Richard Simmons made it his life’s work to make train enjoyable — for everyone. He is pictured above in 1984.
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American Broadcasting Corporations/Getty Pictures
Richard Simmons made it his life’s work to make train enjoyable — for everyone. He is pictured above in 1984.
American Broadcasting Corporations/Getty Pictures
Richard Simmons was immediately recognizable in his quick shorts, sparkly tank tops and frizzy hair. He was one of the authentic, flamboyant and beloved health personalities of the final 50 years.
Simmons died at his residence in Los Angeles on Saturday, a consultant confirmed to NPR. He was 76. A Los Angeles police division spokesperson informed NPR that police performed a dying investigation at an handle within the Hollywood Hills. NPR used public data to match the handle to a home owned by Simmons.
Police didn’t give a reason for dying however mentioned no foul play was suspected.
Simmons created a health empire starting within the Nineteen Seventies that included movies, courses, books, merchandise, infomercials, his personal present and loads of TV appearances.
It helped that his entrepreneurship coincided with new know-how — or new, a minimum of, within the Eighties. Simmons put out health courses on VHS cassettes to be performed on VCRs. In his lifetime, he made greater than 65 health movies, akin to “Sweatin’ to the Oldies,” that offered over 20 million copies.
He grew up as an “sad, bewildered teenager”
Born Milton Teagle Richard Simmons, in New Orleans, he described himself as a compulsive eater as a younger boy. Others bullied and made enjoyable of him due to his weight.
“I grew up with none bodily training,” he remembered on NPR’s Inform Me Extra in 2008. “I used to be 200 kilos within the eighth grade. And once I graduated highschool I used to be virtually 300 kilos. I used to be a really … sad, bewildered teenager who could not work out what I wished in life and why I had such a robust relationship with meals.”
Simmons mentioned on his web site that he tried diets and laxatives, however finally adopted “a way of life of steadiness, average consuming and train.” His life’s work grew to become making train enjoyable — for every type of our bodies.
In 1974, Simmons opened his personal studio in Beverly Hills that catered to individuals who wished to drop extra pounds and get in form. It was initially referred to as The Anatomy Asylum, however was later often known as SLIMMONS. It even featured one of many first salad bars within the space, referred to as “Ruffage.” Simmons continued to be a presence there till 2013.
Simmons’ exercise model was upbeat and welcoming. In a business for considered one of his well-liked “Sweatin’ to the Oldies” movies, he enthused, “Should you’re searching for a energetic, entertaining, stimulating, humorous, colourful, frolicking, playful, inspiring, secure, low-impact exercise that is stuffed with kicks, thrills, gusto, fervor, ardour, fury, bustle and motion you do not have to look any additional. That is it!”
No different health movie star seemed like Richard Simmons. And nobody else in train movies of the period seemed just like the folks in his courses, in keeping with historian Natalia Mehlman Petrzela. “They had been all ages, they had been women and men. Most notably, loads would have been thought-about chubby by requirements on the time.”
Petrzela, who wrote the e book, Match Nation: The Positive aspects and Pains of America’s Train Obsession, says it was revolutionary to welcome fats folks into health throughout the Nineteen Seventies and ’80s. Extra lately, although, Petrzela says Simmons has been criticized for fat-shaming.
“That criticism is just not misplaced,” she says. “However I additionally assume it is so vital to see the best way that … the vital work that he did in increasing folks’s sense of who deserved to train, who was welcome on the gymnasium and who was deserving of discovering pleasure by motion and in communities of motion.”
In his 60s, Simmons grew to become a recluse. Lots of his followers had been baffled as to why this very public and constructive particular person went quiet and did not go away his residence. The podcast Lacking Richard Simmons and some documentaries delved into the thriller, together with one produced by TMZ that appeared on Fox and Hulu. In a 2022 assertion, Simmons tersely thanked his followers. Earlier interviews, akin to one on the At the moment present in 2016, alluded to well being points and a need to spend time alone.
Simmons’ philosophy was easy. He preached positivity, portion management and transferring your physique for a minimum of half-hour day by day. That message resonated with individuals who did not see themselves within the conventional world of health — and those that felt just like the final particular person picked for the workforce.