Jack LaLanne recently celebrated his 90th birthday. Known to millions of TV viewers as “The Godfather of Fitness,” Jack is still looking good, going strong and a great inspiration. “You’ve got to work at living,” Jack says. “99.9% of Americans work at dying! You’ve got to eat right, exercise and have goals and challenges.”
Jack didn’t always lead a healthy lifestyle. “As a kid,” he says, “I was a sugarholic. I was a junk food junkie. It made me weak and it made me mean.” But at a lecture in 1929, pioneering nutritionist Paul Bragg called 15 year old Lalanne a “human garbage can.” Ever since then Jack has been following Bragg’s philosophy – “If you obey nature’s laws, you’ll be born again.”
And Jack certainly was born again. He immediately changed his diet – no white flour, no sugar, no meat and lots of fish, fruits, vegetables and nutritional supplements. He also started lifting weights and became a bodybuilder, eventually being named Professional Mr. America in 1955 when he was in his 40’s.
LaLanne also became a hard working businessman. At 18, he ran his own bakery selling healthy breads. At 21, he opened the first health club in the country with a gym, health food store and juice bar in downtown Oakland, California. His club became the prototype of all modern health spas. Today more than 200 clubs still bear the Jack LaLanne name.
But it was on TV that Jack became famous all over the world. In 1951, he started the first exercise show. Critics thought he’d be off the air in six weeks, but “The Jack LaLanne Show’” ran for an amazing 34 years. Black and white reruns of the jump-suited LaLanne can still be seen twice each weekday morning on ESPN Classic.
Jack loves the limelight and over his seventy year career, he always used it effectively to promote himself, his show and his gyms. He’s written books, produced exercise videos and acted in dozens of TV shows and films, usually playing himself. But he’s probably best known for his amazing feats of strength.
At 41, he swam from Alcatraz to Fishermen’s Wharf in San Francisco wearing handcuffs. At 45, he performed a thousand push-ups and a thousand chin-ups in an hour. And once on an old TV show, he did 1,033 sit-ups in 23 minutes. At 60, he repeated his Alcatraz swim, but this time he did it handcuffed, shackled and towing a thousand-pound boat. And at 70, handcuffed and shackled, LaLanne towed 70 boats holding 70 people for a mile and a half across Long Beach harbor.
Jack LaLanne is definitely one of a kind. At 90, even though his hair is thinner and grayer and his walk a little slower, Jack still maintains his strict diet and exercises daily, including lifting weights and an hour of swimming. He claims to feel better than ever. “I’ve got no aches and no pains. If I get a sniffle, it’s gone the next day. Everything’s working. Just look at my wife. She’s smiling.”
LaLanne believes a half hour of exercise four or five times a week is more than enough for the average person. “You don’t have to work out seven days a week like I do.” he said. “I’m a nut. I just want to see how long I can keep this up.”
For years LaLanne talked about swimming the 26 miles from Catalina Island to Los Angeles underwater to celebrate his 90th birthday. Elaine, his wife and partner for fifty years threatened to divorce him if he tried such a stunt. When asked what he would do instead, Jack answered with a grin, “Tow my wife across the bathtub.”
“I was 40 years ahead of my time,” La Lanne says. “People thought I was a charlatan and a nut. Doctors were against me. I’d be 6 foot 2 if the medical profession hadn’t beaten me down.” (Jack is 5 foot 6.) “They said that working out with weights would give people heart attacks and they would lose their sex drive; women would look like men. And today all the world class athletes work out with weights.”
When asked about the difference between public attitude when he opened his first gym in 1935 and now, Jack laughs and answers with a gleam in his eye, “Back then I was a crackpot. Today I’m an authority. And believe me, I can’t die. It would ruin my image.”
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