Jazzercise

Jazzercise is the oldest continuously operating format in this family and the template for everything that followed it. Judi Sheppard Missett, a trained jazz dancer, was teaching technique classes in Evanston, Illinois in 1969 when she noticed students dropping out — they wanted to feel good and look better, not to be corrected. She turned away from the mirror, stopped teaching placement, and led routines from the front as a workout. The class combines jazz dance with elements of strength training, kickboxing and stretching, set to licensed popular music, and is built on a rolling choreography cycle distributed to instructors rather than improvised locally. Sheppard Missett moved to Carlsbad, California and grew the business by franchising, training instructors herself and later at a distance by video; Jazzercise has counted thousands of franchisees across dozens of countries, making it one of the largest woman-founded franchise systems in fitness. It also ran a substantial media operation, with a gold-certified album released in 1981 and VHS workouts from 1983. Its cultural position is odd: often caricatured as a leotard-and-legwarmers relic, it never stopped operating, has updated its music and choreography continuously, and retains a loyal multi-generational membership.