Guest Author - Katie Byrd
Jack LaLanne 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.”
Go back to Part One
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