Get your nails done, put on a onesie, stroke your belly, take a nap.

When I heard from a tipster that Marie Osmond has a workout video, my snarkal cortex started humming: Republican primaries! Mitt Romney! Mormons! Timeliness! But then I saw a clip of it -- "Marie Osmond: Exercises for Mothers-To-Be" -- and it was four minutes of magic.

I love this video so. much. It says, "I'm pregnant and I'm floating on a cloud of contentedness and motherly love, but I also want a pastel-rainbow room with my name in giant cursive letters where I can wear onesies and talk to my fetus and take naps." I'm sure there are plenty chicks out there for whom that's like "omg BARF" and that is a-ok (choice trumps!), but srsly -- a "ME N MAH BOO" room?  Judging by the recent trend in feministy gals coming out of the closet about their love of Mormon mommy blogs (guilty), I don't think I'm the alone here in feeling, deep down, "gimme."

Moving on. There is so much to cover. Ok, so the music is amazing, most especially at :40 when the camera zooms out to reveal her mustard-colored maternity jumpsuit and the music swells as if to say YOU GUYS THIS LADY IS CREATING ANOTHER HUMAN BEING AS WE SPEAK AND CAN WE JUST MARVEL AS SHE WALKS DOWN THOSE STEPS?? 

"Hi, I'm Marie Osmond and I'm basically Mother Earth incarnate right now. You might be in the same 

way too, which so very exciting! Yay us. Like my sassy blazer? Well it's not actually a blazer..."

If I could turn back time...I'd have bought this when it was cheaper.

YOU GUYS. You guys. Cher has a workout video. OF COURSE SHE DOES! 

She has two workout videos, actually, both under the arbitrarily word-smooshing brand CherFitness: "Body Confidence," (above), and "A New Attitude," (below). Which is fitting since, at the time of these vids' releases (1992 and 1991, respectively), Cher was very much riding the comeback success of a new attitude and a new, shockingly body-confident look. Remember the duct-tape-n-leather-jacket number in "If I Could Turn Back Time"? (As if you couldn't.) Well her outfit in "Body Confidence" is a total self-referencing homage to that get-up. OF COURSE IT IS! 

BASK IN ITS GLORY!

Amazon is charging an absurd $30ish for each of these videos -- somehow they have the VHS "in stock"? Huh. Can't imagine they were priced this way back in the day. Whatever the case, I'ma get a hold of this shit and do it in full and report back to you. Why? Because I'm strong enough. 

Uncle Billy's here to show you the way

I'm really happy I found this clip, because Billy Blanks has put out a gazillion Tae Bo titles, but this is the one I started with many years ago and this is the one that finally kicked my easily-winded ass into gear. 

If I remembered the exact title I'd provide it, but I had to throw out my VHS copy a while back because I actually wore it out. Coming from a one-time Thin Mints hoarder and all-around physical activity dodger, that was absurd. I suppose it could have been a coincidental end result of VHS technology or something, but whatever the case, the dishevelment of that tape really did something for my self-esteem back then. It was as if Billy Blanks was telling me, "Hey, look at you! You can move your body around for whole stretches of time without collapsing! You...are ready...for the next level."

This video isn't as extreme as some of his others -- it's only 44 minutes long -- but at the time, that was a blessing. Blanks doesn't dilly-dally with your heart rate; he likes to get it up as soon as (safely) possible and keep it in that target zone you always hear about. If you're a fitness beginner, you will hate him and everyone in that video after 10 minutes -- especially the blonde chick (his (now ex-) wife, I recently found out!) with her practically mechanized abs. But because it's a no-apologies challenge, you'll feel results after just a couple tries and see them soon after. 

Tracy Anderson's no-fun middle school sleepover workout

VIDEO: "Tracy Anderson Beginner Dance Cardio" (Bubi and Babe Exercise Inc., 2010)
STYLE: Dance aerobics
INTENSITY: Moderate
STRUCTURE: Intro; short warm-up; four routines in 10- to 15-minute sections; cool-down
GIST: The routines themselves are pretty good, but they're undermined in so many dazzling ways, from chintzy production values to Tracy's own blandness, that all I can only summarize thusly: It sucks.

Remember in 6th grade, when you and your friends would have sleepovers and eat pizza and bake brownies and watch Romeo + Juliet for the 46th time, and at some point someone would be like, "OMG guys, let's make up a dance and record it like a real music video!" And you'd put on Ace of Base or the Now and Then soundtrack and get maybe 16 counts down before the whole thing dissolved into hastily-flung criticisms, arguments and tears?

Well, if a) y'all had actually finished the video, and b) you'd shot it in a Pilates studio with someone's overconfident boyfriend operating the camera, it would look more or less like "Tracy Anderson Beginner Dance Cardio."

This is for a British version of the U.S. videos, but it's the same footage. 
The fact that this title is currently out of print in the U.S. yet only 2 years old is telling.

This video could have been good, but it's not. As a trainer to GOOPy Gwyneth Paltrow, shimmying Shakira and ever-calcifying Madonna, Tracy Anderson had some serious blonde buzz behind her with  this video. (Both Gwynny and Shakira talk sugar about her on the video jacket.) But apparently that wasn't enough to get Anderson a decent production budget, because it's put together with as much craftsmanship as my Stay Awake-fueled PowerPoint presentations from freshman year of college. Specifically, I'm talkin bout:

Sweatin to the...Public Radio?

Oh hi. Been a minute. It's...it's 2012, isn't it? Yeah. Wow. Sorry I've been absent for a tick. When not eating Christmas cookies and hammy black eyed peas and sweet potato biscuits and dad's gumbo and this cray-cray cake into sublime yuletide oblivion, I've been turning as much of the sucrose into sweat as possible.

So here we are -- the new year. Resolutions! Fresh starts! Detoxing! (At least until Carnival, which, oh hello, officially starts today.) All good ideas. And in as sure a sign of the apocalypse as any, NPR this morning got into the exercise advice game, with a sorta-obvs/sorta-kewl piece on the efficacy of working out to music. Yes, readers! In case you weren't aware, peppy music can make working out more fun. You could even say it...pumps you up?

But srsly, the piece was interesting because it brought in Science to explain that "When you are perceiving very rhythmic sounds, particularly those that are used in music, these sounds engage the areas in networks of the brain that allow us to move and in particular synchronize different muscle groups. It's this privileged link between the auditory system and the motor system."


The key is BPM (beats per minute). You may not think you like Matrixy industrial, or Clublandy house or, if you're Michele Norris, John Philip Sousa. But if it's uptempo, constant and loud enough to push your heart rate up, you're likely to feel pretty pumped up in spite of your best attempts to keep on hatin, say, La Bouche. (Which...why would anyone hate La Bouche?) It's why Ministry of Sound has a successful line of "Running Trax" compilations engineered according to BPM.

When I think fitness, NPR doesn't exactly spring to mind. But their Sweatin' to NPR website seems to have a semi-earnest collection of different workout mixes for different moods. There's a kickboxing mix (five very different songs, but I can see what they were going for); an 80s mix (super basic, but I appreciate the goofy inclusion of "Oh Yeah"); and a "Work Out, Make Out" mix, which...whatever, sure.

I've cycled through several workout mixes of my own over the years; next week I'll post some top selections from playlists past. But I can say without a doubt that to this day, I never run harder or get more La Femme Nikita fierce than when my iPod shuffles me some Prodigy "Smack My Bitch Up." Is that played out? 90s chaff? Who cares. Try it.

It's the most wonderful time of the year

So I'm maybe the only person in the United States who's excited about this, but THE NEW 'PUMP IT UP' IS ALMOST OUT! Check out the preview above.

It's glaringly (and probably creepily) obvious to anyone who's read this blog that I am a Big Fan of Ministry of Sound's "Pump It Up" series. I explained why, in detail, in this post. But to summarize:

- They're long (70-90 minutes), thorough and challenging. No half-assey "20-Minute Solutions!"

- They're entertaining and varied, drawing from dance, aerobics, kickboxing and pilates. To quote myself, again from that post I linked to above: "The workouts are basically structured, aerobicized sassy-dancing in a fantasyland of bright lights and hot bodies wearing impossible outfits."

- They use real music, which is like omgthankyouwhycan'tmorevideosdothis. Even if you don't like LMFAO's "Party rockin in the house tonight" song (I don't, but I can tolerate it) or club music in general, I maintain it's still better than 90% of the crappy muzak used in other videos.

- They are built for a lengthy shelf life. They better be, since they only release one of these suckers a year. Instead of spending gobs of time explaining each move and, in effect, pandering to the audience, the videos keep a swift, fluid pace. It's assumed that you may need to press pause a couple time on your first or second go-round to get the hang of some of the dancier steps, but then once you get it, you don't have to slow down again!

The 2012 installment features the debut of a new instructor, neither Deanne nor Gareth nor that annoying girl from the older ones! (I think I'll have to write about Gareth for my next post; he's too good to keep away from you any longer.) Two of this year's dancers were in prior videos and.... now I'm really starting to sound psychotic. Ok, stopping here! Here's a longer behind-the-scenes preview:

Butts: A celebration!

So I'm way way behind in finishing an article on my first-ever pole dancing class for The Hairpin, and part of what's taking so long is explaining how I feel about butts. Ferreal. It's especially ridiculous because I know exactly how I feel about butts: I LOVE THEM! Why? Well, watch that belly dance video clip above, for starters. That's seriously one of my fa-vor-ite butt exercises. So meditative and pleasing. (Btw, "Churn the Other Cheek"??? I DIE. It's like an Itchy and Scratchy episode title.)

Anyway, butts are just fantastic in my book, but the Hairpin piece is about a bunch of other stuff and saying "I LIKE BUTTS" isn't really enough to fill an article, you know? However, it is enough to fill a blog post!

I give to you...a bounty of butts. A paean to posteriors and the workouts that keep them so darn likeable.

Here's that same video, but with "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'" dubbed in. It's worth it.

The original butt-sculpting bible:

"Press it. Ooh. Ooh. Ooh."