After 30 years of working out on national television, Gilad Janklowicz is keeping his energetic body in motion. And he’s grateful for it.
"I thought it was sort of like a one- or two-year stint and I got lucky, and I never realized it would be going on for 30 years," said the 59-year-old Janklowicz, whose soft-spoken manner in person contrasts with his boisterous on-screen persona.
His daily show, "Bodies in Motion," launches its 30th season today on the Discovery Fit & Health channel as the longest-running fitness show on national TV.
The 30-minute aerobics and toning workout was the first fitness show to appear on ESPN, airing from 1985 to 1996; it then moved to Fox Sports and later the Health Network. It’s been seen in more than 80 countries and has won a slew of awards from both the cable TV and health industries.
Janklowicz was a popular trainer at the famed Sports Connection gym in Los Angeles, with clients like Arnold Schwarzenegger, when he came to Hawaii in 1981 to coach workouts for a private group. He gave a training session at the Honolulu Club, where he was invited to stay as a trainer, and the rest is history.
"I don’t think if I’d stayed in L.A. that I’d ever have been able to accomplish this," he said. "Because Hawaii is a smaller place, I was able to do what in L.A. would have taken a lot more work and a lot more finessing and contact. Everybody wants something out of you. Here it was like, wow, I can really make something happen here locally."
His show retains its familiar format. With beautiful Hawaii scenery as the backdrop, Janklowicz leads a small group through a series of strides and stretches, twists and turns, occasionally with light weights, all to a bouncy pulse of about 130-plus beats per minute.
"It’s like going to an exercise class, except you’re doing it at home with your TV," he said. "You don’t have to get out of your house, you don’t have to park your car, you have no expense. You’re basically clicking on your TV and there’s your workout for you."
The shows are done in one long take — no stopping for a higher kick, a better camera angle or to touch up makeup or hair. Unless there’s a technical difficulty, there are no retakes, so you are seeing the workout as it’s being done.
Janklowicz doesn’t miss a beat, even in moments when a drunk has wandered into the shoot and when a teenager mocked the group by mimicking the routine in the background.
"I have a mirror so I could see him," he said. "So I brought him (the teen) out there and made him do the workout with us."
Often five or six episodes are shot in one day, and this year he brought back some co-stars from past decades to be on the show.
The format is deceptively simple, but it is in keeping with his message about fitness: "Balance — keep it simple, don’t overeat, don’t undereat, and drink a lot of good fluids, water; don’t drink too much of the other stuff."
Janklowicz tailors the show to people who don’t have time to go to the gym or may have fallen off the fitness wagon.
He hears from housewives trying to lose weight after giving birth or at home watching the kids, and former pro athletes who say they wake up to his workouts.
"In my mind the person who’s watching my show is not exactly the person who’s going to the gym," he said. "Because otherwise, they don’t need me. They’re already going to the gym."
Janklowicz himself retains the trim build of a former Olympic hopeful. His running has been sidetracked by recent knee surgery — "sometimes I don’t follow my own advice" about moderation, he said with a laugh — but he swims and lifts weights, although he might lift 200 pounds these days instead of the 300-plus pounds he used to lift as a decathlete for the Israeli national team.
"I’m going to the point where I’m feeling the work, I’m feeling the muscles, I push maybe one or two more and that’s it," he said.
He’s seen many a fitness fad come and go, and while he responds to trends by adding exercises for abs, buns or the body part of the day, he tries to keep it basic.
"I keep myself fresh and up to date with fitness concepts, and I always try to simplify and make it available to the people at home," he said.
Local audiences will want to set their DVRs to catch "Bodies in Motion" at 1 a.m. on the Discovery Fit & Health network. Today’s workout is on "Cardio, Core, Buttocks and Abs." Tuesday’s episode is on shadowboxing.
New episodes air through Dec. 13.
