In 1985 Billy Blanks called me and said, " I have an idea how to get more people to exercise. By using karate techniques and music, so it will be fun." I said, "Okay......"
He coined the term "Karobics" He asked me if I knew an Aerobics instructor because he wanted one instead of a Martial Arts instructor. I asked "Why?" He said, "A karate guy will teach like he teaches Karate. I want someone who will teach it like Aerobics, teach it like exercise." I called my friend, Michelle, a local aerobics instructor. Her, me and Billy met in my dojo and for two weeks Billy worked with her on how he thought it should be taught. We then implemented the first Karobics class, in my dojo, in Boston. We had class on Monday, Wednesday and Fridays at 11 in the morning. There wasn't much success. There were a handful of housewifes, some of my students from an earlier morning class and some of Billy's guys. The class lasted a little over a year before we cancelled it for lack of interest.
THEN.....Billy relocates to L.A somewhere around 1988. He had a tough go of it. Married with two kids, he struggled to make ends meet. Taught a karate class out of the garage in his rented house in Reseda.
He opened his first school in Studio city a couple years later. And it eventually took off. He had to rent a bigger place. He then offered karobics - and karobics went crazy in L.A. Billy, his daughter Shelly, his sister Irene and his brother Michael all taught Karobics. Billy also had a huge karate class by this point.
Then all of Hollywood started coming there. My wife and I had recently relocated to Maui and I flew to L.A for a week every month to teach and train. I was stunned when I first went there. There were four karobics classes, six nights a week. Each class had 80 to 100 L.A; women (not even a hint of exaggeration in those numbers) this was in addition to several hundred martial arts students in regular classes.
So....it got huge. A Hollywood power couple were training there. They approached Billy and wanted to team up with him and take it to a national level. Naive, he said "sure" Two weeks later he called me on Maui. He told me the couple came in one day, and told them what they were going to do. he said he did not like the idea. They then took out some legal papers and told him, "We just trademarked the term Karobics. We now own it. You'll do what we want."
He promptly threw them out on their worthless asses. Right there on Ventura Boulevard. I heard they even bounced. He then said to me, "We gotta come up with a new name for Karobics" I said, "okay, let's think on it for the next couple of days".
He calls back two days later, all excited, He says, "I got it. we'll call it Tae-bo. A combination of Tae-kwon-do and boxing." (Billy won the Golden Gloves here in Mass. I worked his corner)
I'll never forget what I told him -
"Billy, that's the single worse name for anything I've ever heard. It's stupid, completely unmarketable - it just won't work."
Boy, can I call em', or what? Thank God he doesn't listen to me.
Three weeks later I land in L.A again. There are now seven Tae-bo classes a day. There is one hundred women in every single class and a line out the door waiting for the next one. This is in addition to the Martial arts program - which was the largest I've ever seen in a school to this day.
Soon, fighters were attending the classes for cardio. It was the single toughest workout I've seen, and I was in world class shape at the time. He had to offer Tae-bo at 6 a.m, 7, 8 and 9. Then in the afternoons at 4,5,6,7,8. It was fricken crazy. He again rented a larger place right down the street on Ventura.
A guy in the gym, Paul was his name, was a marketing genius. Back in the 1970's Evil Kinevil used to do commercials for this gizmo that you touched to where you had pain - and pressed a little plunger on top of it. The device gave a mild electrical stimulus that supposedly helped heal aches and pains. Paul sold 20 million units at 29 or 39 bucks apiece (I forget) You know what the unit was? It was the automatic lighter on a gas grill. It just caused a mild spark. Paul purchased them in bulk for a dollar each. Do the math.
Paul approached Billy and said he wanted to help Billy go national. Billy, much wiser now, hooked up several lawyers (who trained in the Karate class) with Paul. The rest, as they say, is history. Billy and Gayle flew out to Maui shortly after. We went out to dinner. He showed me a copy of the check he got from Paul. It was for forty million dollars. (With one hundred million more to come over the next seven years.) I asked him, "Did that puppy clear?" he said,"Yup." I said, You're buying dinner! Like forever!"
Tae-bo was never meant for self defense. Or for fighting, or for kickboxing, It was for exercise, fitness and weight loss. The way Billy, Shelly, Irene and Michael taught it - was just plain nasty. Toughest workout around.
Anyway.....that's the skinny on Tae-bo.
