大象传媒

Radio broadcast home workouts first emerged in America around a century ago.

Walter Camp, a fitness coach who is hailed as the ‘father of American football’, was called upon during World War One to keep the troops in shape. His solution was the ‘daily dozen’: twelve handy exercises to promote fitness and weight loss. When the soldiers came home, a fitness craze ensued and the workouts were monetised, with phonograph records of the exercises being made and sold.

Soon after, these workouts began being broadcast on the radio. “It was designed so you could do it in your home. It was designed so even if you lived in an apartment, you could have 15 minutes of exercises … and go into the world feeling physically fit.” says Professor Donna Halper, who lectures in communication and media studies at Lesley University.

These broadcast bursts of exercise, explains Donna, inaugurated morning workouts, as radio programmes had been largely aired at night until the early 20s. The phrase ‘daily dozen’ soon worked its way into common parlance when referring to exercising, and these nifty workouts became so ubiquitous that the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company got behind them as a sponsor.

Online video tutorials and live workout classes on a video link may be experiencing something of a moment, but radio fitness broadcasts are still thriving too.

Terry Keen, host of radio fitness programme ‘10 Today’, was inspired by the ever-popular rajio tais艒 (radio calisthenics) of Japan. His show gets its name because it comprises 10 exercises in 10-minute sessions. These largely static exercises are to help older people improve their mobility and balance in a secure environment.

Terry’s initial plan was to produce televised workouts, but this took an unprecedented turn, he explains. “The idea was it was going to be a video option, and we’d back that up with the radio broadcasts, which were a bit more explicit, a bit more descriptive.”

But Terry soon realised his audience were happier with a radio broadcast, “maybe they didn’t like looking at a video and trying to concentrate and do two things at once. But if you’re listening to the radio, then you sit and listen and concentrate, don’t you? So the radio broadcasts were really welcome.”

As well as a radio programme, 10 Today is now a podcast, which can be found on 大象传媒 Sounds.

But what adaptions have to be made for radio? Terry finds himself using much more visual language, giving descriptive names to moves which build an image in the audience’s minds before they’ve even had the step-by-step instructions.

He says: “It takes the intimidation factor out of it. Instead of saying, ‘we’re going to do a biceps curl’, you can say ‘we’re going to reach for our shoulders’. People accept that much more.”

Even Walter Camp, the OG radio instructor working a century ago, gave his exercises names, such as the curl, the roll, the grind, the rotate.

Radio fitness has a captive younger audience, too.

Adele Roberts, presenter of Radio 1’s Early Breakfast Show, says that its Workout Anthems are a huge hit. “It’s the fifth most downloaded product that Radio 1 puts on 大象传媒 Sounds, which is huge” she says. “It just shows how popular it is, and how much people need it at the moment.”

The physical benefits of home workouts, as well as the community spirit fostered by radio, are needed more than ever right now. So let’s turn up the volume and get moving. Lycra unitards optional.