Before there was Zumba, Tae Bo, Spinning or even Step Aerobics, fitness video pioneer Cathe Friedrich recognized the need to provide a simple, flexible, affordable and motivating way for Americans to exercise and stay fit. Nearly thirty years and over 200 home exercise workouts later, hundreds of thousands of people have credited Cathe Friedrich for helping them to transform their bodies and their lives with her videos and television shows. Like going through life with a friend, Cathe s followers have grown in their workouts as she has learned and expanded her video offerings, staying focused on her three guiding principles: Professionalism, Passion, and Quality. Cathe is often credited with being the first to bring advanced fitness videos to the home exerciser and helped to shatter the theory that only celebrities could star in fitness videos. As a long-time Certified Group Fitness Instructor, Cathe has taught countless classes at her New Jersey health club and has helped train many of today s top instructors. Since 1986, Cathe has been certified through the American Council on Exercise. Additional specialty fitness certifications include: Indoor Cycling, Body Pump, Kickboxing, Boxing, Prenatal Fitness, Resist-A-Ball, YogaFit, and more. In 2011, Cathe was inducted into the Fitness Hall of Fame along side other profound leaders, such as Arnold Schwartzenegger, Richard Simmons and Kathy Smith. As a leading innovator in the home exercise video industry, she founded Step N Motion Videos in 1988 and in 1989, created one of the first step aerobic videos. Cathe continues to produce fun, intense, and challenging workouts for all body types and fitness levels. Her award-winning workouts have been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Dallas News, Fox Business News, NBC Nightly News, CBS News, QVC and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Health and fitness writers have published articles about her in Shape, Oxygen, Self, Health, Fit, Consumer Digest and Fitness magazines. While appearing on Fox Business News, Cathe shared the story of how she began in the fitness business. At 16, she took an aerobics class and three weeks later, Cathe was asked to teach it and was hooked. A few years later, she was teaching a creative movement class at a fitness studio on the top floor of Carnegie Hall, where she used fourteen inch benches as part of her workout. At the same time, Step Reebok was launching what is now known as step aerobics to the world. Cathe incorporated step into her philosophy, creating her first video, Step N Motion One, which was also one of the first and most influential step aerobic videos of its time. Today, her fitness empire includes all types of workouts and is one of the largest privately-owned fitness video libraries in the world. Collage Video, a source for exercise videos since 1987, says this about Cathe on their web site: Since the early 1990s, Cathe Friedrich s videos have set the standard for challenging workouts. Cathe Friedrich s workout video technique is excellent; her cuing style is very direct. These exercise videos will challenge even the elite athlete! The Dallas Morning News wrote: To say that Cathe Friedrich workout videos are tough is like saying Everest slopes upward. Discovery Channel s FitTV, where Cathe s workouts aired for seven seasons nationally, declared: Cathe is one of the most popular trainers on our network. She is a power-intense cardio-buster, a punch and crunch trainer.  Always on the cutting edge, Cathe recognized the power of the internet and was the first to sell fitness videos online in 1997. Today, Cathe Dot Com is one of the largest and most-visited fitness websites and Cathe s pioneering work in this area has inspired other instructors to market and promote their own fitness videos in a similar fashion.