Michelle Bridges not the only Aussie fitness guru who went from fit to wealthy by helping others to trim the fat

MICHELLE Bridges is not the first Australian woman to have made a name or a fortune telling people how to stay fit.

Olivia Newton-John in a video clip of her 1981 double album Physical.

WHILE some people take to physical fitness to lose weight, the physical fitness industry has made some bank accounts much fatter.

Fitness guru and personal trainer Michelle Bridges has been named in BRW’s list of Australia’s richest self-made women.

Fitness has become a huge industry in modern times as people find the combination of sedentary lifestyles and easy access to fattening foods makes it more difficult to keep personal health in check.

However, the battle against the bulge has been waged for centuries and many women have made a name for themselves, sometimes their fortunes, telling people to get off their broadening bums.

Fitness was not a major problem for the physically active clans of indigenous Australians before the arrival of Europeans in 1788.

Women in traditional Aboriginal society spent long parts of the day gathering and preparing staple foods, burning off calories themselves, while encouraging children to be physically active and learn necessary survival skills.

Aboriginal women carrying their children across water. Picture: from the book ''North Of Capricorn — The Untold Story of Australia's North'' by Henry Reynolds

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After 1788 women continued to do a lot of labour around the home, either as convict servants or as housewives, unless they were wealthy enough to choose leisure activities like taking “a turn” (walking) about the gardens to keep fit.

Australia often latched on to European and American trends in fitness in the 19th century, but most homegrown fitness gurus tended to be men rather than women. Often they were men like the Danish born Hans Bjelke-Petersen (uncle of Sir Joh) who started the BJP Physical Culture gymnasiums aimed at women’s fitness, combining a form of dance and gymnastics that became known simply as physie, short for physical culture.

Some of the problem was that women were in the relative minority when it came to specialists on matters of health and physical fitness.

Women's class at the Bjelke-Petersen School of Physical Culture circa 1934.

That began to change in the 20th century and more women started making a name for themselves in the growing fitness industry.

Among them was Kathleen Burrow, born in Mudgee in 1899, a teacher of physical culture who in 1926 started the Graham-Burrow School of Physical Education, a business that provided exercise and dance classes to children in Catholic schools across Australia.

She went on to become a physiotherapist and a leader of the Legion of Catholic women.

Ivy Lavinia Filshie, born at Captains Flat, NSW in 1892, trained at the Weber and Rice Health and Strength College, marrying the principle Clarence Weber. As Ivy Weber she went on to become Berlei’s expert on female figures.

TV yoga and exercise instructor Swami Sarasvati.

That role brought her to the attention of radio producers and she became famous to a generation of Australian women on the radio giving talks on physical culture.

She would enter Victorian parliament in 1937 and serve on the National Fitness Council from 1939-53.

By the 60s women were playing an even greater role in telling people how to get fit.

In 1961 an exponent of physie, Edith Parsons, started her own non-profit organisation the Edith Parsons School of Physical Culture that is still operating today.

In 1968 Australia became addicted to a more exotic form of fitness dispensed by Indian born woman Swami Sarasvati, who helped popularise yoga in this country.

Although nothing like Bridges’ empire the Swami also wrote books and later sold videos and DVDs.

In the 1980s Olivia Newton John perhaps inadvertently helped kick along a gymnasium workout and aerobics craze in the 80s with the release of the single Lets Get Physical in 1981.

Olivia Newton John in the video clip of her 1981 hit Physical.

The video clip, which was actually meant to distract people from the fact that the song was all about sex, showed Olivia at a gym, wearing sexy workout gear.

The gymwear became part of her own clothing line and she also later also sold gym equipment.

In the 90s a crew cut wearing Australian-born woman named Susan Powter began harassing Americans into cutting their weight with her annoying catchphrase “Stop the insanity.”

Powter, a motivational speaker and fitness expert, based her reputation on claims that she had once weighed 118kg but trimmed down to 58kg.

Susan Powter’s book “Lean, Strong and Healthy”.

Susan Powter before losing weight.

She had her own TV show talking about health and fitness issues and also did a nice sideline in books and exercise gear to help fatten the bank balance but went broke in 1995, but has since bounced back and continues to sell books, DVDs and CDs lecturing people on fitness.

Originally published as Michelle Bridges not the only Aussie fitness guru who went from fit to wealthy by helping others to trim the fat