Jack LaLanne

Jack LaLanne turned 90 on September 26, 2004, and that is hard to believe. He doesn't look it! Whenever Jack appears in public, young people flock to him. Older people feel Jack has found the Fountain of Youth.

Jack LaLanne is America's Number 1 Physical Fitness Expert and Guru, often called the "Godfather of Fitness." It was not always this way with Jack. "As a kid," Jack flatly states, "I was a sugarholic. I was a junk food junkie! It made me weak and it made me mean. It made me sick. I had boils, pimples and I was nearsighted. Little girls used to beat me up. Mom prayed...the Church prayed. At the age of 15, when I heard pioneer nutritionist Paul Bragg speak at the Oakland City Women's Club in San Francisco Bay Area, I finally realized that I was addicted to sugar." Bragg promised that if Jack would exercise and eat a proper diet he could achieve good health. With great determination, he set out to build a totally new Jack LaLanne.

He discovered that Berkeley YMCA had a set of weights and began experimenting with them. Before long, Jack achieved the muscular, healthy body of his dreams. "I became a voracious reader and I absorbed everything that would help me to improve myself. Grey's Anatomy was my bible. During college, I studied pre-med to become a medical doctor and I also went to Chiropractic College and graduated; however, I was more interested in helping people with precaution, before they became ill." Resolving to help other find the secrets to health and fitness, LaLanne opened the nation's first modern health studio, on the third floor of an old office building in Oakland, CA, paying $45 per month for rent. It was 1936 and Jack LaLanne was 21 years old. "I was 40 years ahead of my time," he said, "but by then I knew more about the workings of the muscles in my body than most doctors. People thought I was a charlatan and a nut." Jack says, "The doctors were against me--they said that working out with weights would give people heart attacks and they would lose their sex drive; women would look like men. Even the coaches predicted that athletes would muscle bound and didn't want them to work out with the weights. I had to give them the keys so they could come in at night and work out. What I was doing was scientifically correct, starting a healthy diet and now everyone knows it. Today, all the world class athletes work out with weights."

As the years went by, Jack LaLanne began to formulate a basic approach to physical fitness and nutrition. His methods would be scientifically sound. Jack developed the first models of the exercise equipment in health spas of today; such as the first leg extension machine, the first pulley machines using cables and the first weight selectors. He was the first to have women work out with weights. "There are 640 muscles in the human body," Jack explains, "and I take every one of them into account as I plan to demonstrate an exercise routine."

Jack's reputation began to spread and by the early 1950's, he had taken the new medium of television in order to reach even more people. Ever the innovator, Jack used television to reach out to millions of Americans everywhere with his gospel message of get up, work out and feel better. He was magnetic! He was a motivator! Jack LaLanne believes in daily, vigorous, systematic exercise and proper diet. "My top priority in life is my workout each day." Jack LaLanne lives by what he says to others, and he has been doing it for more than 65 years.

When asked about the difference between then and now, Jack laughs and replies with a gleam in his eye, "It is most gratifying to me to see that everything that I was preaching and advocating over 70 years ago, not only exercise wise but nutrition wise, is coming into fruition. Then I was a crackpot and a charlatan, today I am an authority...and believe me I can't die; it would ruin my image."