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Strong to the Finish: Jack LaLanne
A tribute to a true fitness pioneer
by Charles Poliquin
1/25/2011 10:40:22 AM
If there is one person who exemplifies physical fitness and vibrant health, it’s Jack LaLanne. A lifelong bodybuilder and fitness celebrity, Jack practiced what he preached, every day of his life, and performed amazing feats of strength and muscular endurance throughout his entire life that few can equal. Jack passed away on January 23, and this is his story.
François Henri LaLanne was born in San Francisco on September 26, 1914, the son of Jennie and Jean LaLanne, who had emigrated from France. His mother was a maid, and his father was a dance instructor and a worker for a phone company. His brother Norman, who lived 97 years, nicknamed him “Jack.” The media called him the “Godfather of Fitness.”
Jack was not always a health and fitness fanatic, and he characterized his early teen years as being a “sugarholic” and a “junk food junkie” – he joked that he was sought out by little girls who wanted to beat him up. That unhealthy lifestyle changed at age 15 when he heard a lecture by nutritionist Paul Bragg, at which point Jack became determined to become strong and healthy through proper diet and exercise. He became a voracious reader and graduated from chiropractic college.
In 1936, at just 21 years of age, Jack rented an office building for $45 a month in Oakland, California, and converted it into a gym he called LaLanne’s Physical Culture Studio. At that time many health care professionals regarded Jack as a crackpot, and he claimed that doctors were telling their patients that training with weights would give them heart attacks and make them impotent, and would make women look like men. Even sport coaches were against him, telling their athletes that training with Jack would make them muscle-bound – but the athletes came anyway, and Jack would accommodate their secret training by giving them keys to the gym so they could train after the gym closed. Along the way Jack claimed to have invented several popular pulley machines using cables and weight selector apparatus – and even the leg-extension machine – but never bothered to patent his inventions.
Although he was known more for general fitness, Jack exerted a big influence in the bodybuilding community. Recalls fitness writer Laura Dayton, the sister of former competitive bodybuilder and strongman Mike Dayton, “One of the good things about being born and raised in Oakland was that Jack LaLanne was a part of my life from an early age. Of course I’d run to get my mom so we could exercise with him in the mornings [on TV]. He influenced my brother Mike to pursue a career of bodybuilding and feats of strength, and he was there when Mike performed many of his shows. He’d hang out at [Ed] Yarick’s gym with 1950 bodybuilding greats like Clancy Ross and Jack Delinger. As a matter of fact, Oakland would have been the Mecca of Bodybuilding had a young Joe Weider not moved to Southern California.”
Birth of a Fitness Celebrity
In 1951 The Jack LaLanne Show debuted on television, and Jack’s natural charisma and sincere desire to help people made him a welcome visitor in people’s homes. One of his early fans was Richard Simmons. Writing for CNN, Simmons recalls watching his mother, Shirley, exercising along with Jack on the show; she encouraged her 200-plus-pound son to join in.
Simmons says at first he was jealous of Jack, but eventually he regarded him as a role model and followed Jack’s career path. “He told people the truth about eating and exercising long before anyone else. And he was matter-of-fact. You see, Jack walked the walk and talked the talk. And when he spoke, people really listened to him.”
A master at self-promotion, Jack would make his TV show entertaining with his excellent singing voice and inspirational lectures. He would bring his German shepherd “Happy” on the show to attract the kids, and then would encourage those kids to get their parents and grandparents in front of the TV to exercise with him. Along the way he would come up with mottos, which he called “LaLanneisms,” that promoted his beliefs. Here are a few:
• “Your waistline is your lifeline.”
• “Exercise is King, nutrition is Queen; put them together and you’ve got a kingdom.”
• “Don’t exceed the feed limit.”
• “Ten seconds on the lips and a lifetime on the hips.”
• “Better to wear out than rust out.”
• “People don’t die of old age; they die of inactivity.”
• “First we inspire them, then we perspire them.”
• “You eat every day, you sleep every day, and your body was made to exercise every day.”
• “I can’t die; it would ruin my image.”
• “If man makes it, don’t eat it.”
• “If it tastes good, spit it out.”
• “It’s not what you do some of the time that counts; it’s what you do all of the time that counts.”
And then there were the stunts. To promote his show and ever-expanding health club business (which eventually grew to more than 200 clubs before he sold them to Bally’s), Jack would perform feats of strength and muscular endurance throughout his life. Here are a few:
1956 (age 42): Appeared on the television show You Asked for It and broke a world record by performing 1,033 push-ups in 23 minutes.
1959 (age 45): Completed 1,000 jumping jacks and 1,000 chin-ups in one hour and 22 minutes.
1974 (age 60): Handcuffed and shackled, he swam from Alcatraz Island to Fisherman’s Wharf while towing a 1,000-pound boat.
1984 (age 70): Handcuffed and shackled, he swam one mile while towing 70 rowboats, one with several passengers.
Jack LaLanne’s show went into syndication and remained so until 1985, and he also appeared on many other television shows, including Batman, The Addams Family, Peter Gunn and The Simpsons. His on-screen success led to him receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2002, and his continual promotion of healthy living and physical fitness earned him lifetime achievement awards from many prestigious organizations, such as the State of California’s Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness and the Arnold Classic Lifetime Achievement Award. And speaking of the former “Governator,” Arnold said that he met Jack in 1960 in Muscle Beach in Venice, California. Jack challenged the bodybuilders to match him in chin-ups and push-ups, but, as Arnold said to a news reporter, “No one even wanted to try.”
For 53 years LaLanne was married to Elaine LaLanne and they had three children. For Jack’s 90th birthday party, Laura Dayton presented Jack with a plaque from then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Says Dayton, “Always dressed in tailored suits to show off his still enviable physique, Jack made it a point that day to go to every table and talk with every guest. With his crazy sunglasses, he also treated us all to a beautiful acapella version of Louis Armstrong’s ‘What a Wonderful World.’ Not a dry face in the crowd.”
Many of Jack’s television shows can be found on the Internet. If you haven’t seen them, I encourage you to watch a few segments to see Jack doing what he did best: exercising and encouraging the world to eat well and live healthy. I also encourage you to watch at least one show to the very end, where he would sign off by singing the following jingle:
“It’s time to leave you.
Let’s say goodbye.
These precious moments just seem to fly.
Now here’s my wish for you.
May the good Lord bless
And keep you too.”
And goodbye to you, Jack. We’ll miss you.
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