Exercise gurus work at their staying power

When it comes to fitness gurus, it seems we like them on the seasoned side. Check a top fitness video list, and you’ll see plenty of familiar faces who are pushing or past the half-century mark: perky Denise Austin, buff Billy Blanks, agile Karen Voight, vivacious Leslie Sansone.

These experts have achieved superstar rank. Their multi-market ventures include successful books and videos that cover a range of exercise programs and styles, exercise-related products they’ve either designed or endorsed, frequent appearances in fitness magazines and television shows and name recognition outside the fitness realm.

Fitness is often marketed and perceived as a young person’s pursuit: Witness the plethora of health club commercials and exercise product infomercials featuring buff 20-year-old fitness models plus the scores of under-30 personal trainers who populate almost every gym. On the surface, this may seem anomalous. But someone is keeping the pros high on the charts, and it’s not just flab-conscious baby boomers; it’s also men and women young enough to be their kids.

“They’re in fabulous condition and they’re role models,” says Nancy Trent, president of Trent & Co., a New York-based marketing and public relations firm specializing in fitness and spas. “Someone in their 50s who looks the ultimate is someone I would trust if I were in my 20s,” says Trent, who has worked with Austin, Kathy Smith and Tony Little. “You listen to someone like that because they’re living proof that they know what they’re talking about.”

There are few overnight sensations in the fitness world. “It’s the fact that they’ve been in the industry for years, paid their dues and become known in the industry,” says Kathie Davis, executive director of San Diego-based Idea Health and Fitness Assn. “It makes perfect sense to me. It takes years before you establish a clientele, and then another step to be good enough to present [teach a class] at a fitness convention, then getting the opportunity to do a video, and that’s when you really begin to get recognized.”

Getting and staying in the public eye are essential but difficult. Having your own television show -- or two, in Austin’s case -- doesn’t hurt, nor does a high-rotation infomercial. Being anointed by Oprah Winfrey can propel someone from successful aerobics teacher to fitness superstar. Being featured in magazines is another key component of fame.

“You have to support everything you’re doing with media attention,” says Trent. That hasn’t always been easy; 10 years ago Trent couldn’t convince fashion or women’s magazine editors to do fitness features unless they were tied to a fashion trend, like how to shape up your legs to wear mini skirts.

Tae Bo king Blanks is about to find out whether a long hiatus from television will affect sales of his new videos. “Tae Bo Flex” and two with Christian themes, “Tae Bo Power Within” and “Tae Bo Strength Within,” are set to debut in October. Infomercials will follow a few weeks later touting even more videos, including one that uses an inflated punching bag. It’s been three years since Blanks, who’s about to turn 48, has been on the small screen, and there’s no telling if people will tune in or out when he returns, especially after reports of people sustaining injuries while doing Tae Bo. Blanks doesn’t seem worried.

“I’m excited,” he says, speaking from his Sherman Oaks studio, where he teaches. “I may not be physically in people’s eye, but I believe I’m in the hearts of people. People are still talking about Tae Bo.”

Blanks says he continues to be mobbed by fans when he travels. And it’s a testament to Tae Bo’s acceptance into the vernacular that it’s mentioned in the chart-topping Train song “Drops of Jupiter.” Not many fitness gurus can boast that.

But no established fitness expert can stay stagnant and continue to sell their videos and products. A savvy, fitness-minded audience that stays on top of trends and research demands the next new thing, and if the gurus aren’t paying attention, they run the risk of being perceived as last year’s news.

“It’s different than it was 20 years ago,” says Davis, “when people were content with a high-impact aerobics class. What we’re seeing is consistent with our short attention span as a society, and now we’ve got to have the fitness toys and the balls and the weights and the bars. The industry is forced to come up with new and innovative programming.” To present a new program at an Idea convention, says Davis, even recognized fitness experts have to have a unique cardio workout or innovative strength-training course.

Voight, Smith and the rest are smart enough to stay up with current trends and scientific research. In their video and teaching history, nearly all have gone from generic aerobic workouts to lower-impact cardio programs, added strength training and core exercises and are touting yoga and Pilates, the current fitness crazes. Most, however, are astute enough to realize their own limitations.

Asked if she would ever do a hip-hop exercise video, 45-year-old Austin lets out a big laugh. “I can’t move like that,” she says. “I do what seems natural. I was a gymnast as a child, and so Pilates came naturally.” She adds that her audience keeps her in tune with most-wanted fitness styles: “They’re the ones years ago who asked me to do a Pilates video,” she says, adding that traveling extensively allows her to keep up on trends. Her new book and video, “Shrink Your Female Fat Zones,” came out in August.

Austin fully expects to stay in her workout clothes and sneakers well past middle age, and her role model is the original fitness guru, Jack LaLanne, now 88. (She got her start on TV appearing on his show in 1981.) By then, Austin will have a whole new slate of competitors who are now just nipping at her heels, including Orange County-based Marcos Prolo and Lauren Eirk of Louisville, Ky., who are developing followings and dream of having their own TV shows, product lines, books and videos, their names synonymous with fitness, a la Blanks and Austin. Although each has achieved some degree of success via videos and fitness conventions, both realize they have a way to go to achieve superstardom.

“To look back at 14 years of trying to get hired at conferences and putting out projects that don’t get picked up, yeah, it’s been a hard process,” says 34-year-old Prolo, group exercise manager at the Sports Club/Irvine. “Eventually somebody’s going to give you a break.”

Traveling to fitness conventions, developing a strength-training class and selling videos on his Web site have helped boost his recognition level. Prolo knows that establishing a niche within the industry will be a factor in his success: “We can’t invent a new bicep curl,” he says, “but we can make it different and make it fun.”

Lauren Eirk knows that to break out into the big leagues she’s going to have to eventually break out of Louisville, where she’s the group fitness director at the Louisville Athletic Club. Eirk, 34, has earned a reputation in the realm of yoga and resistance training and has done the convention and conference circuit. “Louisville to the rest of the world,” she says, “is not that big of a place, and the trends come out of major cities like New York and Los Angeles. I’ve sacrificed a lot, but I love what I do, and I think that if you believe in what you do, success comes back to you.”