Oura Ring online from the US (the only way to get it), you get to choose your ring’s design, finish, and size. I opted for the ‘horizon’ design and selected the silver finish. If you opt for a ‘stealth’, ‘gold’ or ‘rose gold’ finish, the ring is considerably more expensive ($349 for silver versus $549 for rose gold).
The most crucial part, however, is determining the right size for your finger. Oura offer a free sizing kit, which arrived within days of ordering. This kit contained eight plastic rings in different sizes, allowing me to find the perfect fit. Oura recommends that you test the plastic sample rings on your index finger for 24 hours to ensure it’s comfortable when you sleep. If you don’t fancy wearing on your index finger, they say the middle and ring fingers are good alternatives.
Once I found the perfect size, I downloaded the Oura app on my phone and delved into its world of tracking – and I was impressed. Not only does it keep tabs on basic metrics like heart rate and activity levels; it also digs deep into some pretty vital aspects of health that often go unnoticed. Plus, it boasts remarkable battery life, usually lasting between four to seven days on a single charge and super quick charging times – usually taking between 20-80 minutes.
The sleep tracking feature is a game-changer. The Oura ring assigns a ‘Sleep Score’ (ranging from 1 to 100), that evaluates the quality of your sleep based on various factors including sleep stages (such as how much time you spent in REM vs. deep or light sleep), body temperature and heart rate. It’s amazing to see how a glass of wine or heading to bed just an hour later than usual can mess with your sleep. I particularly liked how the Oura ring offers tips on how to improve your sleep too – with the app pinging notifications on when it’s time to start winding down for bed.
Lots of watches – including Garmin, Fitbit and Apple – offer menstrual cycle tracking for women, but I was impressed with the accuracy the Oura ring offered. For example, on day 22 of my cycle, the Oura app told me that while my ‘readiness level’ was good, my body temperature was slightly elevated – but this may just reflect normal temperature fluctuation across the menstrual cycle. I’ve found this feature really useful – it’s definitely helped me to better understand my body during different phases of my cycle.
The Oura ring also provides a ‘Readiness Score’, which looks at things like temperature and heart rate variability, to assess how ready you are for the day ahead. It can detect early signs of illness and help you prioritise rest and recovery. It’s like having a personal sleep doctor, PT and GP on your finger, nudging you to make smarter choices.
My only gripe? I found the metal can easily get scratched and can scratch other jewellery. Oura does recommend taking the ring off when strength training or lifting heavy weights, but isn’t the point of the ring to wear it 24/7 so it gets a complete overview of how you exercise?
Overall though, if you’re looking for a fitness tracker that seamlessly fits into your everyday wardrobe, the Oura Ring has accurate tracking capabilities, plus unique features like menstrual cycle tracking. It is expensive though, and for some – especially those training for specific goals like a marathon – you may prefer to have all your data visible on your wrist, rather than depend on your phone.
Fitness
Fitness: The 10-20-30 routine packs the same punch as longer workouts
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Adding a couple of these workouts to your regular workout routine will offer variety and a noticeable boost in fitness and performance.
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If your ideal workout is short and sweet, give the 10-20-30 routine a try. This unique form of interval training features 30 seconds at an easy pace, 20 seconds at a moderate pace and 10 seconds all out. Repeat each one-minute bout five times and each five-minute block two to four times, resting for one to four minutes between each block. Total time exercising is 10 to 20 minutes depending on how many times the five-minute block is repeated.
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What kind of results can you expect from 20 minutes spent alternating between three different exercise intensities? When it comes to health and fitness benefits, the 10-20-30 workout not only rivals most steady-state workouts, it does it in less time, according to a review in the European Journal of Sports Science.
“The 10-20-30 training is a new training modality, which has greater benefits than aerobic moderate-intensity training and is a more time-efficient way to improve performance and health even in trained people,” said the authors of the review, who hail from the Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports at the University of Copenhagen.
How does a 20-minute workout pack the same punch as one that is two or three times longer? The difference probably lies in the repeated bursts of high-intensity exercise. Pushing your physical limits to their max, even if it’s for seconds rather than minutes, raises the heart rate into a zone rarely reached during steady-state workouts.
How hard do you need to work? One of the first studies of the 10-20-30 workout was done with runners who boosted their heart rate to 90 per cent of their max effort during the 10-second sprints. Technically, that works out to 50 seconds at peak intensity over the course of each five-minute block. In practice, however, the heart stays elevated as the exerciser transitions to the easy interval, which results in the heart working in overdrive for about two minutes of each five-minute block. That’s enough effort to reap all the health and fitness benefits of a moderate intensity workout in half the time.
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That original study featured 12 male and six female runners 22-44 years of age who were running about 30 kilometres a week. At the request of the researchers, they gave up their regular routine for a 10-20-30 workout performed three times a week. Starting with three five-minute blocks for the first four weeks, an additional five-minute block was added for the final four weeks of the study. After eight weeks, the runners had improved their aerobic fitness (VO2 max) by four per cent despite cutting their training in half (13 km in the first weeks and 16 km in the final weeks). Similar results were recorded in a group of older runners (mean age of 49) and in cyclists who boosted their VO2 max by eight per cent and performance by 17 per cent after six weeks of doing 10-20-30 workouts.
It’s not just athletic performance that improved. Some studies reported a drop in blood pressure and body fat and a gain of muscle mass. Those results weren’t just in healthy exercisers. Type 2 diabetics, hypertensive patients and asthma sufferers also gained health and fitness benefits from 10-20-30 workouts.
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If all this seems too good to be true, keep in mind that to achieve the results reported in the studies you need to spend 10 seconds of every minute at peak effort. Participants in most of the studies reached 90 per cent of their maximum heart rate (220 beats per minute minus your age) during that brief but intense burst of activity. There is some data suggesting that the results are similar at 80 per cent of max heart rate, but that doesn’t change the fact that you need to spend 10 seconds giving it all if you’ve got if you want to make the 10-20-30 workout effective.
If that level of intensity is intimidating, keep in mind that adherence among study subjects was high, with about 80 per cent sticking with the program. That’s impressive considering that many of the participants were considered “untrained.” Just make sure your easy is easy and your moderate intensity is manageable. It also helps to download an interval app to your phone and set it up to chime at the end of each bout of intensity so you don’t have to keep looking at your phone during the workout.
If you’re not confident in your ability to repeat the five-minute blocks four times, start with two and work your way up to four. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that if four five-minute blocks works, five or six will offer even more impressive results. The more fatigued you get the less likely you will be able to reproduce peak intensity, which dilutes the effectiveness of the workout making your extra efforts in vain. Plus, one of the best features of interval training is its efficiency. Big results in less time is one of the most convincing reasons to give a 10-20-30 workout a try.
That’s not to say that all traditional steady state workouts need to be replaced by interval training. But adding a couple of 10-20-30 workouts to your regular workout routine will offer variety and a noticeable boost in fitness and performance. Not a bad return for a 20-minute sweat.
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