I first read about Jack Lalanne when I was 16 years old.
At the time I had been playing football for three years, and was just getting serious about weightlifting when I came across an article in Men's Health which featured freelance writer Joe Kita deciding to take Lalanne up on an open $10,000 work out challenge.
As I recall, the only thing Kita had to do was keep up with the legendary figure who was, at the time, 85 years-old. Even then, Lalanne smoked him, with Kita writing that Lalanne lifted at least 40 lbs. more on nearly every exercise.
I read that article so many times that I can quote pieces of it nearly verbatim over a decade later.
It was full of one-liners that only a character like Lalanne could say and not sound like an overblown salesman, and although many of his quotes sound comedic in their tone, there was gold in each - simple nuggets of eternal truth that were as solid as the iron he lifted.
Lalanne said that he spoke to his muscles during his daily two-hour workouts and felt that the berating scared them into working harder.
"C'mon you bastards!" Lalanne told them. "See? You gotta' talk to'em. These muscles are saying, 'I can't do it anymore.' The hell you can't! I won't feed you! You sons of bitches work for me!"
He told Kita that he woke up every morning "with an erection a cat can't scratch," and outlined in seven words his philosophy on nutrition - if man made it, don't eat it.
"Look at my corvette," he told Kita. "A '98 - one of the finest sports cars I've ever had. Would I put water in the gas tank? Well, think about the crap people put in their bodies - white flour, sugar, all this processed food. It's just like using water for fuel.
With that, nutrition, and the consequences of neglecting it, became crystal clear.
And that was Lalanne's talent: taking the complicated and breaking it down with an analogy that everyone could understand, and then using his words to inspire a change.
He grew up in California, a self-described sugar addict who had headaches and bulimia and dropped out of high school at 14.
At 15, however, he heard nutritionist Paul Bragg speak in what has become a mythical turning point in his life, and took up the mantle of healthy living.
He opened a gym in Oakland in 1936, and trained women and athletes with weights - ideas that were literally light years ahead of the curve at the time.
His TV show ran from the 50s to the 70s, and encouraged the average American to exercise in any way they could, even with water bottles and a chair; his remarkable feats of strength showed that he lead the life he preached.
At 43, he did 1,000 pushups in 23 minutes. At 60, he swam Alcatraz to Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco while handcuffed, shackled, and towing a boat.
Six years later, he towed 10 boats carrying 77 people for over a mile in North Miami in less than an hour; four years later, at 70, he towed 70 rowboats a mile from the Queen's Way Bridge to the Queen Mary - another mile - while handcuffed, shackled, and fighting the ocean currents.
What Lalanne understood, what he espoused, and what he embodied, was the doctrine of pure, hard work. He wouldn't let you say that it was your job's fault you are fat, or society's, or your thyroid's - and even if it was, it was your job to right the ship.
And in America, where all the rough edges must be ground down so no one's fragile feelings get hurt, he was an old school reminder that hard work pays off, and that you're responsible for how you look and how you feel.
His life, which ended on Jan. 23 at the ripe age of 96, could be epitomized in one quote from his TV show pulled off of an old YouTube video.
"I like to think of life as a battlefield," Lalanne says, his thick arms protruding from his trademark blue jumpsuit as he sits on a backwards chair.
"Every morning when we open our eyes, we wake up, we have a battle on our hands. Either you're gonna' win the battle that day or you're gonna' lose it, you're gonna' have life working for you, or you're gonna' be working for life. What's it gonna' be?"
We always knew what your answer was to this question Jack. Thanks for the inspiration.
E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com
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