Jack LaLanne

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Jack LaLanne bigraphy, stories - American author, fitness trainer and businessman

Jack LaLanne : biography

26 September 1914 – 23 January 2010

Francois Henri "Jack" LaLanne (September 26, 1914 – January 23, 2011) was an American fitness, exercise, and nutritional expert and motivational speaker who is sometimes called "the godfather of fitness" and the "first fitness superhero." He described himself as being a "sugarholic" and a "junk food junkie" until he was 15. He also had behavioral problems, but "turned his life around" after listening to a public lecture by Paul Bragg, a well-known nutrition speaker. During his career, he came to believe that the country’s overall health depended on the health of its population, writing that "physical culture and nutrition — is the salvation of America."

Decades before health and fitness began being promoted by celebrities like Jane Fonda and Richard Simmons, LaLanne was already widely recognized for publicly preaching the health benefits of regular exercise and a good diet. He published numerous books on fitness and hosted a fitness television show between 1953 and 1985. As early as 1936, at age 21, he opened one of the nation’s first fitness gyms in Oakland, California, which became a prototype for dozens of similar gyms using his name. One of his 1950s television exercise programs was aimed toward women, whom he also encouraged to join his health clubs. He invented a number of exercise machines, including leg-extension and pulley devices. Besides producing his own series of videos, he coached the elderly and disabled not to forgo exercise, believing it would enable them to enhance their strength.

LaLanne also gained recognition for his success as a bodybuilder, as well as for his prodigious feats of strength. Arnold Schwarzenegger once stated, "That Jack LaLanne’s an animal!," after LaLanne, at 54, beat a 21-year-old Schwarzenegger "badly" in an informal contest. On the occasion of LaLanne’s death, Schwarzenegger credited LaLanne for being "an apostle for fitness" by inspiring "billions all over the world to live healthier lives,", KSBY.com, Jan. 24, 2011 and, as governor of California, had earlier placed him on his Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness. Steve Reeves credited LaLanne as his inspiration to build his muscular physique while keeping a slim waist. He was inducted to the California Hall of Fame and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Timeline: LaLanne’s feats

(As reported on Jack LaLanne’s website) These accounts are not necessarily entirely accurate descriptions of what LaLanne actually did. See the 1974 Alcatraz Island to Fisherman’s Wharf swim (below) for an illustration of the difference between the website account and objective reporting of the same event.

  • 1954 (age 40): swam the entire length of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, under water, with of air tanks and other equipment strapped to his body; a world record. Orange Coast Magazine, August 1986
  • 1955 (age 41): swam from Alcatraz Island to Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco while handcuffed. When interviewed afterwards he was quoted as saying that the worst thing about the ordeal was being handcuffed, which significantly reduced his chance to do a jumping jack.
  • 1956 (age 42): set what was claimed as a world record of 1,033 push-ups in 23 minutes on You Asked For It, a television program hosted by Art Baker.
  • 1957 (age 43): swam the Golden Gate channel while towing a cabin cruiser. The swift ocean currents turned this one-mile (1.6 km) swim into a swimming distance of .
  • 1958 (age 44): maneuvered a paddleboard nonstop from Farallon Islands to the San Francisco shore. The trip took 9.5 hours.
  • 1959 (age 45): did 1,000 jumping jacks and 1,000 chin-ups in 1 hour, 22 minutes, to promote The Jack LaLanne Show going nationwide. LaLanne said this was the most difficult of his stunts, but only because the skin on his hands started ripping off during the chin-ups. He felt he couldn’t stop because it would be seen as a public failure.
  • 1974 (age 60): For the second time, he swam from Alcatraz Island to Fisherman’s Wharf. Again, he was handcuffed, but this time he was also shackled and towed a boat. At least that’s according to his website. However, according to an account of this event published the day after it occurred in the Los Angeles Times, written by Philip Hager, a Times staff writer, LaLanne was neither handcuffed nor shackled if each of those terms has the unconventional meaning of "tightly binding the wrists or ankles together with a pair of metal fasteners" although that’s not how handcuffs or shackles work. Hager says that LaLanne "had his hands and feet bound with cords that allowed minimal freedom". But "minimal" clearly did not mean "no" freedom, since elsewhere in the article Hager describes LaLanne’s method of propulsion through the water as "half-breast-stroke, half-dog paddle" which is how you swim with your hands tied.
  • 1975 (age 61): Repeating his performance of 21 years earlier, he again swam the entire length of the Golden Gate Bridge, underwater and handcuffed, but this time he was shackled and towed a boat.
  • 1976 (age 62): To commemorate the "Spirit of ’76", United States Bicentennial, he swam one mile (1.6 km) in Long Beach Harbor. He was handcuffed and shackled, and he towed 13 boats (representing the 13 original colonies) containing 76 people.
  • 1979 (age 65): towed 65 boats in Lake Ashinoko, near Tokyo, Japan. He was handcuffed and shackled, and the boats were filled with of Louisiana Pacific wood pulp.
  • 1980 (age 66): towed 10 boats in North Miami, Florida. The boats carried 77 people, and he towed them for over one mile (1.6 km) in less than one hour.
  • 1984 (age 70): handcuffed, shackled, and fighting strong winds and currents, he towed 70 rowboats, one with several guests, from the Queen’s Way Bridge in the Long Beach Harbor to the Queen Mary, 1 mile.