Audio Exercise Tape Helps Motivate Walkers
At first glance, exercise instruction on audio makes about as much sense as a ventriloquist on radio. But, just as Edgar Bergen’s carefully chosen material let him translate his stage act to the airwaves, so Kathy Smith is able to present exercise programs on cassette without visuals to help out.
“Not all exercise translates to audio, and some translate better than others,” Smith said this week, as she began “Walkfit: Better Body Workout” (Time Warner Audiobooks, audio original; $9.98). The tape, part of Smith’s “Walkfit” series, contains three 20-minute workouts for beginners to advanced exercisers.
Smith said that before 1983, exercise “classes” often were released on audio. But with the advent of video, class instruction more often is released in that medium.
“We’ve come sort of full circle,” Smith said. “In this day and age, because videos are so popular, audio is used for certain kinds of exercise, one being walking.”
Smith said she has sold more than 250,000 of her Walkfit System packages (which include copies of her audios) through television advertising, “and we get thousands of letters. Basically, the biggest response is to these audio tapes because people, on their own, would never go as far. You’d never go as fast, and you’d never get the same workout. So the tapes really help to motivate.”
But why put instructions on a walking tape? Don’t people already know how to walk? “If you want to go out for a stroll, you’re not necessarily going to get a great workout,” Smith said. “And if you want to start really using walking - as opposed to stepping or running or some other form of exercise - as your workout, and your goal is to not only burn calories but to get a cardiovascular workout, then you need to be able to pick up the pace.
“Pumping up the pace requires certain techniques. For instance, your arms control the speed of your legs. If you can’t pump your arms fast enough, your legs can’t go any faster. So we work on how you do that.”
Walking as an exercise particularly lends itself to audio instruction, Smith said, “because it is a natural activity that everyone does already, and you can, through description, explain the techniques.
“With your description, you just have to be very vivid. … In a video you can just start to march in place, and you can start moving your arms in a certain way and the people will follow along. In an audio, you have to describe (it) like: ‘You need to bend your arms at a 90-degree angle. Your arms start working like pistons; only let them come up as high as your chest and only as far back as your hip hemline.’ And you have to get very exact on how you describe that arm action.”
The music on Smith’s tapes becomes a tool to help pace the exercise.
“We design the music in such a way that it progresses from the warm-up through the workout. It peaks and then it brings you back down through a cool-down and finally into stretches.”
Equally important, said Smith, is using the music to motivate.
Smith also said she carefully plans the pacing of the tape and where the instruction will go within the songs.
Future tapes in the series will incorporate contemporary music - country-western, rock and easy listening - and Smith said that means working more around lyrics.