Most Americans alive today might know him as one of a cast of thousands in the infomercial real, but Jack Lalanne created an industry.
All those diet plans, home plan weight loss kits, exercise videos and online meal guides? Lalanne was pushing it in the ’40′s. He created the industry which avalanched him– because he was so successful at what he did.
The first one to pump us up: Via
In the earliest era of television, lard was a basic food group, salt was generously distributed, and lifting weights was only for bodybuilders. It wasn’t at all common for everyday exercisers to hit a gym or run for the sole purpose of running, let alone lift weights– but Lalanne encouraged all this… women too. By popularizing and democratizing the practice, Lalanne truly was the first professional fitness and training guru.
He’s also a classic American success story. The son of poor immigrants, he became a chiropractor by paying his own way through college and opened America’s first general fitness workout center (these later became a chain, which is now Bally’s Total Fitness.) After a string of appearances on burgeoning television talk shows, Lalanne was given one of his own. By the ’80′s, his empire had expanded to fitness machines, vitamins, and juices.
This was no get- your- professional- trainer’s- license- in- a- weekend kinda guy; Lalanne indulged the public in several gimmicky, but highly impressive, strongman accomplishments. In 1976, for example, in the Bicentennial Spirit, he swam a mile in Long Beach Harbor. While handcuffed. And with his legs shacked together. While towing thirteen boats. Carrying 76 people. At the age of 62. Dude was ripped, and what’s more, he made thousands believe that they could be, too.
In later life, he released a book entitled Live Young Forever and, well, for a man who once celebrated his 70th birthday by towing 70 rowboats against angry headwinds, if anyone could have pulled it off, it’s Lalanne. But he did pass away at a mighty respectable 96, still working out two hours a day… so we can’t say he didn’t give it a go.
