JACK LALANNE-R.I.P

January 24, 2011

Received word that Jack Lalanne passed away today at age 96.  Part of me has now passed, too.

As a pimply 13 year old, I remember stumbling along a book at the public library. It was entitled, "For Men Only" by Jack Lalanne. On the front jacket was a pic of a man almost 60 years old, coming out of a swimming pool, with coconut deltoids, horseshoe triceps, a barrel chest and a waistline you could wrap your one hand around. Talk about inspiration! I thought, "you really can turn back the biological clock".

I had known of Mr. Lalanne from his syndicated TV show, thinking of him as a gymnast,with that incredible V-shape from obliques-to-lats-to-shoulders, making him appear taller than his 5'6" frame, unaware of the super-human feats he had performed--1,023 push-ups in twenty minutes, swimming Alcatraz island while shackled. Joe Weider wrote of the voluminous amount of reps in his workouts. Arnold Schwarzenegger described how Jack would out-chin everyone at Muscle Beach in Venice.

Despite being decades his junior, I really thought he would outlive me.

What is more impressive than living 96 years, is that he was active up until the end. To quote an article from a doctor that appeared in the New York Times, "living to an old age isnt an attribute, living healthfully is".  You can't argue about his genetics, since his father succumbed to a heart attack around the age of fifty, he wrote in the aforementioned book.

Jack Lalanne-- a true pioneer--chiropractor, exercise inventor and physiologist, and one of the few celebrities who had congruity in his life. He set the example, so therefore he did not have to set the rules. He was 96 and left us too soon.

post-script---Jack was also one the first personal trainers, decades before it became a profession for the masses. Check out his attempt to personally "train" Uncle Fester (Jackie Coogan) on an hilarious episode of "The Adams Family"!

POST-SCRIPT 12-09-2011---I think of the most successful infomercial involving exercise machines or instructional courses--this would include TOTAL GYM, BOWFLEX, NORDITRAC, P90-X.  The inventors all owe a debt of gratitude to Jack Lalanne. His exercise show was the genesis of the fitness movement. And he started it when it was not only a virtual unknown, but taboo. There were all types of myths associated with exercise---getting muscle-bound, sterile.

In addition, Jack was a chiropractor. I can only wonder what it was like to have a practice in the 1930's. While the AMA's conspiracy to destroy chiropractic didn't come until the 1960's, they were still plotting, under the direction of Morris Fishbein, the editor of JAMA, who later testified under oath, he hadn't treated a single patient ever and failed basic anatomy courses in colleges.

So, with few exceptions, Jack was a one-man gang, a grassroots founder, taking on the medical establishment, putting himself out there, with not a whole lot of support, just the convictions of his beliefs and vision.