A few years ago, Olivia Newton John regrettably fell prey to her long battle with breast cancer. She was 73, so way too young. She began her career in the late 1960s in Australia and the UK, and made her Billboard Hot 100 debut in 1971. She built a reputation as a soft-spoken country-pop singer, winning the Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal Performance in 1974. Her 1974 hit I Honestly Love You went to #1 and won Record of the Year and Best Pop Vocal at the Grammys, establishing her as a major international star. In 1978 she starred in Grease, co-starring with John Travolta. The film became the biggest box office hit of 1978. The soundtrack was enormous, producing multiple hits including You’re the One That I Want and Hopelessly Devoted to You. But it was her 1981 hit Physical that gets her the most recognition. It hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in November 1981 and stayed there for 10 consecutive weeks , the longest run of any single in the entire 1980s. Billboard named it the #1 hit of the entire 1980s, and Billboard also ranked it #1 on its “Top 100 Songs of the 1980s” list and #1 on its “Top 50 Sexiest Songs of All Time.”
Physical arrived right at the crest of a massive fitness wave in America. The early ’80s fitness boom is remembered for Jane Fonda and the release of her first workout video in 1982, essentially launching the home fitness industry. Richard Simmons was becoming a household name. Aerobics classes were exploding
in popularity. The bodybuilding craze was peaking, fueled partly by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s crossover fame. And gym membership was transitioning from a niche activity to mainstream culture. The video was genius in that context. The whole idea of the video was to set it in a gym to distract from the fact that the song is actually about sex. Aerobics was just gaining popularity when the song came out, so the video jumped on that trend. The result was a double meaning that worked on both levels simultaneously, people who caught the sexual subtext enjoyed it, and people who took it literally as a fitness anthem also embraced it. That ambiguity massively broadened its audience. It’s a rare case where a song, a video concept, and a cultural moment all collide perfectly. Newton-John herself was initially reluctant… she wanted to pull it from the album, worrying she’d gone too far. But her managers convinced her they had a massive hit, and they were right. The fitness craze essentially gave Physical a second layer of relevance it wasn’t even originally written to have.
I specifically remember the music video, set in a gym. With Olivia Newton-John in colorful 80’s gym attire, complete with a terry headband, it used campy humor with overweight men transforming into muscular hunks, and ends with the reveal that the men are more interested in each other than in Newton-John. The video collection won the Grammy Award for Video of the Year in 1983.
In 1983 I was starting the steep part of my ascent in my banking career…I was moving into management. I was not completely oblivious to the need to work out, but its fair to say that it was a far lower priority with me than it was for many of that era and certainly far lower than it should have been for my well-being. The truth is that I have never liked hanging out in the gym. Back in 1967 when I went off to prep school at age 13, I joined the JV football team (there was a seasonal sport requirement). Even at that age, most of my peers had spent far more time in gyms than I had (we didn’t even have a gym at my local school in Poland, Maine and the nearest YMCA was 16 miles away). It was during football training that I first realized that despite my size, I was simply not destined to be a gym rat. In fact, I very much hated pumping iron. As my cousin’s wife, Nancy, likes to say…picking heavy shit up and putting it back down…never made a lot of sense to me. I did some jogging and made some modest efforts to exercise, but it wasn’t until I was working in NYC that I saw much of the inside of a gym. I made a few half-assed attempts with trainers that lasted a month or two. I bought the full array of home fitness equipment that largely went unused.
When I moved out here to retire seven years ago, I decided that I had better change my ways with regard to exercise, in addition to other things. I joined L.A. Fitness and have dutifully paid my monthly dues ever since. I even tried several different trainers and made a half-hearted effort to go regularly to work out, but it was more like what I had faked my way through for years than a serious effort. Then, after addressing first my edema issue starting a year ago, and then going onto my Zepbound journey starting more than seven months ago, and after I started moving in the right direction, I decided to start exercising with conviction. I’m smart enough to know that overdoing it would probably not be the best way to go, so I started slowly and incremented gradually. For six months I have been recording both my daily exercise and my steps…along with my weight and my caloric intake. It seems silly in this day and age of AI automation of everything getting tracked autonomously with apps, but this old school way is more about consciousness on my part rather than data gathering.
Today I did an hour of Gyrotronics in a private studio. No matter what you call it, that was being in the gym for an hour of working out. Yesterday I did an hour with my trainer on FaceTime in my home gym. Tomorrow I do another training session for an hour…and again on Saturday morning. That translates to four days a week. In addition I do myofacial assisted stretch two days a week for 40 minutes apiece, 2-3 days per week of added exercises in my gym on my own, probably 10-15 hours of gardening (with heavy lifting), and probably on average 10-12 30-40 minute Buddy walks per week. All-in-all, I figure I’m doing an average of 25-30 hours of exercise per week. I’m sure for many people that sounds like a joke. Many do much more, but I feel pretty good about where I am on this quest. I can feel and see the improvements in my posture and overall fitness, but I am still far from finished. The best part of this program is that I have convinced myself that this is the way it’s going to be from here on in…forever. I’m happy with slow steady progress and that seems to be what I’m getting. My life has turned into one big gym as I’m getting physical each and every day one way or another.