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The sport of competitive aerobics has evolved naturally out of aerobic exercise classes. The National Aerobic Championship (NAC) was created in 1983 by Karen and Howard Schwartz, who founded competitive aerobics. The NAC was the first national competition for aerobics presented in the United States. Its format and rules have become the international standard for aerobic competition around the world. In 1989 Howard Schwartz founded the International Competitive Aerobics Federation (ICAF), which became the governing body of the sport.The growth of the sport has been impressive:
In 1990 the first World Aerobic Championship was held among sixteen countries. It was televised in thirty countries. In 1994 thirty-five countries took part. A year later the World Aerobic Championship was televised in 175 countries. More recently, the Federation of International Sports Aerobics and Fitness, which has some twenty-five member nations, has sponsored the Professional World Aerobic Championship in Adelaide, Australia (2004) and Ghent, Netherlands (2005).
Championship competitive aerobics is a rigorous display of both compulsory and freestyle moves choreographed into a two-minute routine set to music. People have called it the “toughest two minutes in sports.” The performance showcases flexibility, strength, and endurance as well as creativity and dance.The competitors follow rules and regulations and are judged by an international panel.

The word aerobic means “with oxygen.” Aerobics is a system of exercises designed to promote the supply and use of oxygen in the body. Aerobic exercises include biking, walking, running, dancing, rowing, and skating. Aerobic exercises increase cardiorespiratory fitness, which is the heart’s ability to pump blood and deliver oxygen throughout the body. Benefits of cardiorespiratory fitness include increased endurance and energy, decreased heart disease, blood pressure, and cholesterol, and an increased ability to manage stress and control weight.
The word aerobics is relatively new in the context of exercise and sport. Dr. Kenneth Cooper, a U.S. Air Force physician, in 1968 published a book entitled Aerobics, which was based on Cooper’s research on coronary artery disease. Cardiovascular diseases, at their peak during the 1960s, accounted for 55 percent of all U.S. deaths annually. Cooper developed his aerobic exercise program in the spirit of preventive medicine, feeling that the contributions of aerobic exercise to cardiovascular health are significant. Cooper felt that if people lower their blood pressure and cholesterol, control their weight, and eat a proper diet they can lower the incidence of cardiovascular disease. One goal of Cooper’s aerobic research was to develop a prescription for exercise, a specific program for people to follow. His book identified the quantity, kind, and frequency of such exercise. Cooper continued to spread his message with later books: The New Aerobics (1970), Aerobics for Women (1972), and The AerobicsWay (1977). Cooper traveled all over the world lecturing and explaining his beliefs and methods, contending that aerobics, exercise, and preventive medicine know no barriers of culture, language, or ethnicity. The Congress of International Military Sports in 1968 adopted Cooper’s program for Sweden, the United States, Austria, Finland, Brazil, and Korea. His aerobic program spread from these military influences to civilian populations. For example, in Brazil runners ask, “Have you done your Cooper today?” meaning, “Have you done your running or jogging?” Aerobic dancing developed as an alternative to running for women who wanted to improve their physical fitness. About the time Cooper was promoting his program in 1968, Judy Sheppard Missett was beginning an aerobic exercise program called “Jazzercise.” It was a highly choreographed set of exercises set to music. It incorporated muscle group work with new dance trends. In 1969 Jackie Sorenson started “aerobic dance,” which was also a choreographed set of dance patterns set to music with the goal of increased cardiovascular fitness. By the early 1970s people used the terms aerobics, aerobic dance, and dance exercise interchangeably to describe the combination of dance movements and exercise set to music. Most participants in the early aerobic dance classes were women.
To attract more men, by the late 1970s and early 1980s advocates shortened the term aerobic dance to aerobics. Co-educational classes were now offered, and the aerobics boom followed. Aerobic classes were offered in a variety of settings: churches, schools, community centers, and, of course, health clubs.The popularity of aerobics is attributable in part to the social support and reinforcement inherent in a group exercise situation. The U.S. movie actress Jane Fonda and the U.S. fitness expert Richard Simmons contributed to the growth of aerobics, and the boom spread all over the world. Fonda’s early exercises primarily were resistance exercises for different parts of the body performed in one spot.Therefore, although she encouraged participants to work hard and to discipline themselves to obtain desired body changes, in the strict sense of the word, her programs did not contain aerobic exercises, and her early workouts were criticized as being unsuitable for ordinary exercisers. The emphasis of Simmons’s exercise programs shifted from dance and fun to the weight-loss benefits of exercise. Aerobics consequently began to be connected closely with improved appearance.
Today many women celebrities (such as models Elle
MacPherson and Cindy Crawford) promote their own exercise programs. Although these beautiful women
might employ professional fitness experts to design and demonstrate their programs, they do further cement the notion that aerobics is a means to an improved body. When aerobics became a means to the perfect body, it also became increasingly commercialized, institutionalized, professionalized, and specialized.
Many of the early aerobic classes were what is called “high impact,” that is, both of a participant’s feet may be off the floor at any given time. High-impact aerobics was characterized by running or jogging in place or performing jumping jacks or small jumps or hops.This style was an exciting beginning; however, it created a tremendous amount of stress on the joints, and many participants developed impact-related injuries. Thus, “low-impact” aerobics was developed in response to the increase in injuries. “Low-impact” means that one foot is kept on the floor at all times; the routines are characterized by marching in place and traveling from one side of the room to the other. Next came variableimpact aerobics, which is a combination of high- and low-impact moves.This style combined the intensity of high impact with the safety of low impact. Many new types of aerobic classes have been developed.These include water aerobics, strength, sculpting, abdominal, sports conditioning, and circuit or interval classes. Step aerobics, which the U.S. gymnast Gin Miller developed while recovering from a knee injury, took the aerobic industry by storm. Step aerobics involves stepping up and down from a platform that is 15 to 30 centimeters high while performing step combinations. As the boom spread, U.S. instructors began to travel to other countries to train new instructors. In the United States an estimated 6 million people participated in 1978, 19 million in 1982, and 22 million in 1987. By the late 1990s, some 25 million people participated. Forty-five percent of aerobic participants were women aged thirty to fifty, and aerobics was their only form of exercise. Another 45 percent of participants added aerobics to their regimen of sport and recreational activities. Ten percent of participants were instructors. Aerobics quickly evolved from its early choreographed dance format to a varied form of dance, sport, and exercise movements set to music. Now virtually every community offers some sort of aerobic exercise class. Aerobics has even expanded into the home:
One can see aerobic dance leaders on television at just about any hour or rent or buy aerobic videos.
Training and educational organizations have
emerged to ensure safe and effective programs. In the
United States the Aerobic and Fitness Association of America (AFAA) and the International Dance Exercise Association (IDEA) developed into two of the largest in the world, helping to promote aerobics in virtually every country. IDEA had more than nineteen thousand instructor-members in more than eighty countries in 2004. Such organizations helped to develop fundamental components of the aerobic exercise class. A welldesigned aerobic exercise class consists of five segments: the warm-up or prestretch (10 minutes), the aerobic segment (20–45 minutes), cool-down (5–10 minutes), strength work (10–20 minutes), and the final stretch (5–10 minutes).
Aerobics helps participants to develop overall physical fitness. Aerobic dance, for example, can improve a participant’s cardiovascular fitness, flexibility, strength, and body composition (percentage of body fat). The rhythmic movements performed to music also help to develop coordination and balance.