1-Mile At Home Walk - Step Into the 80s | 55

Walk 1 mile in about 15 minutes while we time-travel back to the 80s for a fun blast of Gen X fitness nostalgia.

You can do this at-home walking workout anywhere: March in your living room, hop on a treadmill or walking pad, or just take it outside. It’s the podcast to listen to while walking.

Hit play if you want:

• A quick 1-mile walk 
• Easy cardio at home that fits into your busy day
• About 1500 steps
• A fast way to improve your mood and shake off stress

(Walking outside? There’s a bell at the halfway point so you know when to turn around!)

Along the way, we chat about the best (and weirdest) 1980s fitness crazes, including:

• Jane Fonda and her living-room workouts
• Richard Simmons and all that oldies joy
• Gin Miller and the rise of step aerobics (pun intended)
• Jazzercise, Callanetics, and the whole “feel the burn” era
• Suzanne Somers and the ThighMaster that had us all squeezing in our living rooms
• The Crystal Light National Aerobics Championship

Plus, my ADHD brain takes a few detours into: shin splints, unitards, Flashdance, Olivia Newton-John, the flat chest and flat booty goal, and that you should drink water (and not vodka) afterwards.

Tap Follow so your next walk is waiting for you!

Transcript

0:00

Sometimes we have to shake things up to keep ourselves motivated. So we're going to borrow some eighties energy to make the time fly during our walk. Start out at a warmup pace. The attitude will be less working out and more strutting, and you're going to get your mile done before you know it. Or "you could walk 500 miles and you could walk 500 more." Why are we transporting ourselves back to the eighties? Because fitness wasn't so much about optimizing your data or staring at a fitness watch. It was about energy and moving because it felt good and having fun,'cause everything was new and novel. Still staying with our warmup pace. And you can do this walk inside on a treadmill or walking pad, or marching in place in your living room or outside. And if you're walking outside, there'll be a bell at the halfway point in case you want to turn around. And I am going to talk you through how to add some challenge no matter where you're walking. And we're going to see how good I can multitask. Take a deep breath in through your nose and exhale through your mouth. Roll those shoulders backwards. Big, big, big rolls. Clunk crack. It's always my right one, and then roll them forward. Big, big, big rolls. If you're walking outside, don't worry. Nobody's looking. And if they are looking, it's none of their business what you're doing. Your ribs are stacked over your hips. Arms are nice and loose. This is a low stress chatty pace. It's the aerobics, warmup part. So if you're Gen X, you remember in the eighties we used to do living room workouts. We worked out with VHS tapes and we would rewind and stand back from the teeny tv. You know, the one where we had to manually change the channels and then we would use foil so we could get reception, so we could pick out a couple of channels that we normally didn't get., I actually had the Jane Fonda audio tape 'cause I didn't have a VCR. So you can imagine how challenging that would be because there were no visuals and Jane would say "lift" and I really had no idea what I was lifting. I'd be flailing around on the floor trying to figure out what she was telling us to do. And so, unlike Jane's tape, i'm going to be in your ear or in your head, and I'm going to describe the moves so you don't have to guess and you don't have to flail on the floor. Okay, we're going to nudge up our pace from warm up to a brisker walk or march. It's kinda like you're a 1987 mall walker. Your arms are pumping, purpose in your step. Trying to get to Orange Julius before the line gets too long. You should feel like you're working now, but still able to talk in short sentences. And as we're in this first brisk but doable phase, I'm going to give you some fun eighties fitness facts because you know me in my eighties and my fitness facts. So it all melds together nicely. Leg warmers. Yes, I wore leg warmers. and they started out as practical dancer gear to keep the calves warm, but Flashdance turned them into a fashion statement and we were all maniacs on the floor. I wore a unitard, but neon leotards were borrowed from stage and dance costumes, which makes sense. Everything was super bright, super happy. And here's a little weird fact about leotards. They were named after real person. He was a French acrobat and his name was Jules Leotarde, and he wanted tight clothes so he wouldn't get tangled while flipping through the air. Shake out your hands. Oh, and don't forget to hit follow, so your next episode is waiting for you in the app. And if you follow, it helps me get discovered by more people, which is totally awesome or totally rad, dude. Bump it up just a little. Now if you're marching in your living room, try a little bit of eighties overhead reach. You know where you try to push the ceiling away. You're going to reach up like you're winning the Crystal Light Aerobic Championship. Smile like you mean it. Smile like you're going to win. When your hands go above your heart, your heart rate usually jumps up without you having to walk much faster. And it's a tiny little cheat code, more work, same pace.' In those eighties fitness classes, and we had lots of big hair and bigger smiles and someone was always yelling, "feel the burn!" "No pain, no gain." That was our motto." When I first started teaching in the eighties with that same attitude, we were proud when people dropped out of our class. We thought it meant that the workout was good, and we were really hard and amazing instructors. And then life happened. I stopped teaching. I gained weight, and I was inactive for at least 15 years. But when I came back and I started teaching spin, I wasn't that drill sergeant, super go, go, go person from the eighties. And I fell in love with teaching beginners and the win wasn't crushing people, it was helping them finish and actually want to come back to class. when I look back at the whole dropout mentality, it really, really horrifies me now as an instructor, like why that would be a badge of honor. In our walks, we don't do pain, we do progress be cause it's not about beating ourselves up anymore. Those days are over. We're still holding a strong but doable pace. Pretend like you're in the middle of a class. Now, here's an optional booster, if you want to make it harder. If you're doing this indoors, like marching in your living room, you can take some side to side steps, like low impact skater moves. Keep your toes pointed mostly forward. Your knees are soft. If you're feeling frisky, you can add a tiny little bit of air in those side to side movements. If you're on a treadmill or walking pad, you can either increase the incline or you can walk a little faster or pump your arms more. Or you can play a game with yourself, widening your feet a little bit for a few steps, and then bringing them a little closer together for a few steps. Just vary it up. Now, if you're walking outside, you can do tiny up and down steps on the curb. And if you do tiny up and down side steps, then you can also add some glute action to your walk. You're going to still hold onto that pace, still working. Doing those little steps up and down on a curb, reminds me so much of our step days. I used to love stuff. It was one of my favorite things. And in the beginning step was simple, but it was really fun because it was different. We had great music and everyone was in it together. And then it got a little wild. They would add like a second step and then suddenly you had two steps that you had to figure out how to use. And then sometimes it was four steps, and then the choreography got really complicated and then you felt like you needed a PhD to just take the class. We couldn't get a really good workout anymore because we were focusing on trying not to trip over all these steps that were everywhere. And that's when I stopped teaching step and got out of that. And that's one of the reasons why I like walking too, is because we don't have four steps to deal with. You can push your pace up a little bit more if you want now. And here's the name, you might not have heard: Gin Miller. Gin Miller was actually the person who invented step, and she invented it when she was rehabbing after knee injury. And she would step up and down on a crate. Feel for any tense spots in your body. And as we're holding onto the brisker pace, here are some names that should bring a smile to your face. Richard Simmons remember. Sweating to the Oldies and he let people do cardio at home to fifties and sixties music. And now as I look back, I really like his philosophy that fitness should be joyful and welcoming and fun and not punishing like the rest of us were doing in the eighties. Jazzercise. Oh yeah, remember that?. Jazzercise was everywhere. By the mid eighties it was one of the largest female owned franchises in the US and it still exists today, which is kind of cool and kind of impressive. Of course, we can't forget the Thigh Master. Do you remember those infomercials, Suzanne Sommers? And she convinced people that they could spot reduce while watching TV using that Thigh Master. Holding the pace as we think about our Thigh Masters. Of course in class in the eighties there were some really fun music and fun songs and weird songs, but one song that had mixed reactions was Physical. I think it was Olivia Newton John."Let's get physical..." And it was so sexually suggestive that some radio stations refused to play it, but yet it was the longest running number one hit of that entire decade. Keep your breathing going. Keep your arms strong. And then there was the 20 minute workout. That's right. It aired in the early eighties and it promised results in 20 minutes. It filmed the beachside with neon everything, And that was a nice change from those longer brutal workouts that we did. And of course Callanetics. See am I just bringing your past all rushing back to you right now? I still do one of the moves from Callanetics because it really does help my butt. But it was about micro movements. And that was the counterculture to high impact aerobics. I taught so much high impact aerobics that I got shin splints in both my tibias in both my legs. And I could barely walk, And I would still teach, but I was in so much pain and after class I would limp home and then I would ice my shins. It was the eighties, right?"No pain, no gain." It was more like"act really stupid and don't take care of yourself for the future." We are going to slow it down just a little bit into a comfortable pace, but not cool down yet. Back in the eighties, rest days were not a thing. Most of these 80 programs pushed us like daily workouts or twice a day workouts. And the flatter the better. No chest, no butt. That was a look we were going for. And think about like our cortisol levels and our nervous systems. They were probably on high alert all the time because it wasn't a super healthy lifestyle. Shake out your hands. Make sure your toes aren't gripping your shoes. I remember how grateful I was when we finally had low impact aerobics because it was so much easier on my poor shins. Okay. Slow it down a little bit now. Going to start cooling it down. Are you still lost in the eighties? I want to go back to the eighties, but I want to go back to the eighties knowing what I know now. I would make some different choices in my life. Take a deep breath in through your nose and exhale through your mouth. Let those arms relax. Shoulders are down. And even though the eighties were hard and brutal, at least for me, they did show us that movement can improve your mood and not just your body. Everybody was so happy and everybody loved all the different workouts that we did, and we just had so much fun... until we didn't. Roll those shoulders, big rolls backwards now. Big, big, big rolls. Roll those shoulders forwards. And if you're doing this in your living room, you can just gently step side to side or little sways. If you're on a treadmill or walking pad, bring the incline down or bring the pace down. It is always good to cool down a little bit. I know it's so tempting for us just to jump off or stop what we're doing right now, but try to cool it down. If you can, get in a little bit of a stretch. Save this walk in case you need an emergency, one mile eighties walk for when you don't feel like doing anything because the eighties were awesome and amazing and you can't change my mind. Make sure you get something to drink afterwards. Maybe not vodka, but some water would be good. Slow it down a little more, and hopefully this walk made you smile. Got your heart rate up a little bit. Reminded you of the good old days and what we didn't like about the eighties, and I'll see you next time.