My face is red- not from embarrassment, but from another work-out on Exercise TV. This time, I plowed through a work out with Jake, who was the founder of Exercise TV for Comcast and the creator of “Body by Jake Global”, which has become a kind of empire within the fitness industry. I was curious about Jake and did some Internet sleuthing to find out what little I could about the self-proclaimed Fitness Guru.

A quick visit to Jake’s website reveals that he was one of the first people to invent the personal trainer fitness industry over thirty years ago.  I couldn’t find any outside verification of that and have to wonder whether ole Jake and Al Gore have the same publicist. (Remember Al’s claim that he invented the Internet?)

In addition to Jake’s creation of Exercise TV (which I think is absolutely great as I prefer working out at home to sweating in front of perfect strangers at the gym), Jake Steinfeld (not to be confused with Seinfeld) launched a music label specifically targeted to people needing peppy music to exercise to. All of the music on the new label, which is called, “Don’t Quit Music” was designed with the intention of keeping people highly motivated to work out.

Jake is also an actor, although I can't remember seeing him in anything, he apparently had his own TV show and has appeared in minor roles in some movies.

I also learned that Jake was appointed as the Chairman of a California board devoted to making California the only “Fitness State” by no less than Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger himself. Unsurprisingly, the California Governor has been a leader in promoting health and fitness in his state.

To see if Jake was really a fitness expert, I took the “Body by Jake” challenge and did one of his work-outs on Exercise TV.  The routinek lasted for 40 minutes and required some endurance, hearty knees, and a basketball. As we moved from jumping jacks to squats to lunges, to push-ups with three kinds of variations to basketball-like moves,  I stayed interested in the work-out, felt challenged by it in some parts, and never felt like skipping a particular segment because it was too easy or too difficult or too boring. Like many of the work-outs available on DVD or on Exercise TV, the trainer was accompanied by two people demonstrating poses- one with a modified version of the activity.