In Memory of Jack Lalanne

Jack LaLanne: "I don't care how old I live; I just want to be LIVING while I am living! I have friends of mine that are in their 80's and now they are in wheelchairs or they're getting Alzheimer's. Who wants that? It's terrible. I want to be able to do things; I want to look good; I don't want to be a drudge on my wife and my kids. And I want to get my message out to the people. I might live forever or it may seem like that. I tell people I can't afford to die; it will wreck my image! I am proud to say I was just voted in to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. This year I get my star."

Those words are a direct quote from an interview with the grandfather of fitness, Lack Lalanne. Unfortunately, he died last week due to complications from pneumonia; but he was vigorous through the last days of his life. He never missed his two hour per day workouts--for nearly eighty years he never missed them. How extraordinary for a man born in 1914. How much on par though far more extensive than a dedicated high school athlete hoping desperately to win the state meet. Talk about quality of life.

What made Jack tick? In his everyday life, it was diet, supplements (in his words forty to fifty of them from A to Z) and exercise. He never missed at any of these though he traveled extensively, lecturing on the life he loved. He was an authority on fitness, believing that it could transform the life of anyone. His listeners reached from the elderly, whose strength doubled after six months of training, to corporate executives, whom he berated for being more concerned about money than the unfit employees, who looked up to them.

Too many of today's high school aged people do not really know of this grandfather of fitness. Possibly that is because they have not had the advantage of older generations with baby boomer parents. How many of these had a mother who would not think of missing a one of Jack's TV workouts from the late fifties onward. Many of them idolized him as much or more present day celebrities. To say the least, Jack was an icon, affecting and changing the lives of many.

Jack is remembered for many different things--things which we all have now come to view as commonplace. He started the first health club in 1936. He invented many of the machines that we have all come to expect in the gyms we frequent. He advocated weight lifting for both men and women, when virtually no one believed that this was good even for male athletes. He promoted his juicer, which when used regularly, promotes better digestion and assimilation of the food we eat. And, as a former sugar addict (or so he described himself), he took a stand against soft drinks and candy serving as living proof that anyone can beat a compulsion if only they would commit to doing the right things.

Those were his normal achievements, all exceptional in themselves because of the amount of time that they kept in the public view.Yet, they were very abnormal during his early years. They were so much so that they made him the country's first health nut. But, in spite of the sports and medical establishment which stood against him, he prevailed to become the nation's foremost authority on fitness. In his words, back then he was forty years ahead of his time.

Most us today can accept what Jack has taught us. Still, we may have an inability to tolerate him as a super- extraordinary athlete as distinct from a very good one. He did win Mr America in 1955, nothing to ever be taken lightly; and he did do the impossible on his seventieth birthday. The reader can look this up for him or herself. It is too astonishing to write about. The feat will simply cause disbelief in any of the other more believable assertions in this article. Besides, it is more important to talk about what something like all of his his accomplishments really mean when viewed against backdrop of an unbroken life of fitness.

Today we are quick to say that noteworthy physical accomplishments are solely the result of exceptional genes. That is what we do with extraordinary athletes. Because we neither cannot do anything like them, nor even imagine ourselves doing so, it must be that the the superstars are genetically different. Perhaps that is true. But why must this be entirely the case? Why can this not also be due to decades of living the healthy habits?.Jack certainly thought so. He believed that the everyday doing of the right things could make us the people we can barely dream of being. And that is the bedrock of the lectures that he never tired of delivering.

This country is in a sad state. It could be turned around physically, mentally and spiritually by more of us taking this exceptional man seriously. His life was dedicated to getting us where we are today, and it was successful. It has made a difference--one that has lasted. The only problem is that far too few of us follow ardently in his footsteps. Perhaps China would be less of threat to our national self esteem if more of us did.

For more about this extraordinary human being Google his name and order my book Think and Grow Fit.