The 7 funniest workout videos

Source: Web exclusive, February 2011

1. Country hip-hop dancing

Have you ever wondered how twangy country music, hillbilly line dancing and urban hip-hop moves could ever live together in harmony? Voila: "Diane Horner’s Country Hip Hop." Horner appears to have produced a whole collection of instructional line-dancing videos, but we just can’t imagine that anything could compare to the sheer genius of countrifying such classic moves as the Roger Rabbit and the Running Man.

2. Dixie Carter’s lion face

Dixie Carter of Designing Women fame is such a charming Southern belle, you’d think that she could get away with doing just about anything. Alas, no. In this clip from her 1992 exercise video entitled, Dixie Carter’s Unworkout, the actress demonstrates the roaring lion pose by rolling her eyes back in her head, sticking out her tongue and making a sound that registers somewhere between a fog horn and a cat in heat. This posture is used in yoga practice to stretch the facial muscles, and Carter looks both ridiculous and strangely fabulous doing it sitting in an ornate boudoir dressed in silky white pajama-like workout attire.

3. Jazzercise: Move your boogie body

The 1980s was a strange time for exercise. Case in point: this Jazzercise video staring company founder Judi Sheppard Missett. For the uninitiated, Jazzercise is a dance-based fitness program that’s still going strong, but it was particularly popular in the fitness-crazed ’80s when aerobics classes were all the rage. We can’t get enough of this routine set to what we suppose is an ode to the song ‘Move your boogie body’ by funk group The Bar-Kays. There’s so much to love about this video: the outfits, the artfully placed scrunchy, Missett’s colour commentary urging us to, ‘Get loose, for heaven’s sake!’ It’s all classic ’80s fun.

4. Mariko Takahashi’s Fitness Video for Being Appraised as an "Ex-fat Girl"

This is obviously a spoof, but the effect of poodles working out alongside poodle-ized model Mariko Takahashi is both creepy and hilarious. Panasonic produced the short for a series of films the company made for the 2004 Summer Olympics. Acclaimed Japanese director Nagi Noda is the mad genius responsible for this awesomeness, and the script is reportedly taken word-for-word from workout guru Susan Powter’s first video.

5. Buff, Beautiful and Bitchin’ with Vera de Milo

This is a knee-slapping fitness spoof starring slapstick genius Jim Carrey on the 1990s sketch comedy show, In Living Color. In this clip, Carrey plays his recurring character Vera de Milo, a pumped-on-steroids fitness instructor, and leads the cast of Fly Girls (possibly including a young J-Lo on the far left) through a series of bone-cracking exercises and grotesque beauty treatments, all while sporting a matching eclectic-blue bikini top and Spandex bike shorts.

6. Form, Focus, Fitness: The Marky Mark Workout Video

Well before starring in Oscar-nominated films, Mark Wahlberg was Marky Mark’a muscle-bound underwear-model-cum-rapper from Boston’s wrong side of the tracks. And he made a workout video, presumably to help us all how to look awesome in our Calvins. This clip shows Marky working out poolside with his ‘fly honnies’ and sexually harassing a female assistant while doing at-home push-ups. And the Oscar goes to’

7. Splash’s Workout Video

Cuteness alert: This video features an adorable dog doing a workout routine along with his trainer. Here the amazing Splash lifts weights, performs stretches and even does a downward dog. While your pup may not be as talented as Splash, working out with a pet can make exercising just as much fun as watching this video.