CALLANETICS

plural noun (but usually treated as singular) (Health and Fitness) (Lifestyle and Leisure) The trade mark of a physical exercise programme originally developed in the US by Callan Pinckney and based on the idea of building muscle tone through repeated tiny movements using deep muscles. Etymology: Formed by combining the woman's name Callan with -etics, after the model of athletics; probably also influenced by callisthenics, a nineteenth-century word for gymnastics for girls, designed to produce the 'body beautiful' (itself formed on Greek kallos 'beautiful'). History and Usage: One of a long line of exercise programmes and workout routines popular in the eighties, Callanetics was made the subject of a book of the same name in the US in 1984. Despite claims that Callan Pinckney had 'stolen' exercises from the workout routines of her own teachers, the programme was hailed as a new approach to exercise and by 1988 was proving extremely successful commercially. When the book Callanetics was first published in the UK in 1989 it started a new exercise craze, helped on by reports that the Duchess of York had used the programme to get herself back into shape after the birth of her daughter Beatrice. Pinckney herself claims that the unique feature of Callanetics is the way in which it works out deep muscles through movements of only half an inch in each direction from a starting position. Callanetics requires only two hour-long work-out sessions a week. Sunday Times Magazine 5 Mar. 1989, p. 21