Fifty years ago, in the mid-1970s, working out in America split into two camps: a mass jogging and “aerobics” craze that anyone could join with a pair of running shoes, and a smaller iron-and-machines scene built around bodybuilding gyms and new equipment like Nautilus and Universal machines.
Most people jogged, did calisthenics, or took early aerobic dance classes like Jazzercise, while serious lifters trained with free weights at no-frills gyms such as Gold’s in Venice, California, and all of it ran on advice that was partly ahead of its time and partly wrong, from withholding water during hard practice to steering women away from weights.
Keep reading for a more detailed look at where people trained, what they used, and routines you can still try today.
Where People Worked Out in the Mid-1970s
If you picture a 1975 workout, you probably imagine a sweaty gym. The more accurate picture is a road, a park path, or a living room. The gym scene was growing fast, but it was still the smaller part of the story.
The Road, the Park, and the School Track
Running was the defining activity of the decade, and most of it was solo jogging done for recreation rather than competition.
One often-cited estimate says 25 million Americans took up running across the 1970s and 1980s, President Jimmy Carter among them. Treat that as a rough figure, not a measured count.
The New York City Marathon shows how fast things moved. It drew 127 entrants in 1970, when the entry fee was $1 and the whole event ran on a $1,000 budget. By 1976, the year the course first covered all five boroughs, 2,090 people entered.
Bodybuilding Gyms
Joe Gold opened the first Gold’s Gym in August 1965 at 1006 Pacific Avenue in Venice, California. He built much of the equipment himself, and the place was known for having no fancy rugs or chrome, just plain weights.
The ownership history gets a little tangled:
- Gold sold the gym for $50,000 in 1970, though some accounts put the sale in 1973.
- Ken Sprague bought it in late 1971.
- Gold went on to found World Gym, in either 1976 or 1977, depending on who you ask.
Venice also inherited a famous name. The original Muscle Beach near the Santa Monica Pier closed in 1959, and the “Muscle Beach” label moved to Venice.
Health Clubs, Nautilus Centers, and Community Spaces
Commercial clubs grew quickly during the decade. Membership rose from 1.7 million in 1972, when the industry took in $227 million, to 13 million by 1978.
There were roughly 2,700 clubs in 1977 and 3,000 private fitness clubs in 1978. These numbers are ballpark estimates, because the industry had no official government category before 1992.
Most clubs sold multi-year contracts paid upfront. Monthly electronic dues came later. Meanwhile, Nautilus, based in DeLand, Florida, began selling its machines in 1970, and Nautilus clubs eventually spread through strip malls across the country.
Not all exercise happened in commercial clubs. YMCAs, recreation centers, and school gyms hosted aerobic dance classes and fitness testing, and they reached people who would never have signed a club contract.
Boutique Studios and the Living Room
Richard Simmons opened a Beverly Hills studio in 1974, first called the Anatomy Asylum and featuring a salad bar named Ruffage.
He renamed it Slimmons about a year later. The studio deliberately welcomed overweight people, seniors, and people with physical limitations, groups that established gyms often overlooked.
At home, Jack LaLanne’s TV show had viewers exercising with nothing more than a chair and a towel.
Costs and Access
Running was nearly free, which helps explain why it spread so widely. Bodybuilding gyms were cheap too, at least until Pumping Iron arrived in 1977. One account says Gold’s memberships jumped from $60 to $200 almost overnight, though it doesn’t specify the unit or year, so take it as a sign of the trend rather than a precise price.
Reliable mid-1970s club prices are hard to find, but two later data points give a sense of the range:
- A Jane Fonda class cost $5.50 in 1979, which was a lot for someone earning $165 a week.
- The Sports Club/LA charged a $2,500 initiation fee plus $160 a month that same year.
Dance classes sat at the affordable end, which made them an easy way in for many women.
The Equipment That Shaped the Gym Floor
Walk into a serious gym in 1975 and the core of the room was still iron: barbells, dumbbells, and benches. Machines were spreading fast, but they added to that foundation rather than replacing it.
Free Weights as the Core
Free weights remained the base of serious training. Even as machines took over more floor space, elite strength athletes mostly stuck with barbells and dumbbells.
Universal Gym (1957)
Harold Zinkin, a Muscle Beach alumnus and the first Mr. California, introduced the Universal Gym in 1957. Its main idea was to put stations for eight or ten exercises into one large frame.
The design solved a practical problem for coaches:
- Pin-selected weight stacks meant changing the load was as simple as moving a pin.
- A coach could run a whole team through the machine with little supervision.
- It is credited with popularizing circuit weight training, where you move from station to station.
Zinkin sold the company in 1968 but stayed on as CEO for about ten more years, so the machine’s growth in the 1970s still ran under his leadership.
Nautilus Machines (First Delivered November 30, 1970)
Arthur Jones started with the Nautilus pullover, and an early prototype went by the nickname “Blue Monster.” The key innovation was an elliptical, shell-shaped cam that varied resistance through the range of motion, so the load changed as the lift moved.
Adoption started with athletes. By 1975, wrestlers, college football teams, and NFL teams were using the machines, along with players such as Dick Butkus. Accounts disagree on who was first: some credit the Miami Dolphins in 1971, others say the Kansas City Chiefs ordered machines in 1970.
Nautilus’s peak popularity came after the mid-1970s. More than 2,000 U.S. clubs used the Nautilus name at the height, and one estimate puts Nautilus Fitness Centers at 4,700 by 1984.
Competition between rival systems was already visible by 1977, when a newspaper story titled “The War of the Gym Machines” covered the rivalry.
Calisthenics Gear and Cardio Machines
School physical education relied on simple equipment: pull-up bars, ropes, mats, and sit-up stations. These were also the tools behind the era’s standard fitness tests.
Cardio machines existed too, but they were basic compared with what came later. Home treadmills and stationary bikes were available, and Kenneth Cooper’s Aerobics helped drive interest in them. One inventor, for instance, built his treadmill after reading the book.
The Training Methods People Actually Followed
Three ideas dominated mid-1970s training: score your cardio, jog at an easy pace, and pick a side in the gym between doing lots of sets or just one. Here is how each worked.
Cooper’s Aerobics Points
Kenneth Cooper’s Aerobics (March 1968) made the word a household term and gave people a way to score exercise. Activities earned points based on their aerobic value, with charts scaled by age group.
For example, 15 minutes of ice or roller skating earned 1 point, while 25 minutes of running in place at 80 to 90 steps per minute earned 14 points.
His 12-minute run and 1.5-mile test became standard fitness measures. Cooper founded the Cooper Aerobics Center in Dallas in 1970 and followed up with The Aerobics Way in 1977.
He has said that exercise was considered dangerous in the 1950s and 1960s, and that he was condemned at first for encouraging it.
The Jogging Boom
Bill Bowerman’s 96-page Jogging (1967) taught a simple walk-run method: jog for a minute, walk for a minute, and repeat.
Frank Shorter’s 1972 Olympic marathon gold then sparked wider interest, and Bill Rodgers kept it going by winning the New York City Marathon four straight times, from 1976 to 1979.
Jim Fixx gave the movement its most popular voice. He started running in 1967 at age 35, and his The Complete Book of Running (September 12, 1977) spent 11 weeks at number one and sold over a million copies. His pacing rule was easy to remember: if you can’t talk easily while running, slow down.
Runner’s World grew alongside the boom. Its 1977 circulation is reported as either 250,000 or above 350,000, depending on the source.
Two Opposite Gym Philosophies
Serious lifters had two very different models to choose from.
Schwarzenegger’s high-volume approach was a six-day double split. He trained at Gold’s with Franco Columbu and Dave Draper, from about 10:00 to 11:30 a.m. and again from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. Each muscle group got hit two or three times a week, abs were trained daily, and the total came to roughly 15 to 20 hours weekly. Details differ between modern retellings, so treat the specifics as approximate.
Arthur Jones’s High Intensity Training (HIT) went the other way. His motto was “Train hard, train briefly, train infrequently.” The method looked like this:
- One set per exercise, taken to failure
- 8 to 12 reps
- A 2-1-4 second cadence (lift for 2, hold for 1, lower for 4)
- Full-body sessions about three times a week, often under 30 minutes
Jones spread the idea through his Nautilus Bulletins (1970 and 1971) and magazine articles. West Point’s 1975 “Project Total Conditioning” put it into practice, with cadets doing one set of 8 to 12 reps on 10 Nautilus machines, three times a week.
The Colorado Experiment (May 1973)
The era’s most famous, and most disputed, training claim came from Jones himself. Casey Viator trained for 28 days under Jones, and the claimed result was a jump in body weight from 166.87 lb to 212.15 lb, including 63.21 lb of muscle, in either 12 or 14 workouts, depending on the account.
Several caveats apply:
- Viator was regaining muscle lost after an industrial accident, so this wasn’t a typical starting point.
- He had weighed 218 lb when he won the 1971 Mr. America.
- The result came from Jones’s own camp and was never independently replicated.
Circuit Training and School Testing
Circuit training on Universal machines needed little instruction, which coaches liked. Players moved from station to station, and the pin-selected stacks kept things simple.
In schools, the Presidential Physical Fitness Award (created in 1966) set the standard for ages 10 to 17. Students had to score at or above the 85th percentile on all seven items:
- Pull-ups (boys) or flexed-arm hang (girls)
- Sit-ups
- Shuttle run
- Standing broad jump
- 50-yard dash
- Softball throw for distance
- 600-yard run-walk
Who Worked Out and the Rise of Group Fitness
The mid-1970s exerciser was not one type of person. Runners skewed toward educated professionals, lifters were mostly men in hardcore gyms, and a new wave of group classes pulled in people the gym world had largely ignored.
Runners and Lifters
Race participants were most often university-educated men, though women and minority communities did take part. Jim Fixx’s audience was largely stressed professionals who ran to manage pressure at work.
Hardcore bodybuilding gyms were male-dominated. Pumping Iron (1977), filmed mainly at Gold’s and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno, widened that audience considerably. Interest was already building before it arrived, with a reported five-fold increase in turnout at bodybuilding events.
Women
Women’s options widened in several ways:
- Title IX (1972) expanded school and college sport for women.
- The 1975 New York City Marathon served as the U.S. women’s championship, and Miki Gorman won the women’s race in 1976 and 1977.
- Women began entering weightlifting contests in the 1970s, often competing against men.
Weight rooms were a different story. The fear of getting “big and bulky” kept many women away from lifting. One professor got around it by introducing weight training with bleach bottles, which kept the whole thing feeling non-threatening.
Aerobic Dance
Group dance classes became the main on-ramp for women, and two programs led the way, both starting in 1969:
- Aerobic Dancing: Jacki Sorensen created it for Air Force wives in Puerto Rico, inspired by Cooper’s book. She later advised Presidents Nixon and Ford.
- Jazzercise: Judi Sheppard Missett started it in Evanston, Illinois, after noticing her jazz students dropped out because the classes were too hard. It took off in San Diego, grew by word of mouth, and expanded through franchising. Its records (1981) and videos (1983) came later.
These classes were overwhelmingly female, at a time when health clubs were still mostly male territory.
Older Adults and TV Figures
Fitness for older adults had some early backers. Cooper’s point charts were scaled by age group, and Richard Simmons designed his program with seniors in mind.
Jack LaLanne made the case publicly, with stunts that argued fitness didn’t end at middle age:
- 1974, age 60: swam from Alcatraz to Fisherman’s Wharf.
- 1975, age 61: swam the length of the Golden Gate Bridge underwater.
- 1976, age 62: swam a mile in Long Beach Harbor towing 13 boats carrying 76 people.
The popular “handcuffed” version of these stunts is disputed. One report from the time said his hands and feet were bound with cords that allowed minimal freedom.
Where People Got Information
Magazines did most of the teaching:
- Joe Weider’s Muscle Builder/Power, which put Schwarzenegger on the cover in November 1975 and July 1976
- Iron Man, with a peak circulation of about 40,000
- Strength & Health
- Runner’s World
Books by Cooper, Bowerman, and Fixx filled in the rest, along with television through LaLanne and Sorensen’s Aerobic Dancing program in San Juan.
As for how many people actually exercised, no reliable mid-1970s national survey exists. The closest bracket comes from either side of the decade: 24 percent of Americans claimed to exercise regularly in 1960, compared with 69 percent in a 1987 poll. The real figure for 1975 sits somewhere between.
What People Wore, Ate, and Believed
The mid-1970s exerciser dressed in nylon and cotton, ate a lot of cottage cheese, and followed advice that sometimes missed the mark. Some of those beliefs were harmless. Others, like withholding water in the heat, were not.
Clothing and Footwear
Running shoes were the defining purchase for the mass market. The Nike Cortez launched in 1972, and by July 1973 Runner’s World called it the most popular long-distance trainer in the U.S. A women’s version, the Señorita Cortez, followed in 1974.
Bill Bowerman then developed the waffle sole using his wife’s waffle iron. Nike received a patent on February 26, 1974, and released the Waffle Trainer that same year. By 1977, the Waffle Trainer and the LD-1000 had displaced the Cortez among runners.
Off the road, the clothing varied by setting:
- Everyday workouts: Sweat clothes and sneakers became fashionable.
- Dance classes: Bare feet or jazz shoes, mostly black leotards, and footless or stirrup tights. The colorful leg-warmer look belongs more to the 1980s.
- Bodybuilding gyms: Functional and worn, in keeping with the stripped-down feel of the place.
Diet and Protein Powder
Bodybuilders favored high-protein, low-carb eating. Typical foods included chicken, steak, hamburger, fish, milk, cheese, and especially cottage cheese. Few people tracked calories or macronutrients closely.
A typical day might look like this:
- Breakfast: Cheese omelette and a hamburger patty
- Lunch: Beef and eggs
- Dinner: Steak or chicken
- Between meals: Protein shakes
For shakes, Rheo Blair’s milk-and-egg powder was the prestige product. A quarter-cup serving had about 102 calories and 17.5 g of protein. Cheaper soy-based powders competed with it.
Steroids
Dianabol launched in the U.S. in 1958. In the 1970s, steroids were prescription drugs rather than illegal ones, and they weren’t federally controlled until 1990.
Professional bodybuilding had no drug testing at all. Elsewhere, the first Olympic steroid testing arrived at the 1976 Montreal Games.
Still, “legal” did not mean safe or well understood. Doctors and athletes alike knew far less about long-term effects than they do now.
Water Restriction and Heat Guidance
Many coaches withheld water to toughen players up, and some handed out salt tablets with only a small gulp of water. The evidence against this already existed.
Research from 1965 showed football players losing up to 18 pounds in a game, 90 to 95 percent of it water, and that work led to Gatorade.
Official bodies began catching up in the mid-1970s. The American College of Sports Medicine issued heat-injury guidance for distance running in 1975, and the NCAA issued heat-illness guidance that June. Coaching practice lagged for years afterward.
Medical Attitudes
Exercise for heart health was new and contested. Cooper’s message that structured cardio could prevent disease ran against earlier medical caution.
Jim Fixx’s death from a heart attack in July 1984, at age 52, later sparked debate, although he was predisposed to heart problems.
1970s Routines You Can Try Today
Before you try any of these, get medical clearance if it applies to you, and drink water the modern way. The 1970s habit of withholding fluids is not something to copy.
Bowerman-Style Jogging
This is the gentlest entry point, and it works for beginners.
- Walk briskly for 5 minutes.
- Jog for 1 minute, then walk for 1 minute. Repeat for about 20 minutes.
- Do this three or four times a week, and gradually lengthen the jogging intervals.
Cooper’s Approach
Start by testing yourself with the 12-minute run (cover as much distance as you can) or a timed 1.5-mile run. Then build toward weekly points across running, swimming, cycling, or walking.
Cooper’s book noted that running for eight minutes four to five times a week would improve your condition, so you don’t need long sessions to begin.
Nautilus/HIT Session
This is a full-body workout that takes about 30 minutes, three non-consecutive days a week.
- Pick 10 to 12 exercises that cover the whole body, using machines or free weights.
- Do one set of 8 to 12 reps per exercise, to the point where you can’t complete another good rep.
- Use a 2-1-4 tempo: lift for 2 seconds, pause for 1, lower for 4.
- Move to the next exercise with minimal rest.
- When you reach 12 good reps, add weight next session.
Universal Circuit
If you have access to a multi-station machine, rotate through the stations: press, pulldown, leg press, and curl. Do one set at each, then repeat the circuit two or three times. Coaches liked this setup because it needed so little instruction.
Schwarzenegger-Style Split (Advanced)
This one is demanding, so treat it as a look at how competitors trained rather than a starting plan.
- Morning, chest and back: Bench press for 4 sets of 10, 8, 6, 4, plus weighted chin-ups and T-bar rows.
- Evening, legs: Squats for 5 sets of 20, then 4 sets of 10, 8, 6, 4.
- Alternate days: Shoulders, arms, and calves.
- Abs: Daily.
- Sunday: Off.
Most people who aren’t competing should do about half the volume.
Presidential Fitness Self-Test
Run through the seven items from the school test: pull-ups (or a flexed-arm hang), sit-ups, shuttle run, standing broad jump, 50-yard dash, softball throw, and 600-yard run-walk. Record your results and retest every few months to track progress.
LaLanne-Style Home Routine
All you need is a chair and a towel. Try chair squats, dips, step-ups, towel pulls, and stretches, moving continuously for 15 to 20 minutes.
These exercise choices are illustrative, since LaLanne’s show confirms the chair-and-towel format but not one fixed sequence.
Conclusion
Fitness in the mid-1970s centered on heart and lung health, with strength training still a smaller subculture.
Aerobic exercise, short full-body sessions, circuits, and accessible group classes have held up well, while water restriction, salt tablets, unregulated steroid use, and keeping women away from weights have not.
If you’re weighing how this history applies to modern fitness products and apps, contact our team to talk about custom software.
