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If your body is a temple, then the gym is a sanctuary. It’s no longer a place to just sweat for an hour, but a third space where culture, wellness, health, physiology, fashion, science, bodies, and beauty meet. Our Working It Out package investigates modern fitness and its increasing impact on our everyday lives.
Weslande Jean Baptiste, a mother in Cleveland, never used to work out much. That is, until she found Tae Bo videos, which feature a blend of taekwondo and were created by Billy Blanks in the ’90s. “I was 10 months postpartum and looking for at-home workouts on TikTok,” she says. Jean Baptiste’s interest was initially piqued because you don’t need equipment to do Tae Bo, but after three days, she became hooked. Now, she does it every day.
Older workout videos, including P90X videos from cult-followed trainer Tony Horton and step aerobics led by the late Richard Simmons, are experiencing a new surge. While some people are sweating in the newest workout classes, others are going back to the basics. There’s a subset who are returning to the old-school fitness routines they watched their parents do. But what’s the allure of revisiting workouts of yore? In an unsettled economy, cost and accessibility might be driving factors. You can find Tae Bo workouts for free on YouTube. And for $10 per month, you can access every video on BODi, the home of P90X (plus, it has plenty of free videos available). You don’t need to go to a gym or shell out money for fancy equipment.
The classics are also evolving to meet the modern era. P90X has an updated version called P90X Generation Next, which has taken the classic “Ab Ripper” and plyometric routines and given them a facelift. According to Carl Daikeler, CEO of BODi, the company behind P90X, P90X Generation Next has added cardio intervals between sets, a focus on coordination and mobility, and two days of active recovery per week. It’s the same type of intense workout but with a more nuanced and holistic view. “Old P90X I equated to watching Arnold [Schwarzenegger] and all the guys working out in a Gold’s Gym in Venice Beach,” he says. “They’re just pumping iron and going for it. This is a far more sophisticated approach to functional training.” But if you want the nostalgia factor, you can still watch Horton tell you to “do your best and forget the rest.”
People on TikTok are also trying old workouts for entertainment. One video from user Victoria Marano went viral, as she tried out step aerobics. “Just discovered Jane Fonda’s workouts…genuinely what was in the water in the ’80s? This is actually so hard,” she wrote over a clip of herself mirroring Fonda’s movements in front of a TV. (She also later discovered CherFitness, starring the singer.) The Pilates instructor known as Burn with Bec even started a series where she tries workouts of yore and analyzes their validity. She’s attempted aerobics, Cindy Crawford’s routine, and Denise Austin’s regimen.
Wistfulness might be playing into the interest too. “The children who watched their parents do these workouts at home are now the age that their parents were when they were doing them,” says Ajay Marken, MD, a psychiatrist at NYU Langone. The fact that these workouts have stood the test of time also gives them an authority of sorts—we know these workouts work. And in a post-pandemic world with return-to-office mandates, we find ourselves in the perfect position to dust off the equipment our parents bought in 1990 and do a quick routine in front of the TV.
A version of this story appears in the May 2026 issue of ELLE.