Let's get physical... with Bruce Jenner!

Long before there was the supreme hotness of Brody Jenner, there was his father Bruce. Despite succumbing to bad haircuts of the era, the 1976 Olympic gold medalist was a total babe who became a national hero and gave us arguably the most memorable Wheaties box of the century.

In 1984 he also gave us The Bruce Jenner Winning Workout.

This was the decade in which practically everyone with a recognizable name was begging us to work out with them via the magic of VHS. But come on, whose exercise advice would you rather take: a movie star who’s secretly puking up her food off camera in order to stay skinny or a celebrated athlete who earned his buffness the healthy and natural way? (OK, stupid question. The answer is obviously whomever you think is cuter. Duh.)

Bruce’s Winning vid leads us through two workouts that are energetic and fun. Also included are nutrition tips and lessons on how to better manage stress.

What strikes me most—after the visually abusive pink and turquoise ’80s fashions, of course—is Bruce’s on-camera charisma. The guy’s a natural. Why he didn’t parlay that into a big screen career is beyond me. (Granted, his one and only attempt at movie stardom, Can’t Stop the Music, was a colossal flop, but that certainly didn’t stymie his co-star, Steve Guttenberg, who dusted himself off and tried again. And again. And again.)

Like the best video fitness, it gets a little gay when Bruce starts doing dance kicks at 1:41, but Jenner’s masculinity has never been in question. There are even some odd wrist flexes at 2:40, the aerobic benefit of which escapes me. But there must be some advantages if Bruce is doing them. There are probably even some ulta-hetero guys out there dosing and overdoing these flexes and then admiringly saying things to each other like, “Dude, your wrists are massive.”

Sadly, The Bruce Jenner Winning Workout is not currently available on DVD, but thanks to the Internet we can all exercise like Bruce and fantasize about one day having our own Wheaties box.

Or we could skip all that and just keep fantasizing about Brody.