I Tried Jane Fonda’s Legendary Workout

I wouldn’t say that I’m unfit. I exercise regularly, usually in the form of yoga and barre classes. I’m surprisingly not terrible at gym stuff, although I don’t like being in a crowded space while I do it. Lately, I’ve found myself drawn to forms of movement that allow me to shut out all other thoughts (especially ones of crushing anxiety about the state of the world) and focus solely on doing the task at hand. That includes long walks where I get to indulge in a podcast, hot sculpt yoga and Pilates classes, and anything that demands me to balance and not fall over.

Exercising wasn’t always something I took a lot of pleasure in. I hated PE at school and have some health issues related to my feet that made even walking a painful nightmare for too long. Finding a form of movement I both enjoy and feel nourished by was a game-changer. It turns out that the whole endorphins thing is totally true. Who knew?! I’m almost mad about it. I’m less hesitant now than I used to be about trying out new exercises, mostly because I’ve gotten over that initial wave of shame that convinces me I’ll irrevocably suck and people will mock me for it. Still, when I decided to challenge myself to try out one of the most iconic and influential workout videos ever created, I was comforted by the knowledge that nobody would see me trying to outdo Jane Fonda. Reader, I didn’t even come close!

(Image via Amazon.)

As far as I’m concerned, Jane Fonda is one of the true icons of the past 60 years and one of my all-time favourite celebrities. The endless evolutions of her storied career are the stuff of legend: from nepo baby to cute girl sex symbol to radical politico to Most Hated Woman in America to box office icon to fitness guru to trophy wife to elder stateswoman. And through it all, she’s remained consistent in her support of left-wing causes, causing good trouble wherever she goes. She’s still getting arrested for protesting governmental inaction on the climate crisis. Truly, there’s nobody else out there like her and there will never be another Jane Fonda.

Workout Jane is maybe the oddest reinvention of the bunch. Nobody imagined that Fonda would respond to Reaganism and yuppie domination by wearing Lycra and getting women to perform aerobics from their living rooms. Some saw it as her attempt at making her image more relatable to conservatives after the errors of Hanoi Jane. Personally, I don’t think that was the case. What Fonda did was create an entire industry centred on women’s oft-underserved needs.

For 20 years, Fonda struggled with an eating disorder. From her 20s to 40s, she dealt with bulimia and, as she admitted during an interview with the podcast Call Her Daddy, didn’t think she’d live past 30. She eventually moved on from the disorder in her early 40s by going, in her words, “cold turkey.” Her primary workout for the first few decades of her life was ballet, which she had studied as a child. While working on The China Syndrome, she injured her foot, and her mother recommended that she try out a new form of exercise at Body by Gilda, an exercise studio located in a Century City medical building.

Gilda Marx was a fitness instructor and businesswoman whose studio was popular with many celebrities like Barbra Streisand. One of her instructors was Leni Cazden, and it was in these classes that Fonda found a new passion.

Fonda soon hired Cazden to teach her privately, and eventually, she decided to open her own studio, Jane Fonda’s Workout, in 1979 (Cazden was not part of this move, and it took many years for the pair to make amends over this messy split.) The Fonda Workout caught on like wildfire. Jane even taught classes herself to paying customers, open for all. These classes were also secret fundraisers for Fonda’s left-wing causes, a sly f*ck you to the growing force of Reaganism. Men exercised here too but it was largely seen as a space for women to sweat and stretch with no outside judgement. Granted, it wasn’t exactly body-inclusive, as Fonda’s tapes show. Throughout it all, Jane and her giant hair looked forever astonishing.

Jane Fonda’s Workout was released as a VHS in 1982 and was a mega-hit. It was the first non-theatrical home video release to top sales charts. It was credited with leading to an increase in the sales of video players. The entire industry of home workout videos was born here. This wasn’t an industry until Jane Fonda made it one. The original Fonda Workout video is still one of the biggest-selling VHS tapes ever made. Now, you can watch it and its many sequels on YouTube. And I did.

Yiiiiiiiikes.

(No, I couldn’t do this bit.)

Look, as I said, I am not unfit, nor am I a novice when it comes to exercise. A lot of stuff in The Workout was surprisingly familiar to me. Many of the stretches and leg lifts were similar, if not outright identical, to stuff I do in barre and sculpt yoga classes. You don’t need any special equipment for this workout, which makes it accessible to all who are committed to the process. And you need to be committed because this is a full-on piece of work. This is a 90-minute workout (my yoga studio classes typically run for 45) and Jane wants you to keep at it.

Fonda is a reassuring presence. Aside from looking absolutely gorgeous, she’s steady-voiced, smiling, and encouraging without entering drill sergeant territory. When she asks her fellow exercisers if they feel the stretch, you join in with a big “Yeah!” Jane’s doing the tough version, but the people behind her are showing a slightly less terrifying version where the leg lifts aren’t at the 1 o’clock position.

She truly makes all of this look easy, which is also mad because the things you’re supposed to do in this workout made me literally go, “Nope, fuck that” out loud more than once. There’s a moment where she asks you to do a shoulder stand (can’t do those), then straighten your legs over your head until your toes touch the ground (buh?), THEN bend your legs so that your shins rest on the ground on each side of your body (nah!) I just lay on the floor until Jane was done with this point. Sorry, Ms. Fonda, but I am not a pretzel.

(What is this?! HELP?! Image via YouTube.)

It’s tough. But it’s not hugely unmanageable, the occasional twisted knot positions aside. Hard but not hardcore. It ain’t tai bo. Like I said, if you’ve ever done a barre class, aerobics, or any sort of thorough yoga stretching, a lot of this will be familiar. It did make me wonder just how much of this workout my own barre teacher has seen. By the end of it, I felt sweatier than a sinner in church but the endorphins were booming. Maybe I didn’t look quite as fabulous as Jane Fonda but the smile of achievement was there. I thought a lot about the women of the ‘80s who did this workout at home all the time. They must have been running their houses like the Navy!

There’s definitely a lot of talk of burning fat, toning down areas, and, of course, “No pain, no gain.” I personally prefer my exercise classes to be without any talk of calories and weight loss, so this might be a turn-off for some, although it’s extremely of its time in this manner. Exercise isn’t just for weight loss, guys! Some of us just want to be able to lift our shopping bags and run for the bus without collapsing in a pile of our own perspiration. But you can certainly use this routine for any reason you want. There’s a reason it’s called The Workout.

A lot of copycats followed in Jane’s footsteps, and if you’re interested in seeing me try those workouts, let me know. Fonda birthed an industry, one that can be seen everywhere online today, from Yoga with Adrienne to Joe Wicks to Pilates-tok. Not all of these are necessarily positive things. Fitness and wellness spaces continue to foster dangerous attitudes towards diet and any body deemed “unfit”, and a lot of us have felt the pain of that. I didn’t start doing exercise classes until I was 27 because I was so fearful of being judged and mocked for my body. My Instagram feed seems convinced that I want to watch videos of wannabe influencers secretly filming strangers in gyms and laughing at their work, or nitpicking at fat women’s diets to insist that they should limit themselves to starvation levels because they clearly don’t care about their health.

Jane has remained active in acting, wellness, and activism. She released 27 workout videos over three decades, ageing them up with her audience. She’s done a ton of work protesting the expansion of the fossil fuel industry (and has gotten arrested several times in the process.) While I was working on this piece, she revived the Committee for the First Amendment, a free speech group her father once headed, in order to keep her foot on the Trump administration’s necks. If only she were more assertive on Palestine.

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I’m sure my biases towards Jane made me a bit blind to some potential dark sides of her workout. After all, it was rooted in her recovery from disordered eating and in presenting an aestheticized image of fitness beyond the majority of our grasps. But I also can’t help but think about what it must have been like for an ‘80s housewife or woman shoved to the margins to receive something like this in their lives: a Hollywood radical telling them that it’s okay to prioritise yourself for once and do it in your own space. Ronald and Nancy must have been seething.

(No, I couldn’t get as low as Jane either!)

Thanks for reading. This is a new thing for me, but it fits in with this newsletter’s commitment to delving into the weird and fascinating world of celebrity. Would you like to see more pieces on celebrity workouts? Is there another area of celeb side-hustles you would want pieces on? Let me know in the comments!