Jane Fonda's Workout, also known as Workout Starring Jane Fonda, is a 1982 exercise video by actress Jane Fonda, based on an exercise routine developed by Leni Cazden and refined by Cazden and Fonda at Workout, their exercise studio in Beverly Hills. The video release by Karl Home Video and RCA Video Productions was aimed primarily at women as a way to exercise at home. The video was part of a series of exercise products: Jane Fonda's Workout Book was released in November 1981, and both Jane Fonda's Workout video tape and Jane Fonda's Workout Record, published as a double-LP vinyl album, appeared in late April 1982. The VHS tape became a bestseller, and Fonda released further videos throughout the 1980s and into 1995. The video also increased the sales of VCRs.
The original 1982 Jane Fonda's Workout was the first non-theatrical home video release to top sales charts. In total, Fonda sold 17 million videos in the 1982–1995 series, considered an enormous success. Fonda's accomplishment spawned imitators and sparked a boom of women's exercise classes, opening the formerly male-dominated fitness industry to women and establishing the celebrity-as-fitness-instructor model. The ballet-style leg warmers she wore increased the popularity of an ongoing fashion trend, and her encouraging shout, "Feel the burn!", became a common saying, along with the proverb "no pain, no gain."
The success of Fonda's workout series funded her political activism, which was her original goal. Profits from the Workout franchise supplied money for the political action committee (PAC) she had been running with her husband, the activist and politician Tom Hayden. Their PAC, named Campaign for Economic Democracy, promoted left-wing political issues such as women's rights and the anti-war movement. In 1984, Fonda used her Workout money to help pay for a new PAC with Barbra Streisand and ten others forming the Hollywood Women's Political Committee.
Exercise studio, book, and LP In 1978, Fonda broke an ankle bone while filming The China Syndrome, forcing a stop to her ballet exercises. She sought a new exercise regimen that would help her lose weight and stay trim without stressing her foot. She was referred to Leni Cazden, an exercise instructor in Century City who formulated a lengthy exercise sequence to burn calories. Fonda took classes from Cazden and adopted her style of exercise. Fonda later recalled that women in 1978 had few choices for exercise classes and that most gyms were designed for men. She said, "We weren't supposed to sweat or have muscles. Now, along with forty other women, I found myself moving nonstop for an hour and a half in entirely new ways." On location in Utah shooting The Electric Horseman in late 1978 and early 1979, Fonda taught her actor colleagues the exercises she had learned from Cazden, and was encouraged by the warm reception. In May 1979, she partnered with Cazden to open an exercise studio called Workout on Robertson Boulevard in Beverly Hills. The sign above the studio's door read "Jane Fonda's Workout". One week of instruction (five one-hour sessions) cost $32.50. Two to three thousand customers attended per week, likely because Fonda taught some of the early morning classes. Merv Griffin and Barbara Walters shot segments at the studio to air on their television shows. Famous customers included actresses Ali MacGraw, Tina Louise and Peggy Lipton. The new business was profitable. With the concept proved, Fonda added a second studio in Encino and a third in San Francisco. She wrote Jane Fonda's Workout Book to bring the technique to a wider audience. The book was published in November 1981 through Paramount-owned Simon & Schuster and sold 2 million copies.
In parallel with the exercise book, Fonda released the vinyl LP Jane Fonda's Workout Record through Columbia Records in April 1982, which sold steadily at $12.98. It was certified double Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America in December 1984. On the album, Fonda speaks as exercise instructor, backed by music. The double album contained songs by the Jacksons, the Brothers Johnson, Boz Scaggs, REO Speedwagon, Sylvester, Quincy Jones and others. A cassette tape version was also sold. While preparing the book and audio recording, Fonda was already considering a video.
Video Exercise industry Exercise products had already been selling briskly before Fonda entered the field. Carol Hensel released an aerobic Dancercize album in 1980, selling 500,000 LPs and starting the 1980s craze for exercise. Hensel's later Dance & Exercise videos went Platinum. Richard Simmons was already producing exercise records; his 1982 Reach LP was certified Platinum before it shipped, based on advance orders.
Video Aerobics, featuring Leslie Lilien and Julie Lavin and available on videotape in 1979, was the first in the home video category of exercise tapes. The same title appeared in 1982–83 in an updated new shoot. Erotic photographer Ron Harris produced the Aerobicise program which aired on paid cable TV, and in early 1982 he sold a novelty aerobics video tape, Aerobicise: The Beautiful Workout, featuring close-up shots of the exercising women. Harris's abstract camera work was seen as an application of "art instead of instruction", appealing to men and useless for exercise.
There are two conflicting stories about how Fonda's exercise video project was started. Stuart Karl's version is that he brought the idea to Fonda in late 1981 after the book came out in November, while Richard D. Klinger says he and Karl called Fonda in early 1981 before the book. According to Karl, he was a young entrepreneur in Southern California starting a home video publishing company called Karl Home Video. His wife, Deborah, saw Fonda's Workout book promoted in a store window, and remarked that she would rather watch Fonda teach the workout on home video. Seeing an opportunity to bring exercise tapes to the home video market, Karl contacted Fonda's husband, the activist and politician Tom Hayden, to propose the idea as a source of campaign funding. Hayden put Karl in touch with Fonda, but she initially declined; the home video market was new and unfamiliar to her – she did not know a single person who owned a videocassette recorder (VCR). Karl persisted, and Fonda was persuaded by the possibility of extra money for her Campaign for Economic Democracy (CED), a political action committee founded by Hayden and Fonda in 1976 to promote liberal and progressive issues. Karl teamed with RCA Video Productions on the project. Fonda signed with Karl and RCA in early 1982.
According to Richard D. Klinger, an executive in RCA Records' SelectaVision video group, Karl and Klinger contacted Fonda about shooting a video of her Beverly Hills exercise routine in early 1981. At the time, she was still creating Jane Fonda's Workout Book, and she said she should first present the video idea to her book publisher, Simon & Schuster. David Obst at Simon & Schuster was keen on the proposal, but it was rejected by their affiliate Paramount Home Video. Fonda returned to Klinger and Karl who then entered into a joint production deal in which RCA would make the video discs while Karl would make the video tapes. Klinger was named West Coast director of RCA Video in January 1982. Karl Home Video and RCA Video Productions began shooting Fonda's video in early 1982. Simon & Schuster later regretted their decision, and by 1985 they were shopping for video projects. Paramount head Barry Diller said in August 1983 that Paramount ignored obtaining publishing rights to business opportunities such as the Fonda workout video because Paramount executives were not familiar with the process. After this prominent failure, Diller said Paramount vigorously pursued the rights to related business ideas.
Fonda's Workout With a budget of $50,000, $75,000, or $100,000, Fonda started shooting the video with her friend, director Sid Galanty, a fellow Democrat known for making political advertisements for television. Fonda suggested that she act out a scripted role but Galanty convinced her to ad-lib and be herself. Galanty proposed shooting outdoors but Fonda insisted on a sprung floor suitable for dancers. Fonda's Beverly Hills studio proved to be incompatible because the mirrored walls reflected lights and cameras. Instead, Galanty built a theatrical set for the video, and the production crew worked out the many technical problems. Filming with music was impractical because the recording of Fonda's voice needed to be as pure as possible, so only the beats, the lowest frequencies of the music were amplified, to be filtered out in the editing. Fonda was unable to simultaneously talk to the viewer and count through her movements, so she took timing cues from hand gestures given by assistants stationed at the camera. Behind Fonda and also barefoot, a group of seven instructors and students from her exercise studios took part in the routine; they, too, watched the timing cues. Every exercise sequence was filmed in one long take, and if Fonda or Galanty saw a problem in playback, they filmed the whole sequence over again, which was physically demanding. Principal photography was done in three days, and editing was finished by mid-March.
The Workout video was released on April 24, 1982, at the price of $59.95 for the video tape, . Karl Home Video released the video tape, and three months later RCA Video Productions issued the workout on Capacitance Electronic Disc (CED), a vinyl video format, selling for $24.98; less than half the cost of the tape. Galanty was listed as producer. Joe Chemay and John Hobbs composed Fonda's original theme music for the video; the two had worked together on Chemay's 1981 R&B-pop album The Riper the Finer. The RCA SelectaVision version of the video offered two audio channels, one with Fonda's verbal instruction, and the other with monaural music. The consumer would normally listen to both at once, but after they had memorized the routine, they could listen to the music by itself. Fonda's Workout appeared on the video sales chart of Billboard magazine on May 22, 1982, entering at number 23. The video rose up the chart to the number 4 position on June 19, and from that point, stayed at number 4 and above for three years. During 1982–1985, the video topped the chart for a total of forty-one weeks, dipping to number 2 for seventy-five weeks. At that time, no other video came close to this level of sales performance. Workout was the first non-theatrical home video release to top sales charts.
Fonda herself prevented the Workout video from racking up better chart statistics, as she was competing against it through the home video release of her film On Golden Pond (1981) which was number 1 for fifteen weeks in 1982. Three years later, Fonda charted with the home video release of We Are the World: The Video Event which she narrated. We Are the World hit number 1 in August 1985, edging the Workout video down to number 2. Many of Fonda's later videos in the workout series also charted: in February 1985, three at once were in the Top Ten of Billboard chart. Billboard magazine featured Fonda on the cover at the end of August 1985, describing her "video victory" and carrying articles about the actress, the exercise series, and the surprising sales juggernaut. Many buyers of the exercise video also required a playback device, boosting sales of VCRs. These new VCRs contributed to a general surge in home video popularity during the 1980s, extending far beyond Fonda's Workout. By 1985, about one-third of American households owned a VCR, up from 2.5 percent in 1980.