Year after year, the most popular way for busy women to work out is to exercise with fitness workout videos in the privacy of their own homes. With their low average cost per workout, It's no wonder these videos have endured through the years.

Where It All Began: Workout, Starring Jane Fonda

The workout fitness workout video business owes its start to Jane Fonda's 1982 "Workout." In a long shag haircut, black and red stripes, and black spandex pants, the fit and limber Jane Fonda does 90 minutes worth of a high energy, high impact aerobics in a pair of bare feet that to this day make fitness trainers and podiatrists cringe.

Jane Fonda's Workout was a screaming success, and she followed it up with other fitness workout videos for the next 13 years. Some of Fonda's best selling fitness workout videos are Jane Fonda's Pregnancy, Birth, and Recovery Workout; Jane Fonda's Light Aerobics And Stress Reduction Program; and Jane Fonda's Workout Presents Fun House Fitness: The Fun House Funk. Fonda's last video was released in 1995: Jane Fonda's Personal Trainer Series: Abs, Buns & Thighs.

Popular 1990s Fitness Workout Videos

The dance fitness craze continued to grow throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s. Established programs like Judi Missett Shepherd's popular group fitness Jazzercize organization jumped on the bandwagon and diversified their products lines by coming out with fitness workout videos of their own.

By the 1990s, health and fitness professionals began to recognize the role of controlling dietary fat in weight loss, and the desirability of burning fat during exercise. These advances in knowledge came around the same time as high-impact exercisers had been doing their high impact aerobics for ten years and were starting to feel pain in their joints from the stress.

A new generation of low impact fat-burning fitness workout videos was born, with the likes of Kathy Smith, "Body By Jake," and Gilad and his Navy Seals topping the fitness workout video charts. Step aerobic videos enjoyed a surge of popularity, and other 1990s videos focused on pumping up abs and buns with grueling lower body workouts.

Today's Fitness Workout Videos

Fitness workout videos today are as different from Jane Fonda's Workout as night is from day. Yoga, Pilates, and Kick Boxing videos are at least as popular as traditional 60-minute aerobic workout routines. The biggest revolution in fitness workout videos is the proliferation of short, tightly focused video routines on video sharing web sites like You Tube and Google Video.