The Fit Girl Next Door
By L.E. Gomez
Chalene Johnson may be the powerhouse of a modern fitness phenomenon that energizes the masses at health clubs everywhere, but the girl from Michigan is still there, true at heart.
Fifteen years after she created the ever-popular fitness program, Turbo Kick®, Johnson's rising status as a fitness personality has not shaken her ability to be a mother, wife and mentor. You ask her about her roots, and she'll bring up Rachel Ray. Ray was fueled by a passion to teach people that cooking can be fun and simple. Johnson sees the parallels.
"In much that way, though my early aspirations were not fitness, I have always simply wanted to help people experience fun when they exercise," she said. "My goal is to help people be happier, healthier and live a more balanced life."
Much of that life is a product of her success, which has brought in a lot of notoriety and fanfare. At the same time it has brought in a lot of work, hundreds of TV hours promoting her program, filming DVDs and connecting with her fans on the Internet.
Johnson's image and energy fuels the brand, whether it is on the cover of magazines, on TV news programs, workout DVDs, infomercials or websites. None of it happened over night.
From an early age, Johnson was drawn to kinetic energy,martial arts classes, dance, hip hop or simply the way cheerleading squads would combine sound to accentuate their choreography. The energy that came out of human movement was particularly attractive to her. That attraction would eventually lead to the creation of the Turbo Kick program. But early in her fitness career, the 1970s and 80s, aerobics was king.
Judi Sheppard Missett, with Jazzercise ®, and Jane Fonda, with aerobics, brought fitness to the masses on TV and in fitness clubs. The industry wouldn't see a noteworthy explosion until the 1990s when videocassette players became household products nationwide.
After graduating from Michigan State University, Johnson settled in Southern California where she experienced first-hand a shifting movement in group exercise as new formats emerged. The pressure was on fitness instructors who were expected to choreograph, test and create music programs for a wide variety of formats.
So she took what she knew about Tae Kwon Do, dance and aerobics, mixed her own music and brought it into the gym where she worked as a part-time fitness instructor. The concept was fresh. It didn't even have a name at the time but it was catching on. By 1997, Johnson created Powder Blue Productions to help produce notes and instructional DVDs (VHS at the time) with music, the combination became a preprogrammed course that trained instructors.
"In essence I was providing instructors with the benefit of letting me do the `testing' and research and development for each of their classes and providing them with a paint-by-number system that allowed them to focus on another format, such as step, or another that they enjoyed choreographing themselves," she said.
In its first year, Powder Blue Productions trained nearly 1,000 instructors. Within a few years, the program was getting attention at health clubs across the country. To date over 80,000 instructors in 43 countries have gone through one of Johnson's many prechoreographed fitness trainings. "For the first 10 years we never spent a dollar on advertising. It was all word of mouth from one fitness instructor to another via message boards, fitness meetings, conventions and group fitness forums," she said.
Johnson became a figure hard to ignore. Two years after she officially created Turbo Kick, a small (but rapidly growing) company in Los Angeles, Calif., took interest in her workout program as something that could be sold as a home gym product.
Through its infomercials and its diverse menu of in-home fitness programs, Beachbody tapped a demand for accessible fitness and weight loss programs outside the gym. Beachbody was ready for the changing times, and along with it were a number of fitness trainers who wanted to introduce their fresh and exciting concepts. Johnson was one of them.
...I have always simply wanted to help people experience fun when they exercise...My goal is to help people be happier, healthier and live a more balanced life
At the time, Johnson had hired Jay Blahnik and Julie LaFond to manage and process offers to market her product that were coming in from various infomercial companies. Through that process, the group declined offers from some infomercial giants to go with what was at the time a small up-and-coming player. Together, Johnson and Beachbody introduced Turbo Jam® as the in-home version of Turbo Kick. Turbo Jam spawned a number one selling infomercial and a home-workout craze. Beachbody is now a fitness infomercial giant with programs such as P90X®, Insanity® and TurboFire®.
While Turbo Kick initiated with the instructor, pro-level demographic, the program later shifted to a consumer market. The target end user was no longer the veteran fitness instructor, Johnson explained. It was now the fitness enthusiast, or as she said, the one "who has moved from the back row to the front row and now is looking for another challenge."
"Because of Beachbody, there are literally millions of DVDs in the homes of people who might not ever have gathered up the gumption it takes to try a group fitness class at a health club," she said. "I am so thankful that we did the early research when many lucrative deals were on the table and decided to go with a company that really `gets' not only fitness, but the importance of the culture and the family I had created with Turbo Kick. The relationship has been amazing."
To some, Johnson is the master role model of what it takes to create a successful enterprise¿particularly one in which prominence can help reach a bigger goal, and that is to be a mentor.
Though she continues to create workouts and manage Powder Blue Productions, her focus has zeroed in on personal development through a series of audio programs called "Car SmartTM" and via her motivational retreats like the "life-changing" weekend in Southern California called Camp Do More. Along with the fitness component, her audio programs and retreats are about coaching people to balance their lives outside the health club with goals like reducing stress, improving self-image and making the best use of their time to live according to their priorities, she said.
"Quite by accident I ended up in fitness videos, but my personal mission extends beyond fitness. Of the camp she said, "It's my calling. It's my passion.
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