Jack LaLanne, who died on Sunday at age 96, was regarded as the father of the modern fitness movement. Dressed in snug jumpsuits, the television fixture preached a balance of exercise and healthy diet and inspired millions. The Post spoke to fitness gurus about the top lessons learned from LaLanne’s legacy.
1. There is no excuse for not exercising. Long before Nike told everyone to “just do it,” LaLanne was relentless in his pitches, using a drill sergeant’s bark and cadence. “Jack inspired the world with his no-nonsense approach to exercise,” says Maureen Hagan, fitness instructor and VP of operations at GoodLife Fitness Canada. “Many of us will recall Jack showing his TV viewers how to exercise in the kitchen, using a chair and lifting soup cans as dumbbells. His ‘no excuse, just do it’ attitude inspired the world to at least try exercise.”
1. There is no excuse for not exercising. Long before Nike told everyone to “just do it,” LaLanne was relentless in his pitches, using a drill sergeant’s bark and cadence. “Jack inspired the world with his no-nonsense approach to exercise,” says Maureen Hagan, fitness instructor and VP of operations at GoodLife Fitness Canada. “Many of us will recall Jack showing his TV viewers how to exercise in the kitchen, using a chair and lifting soup cans as dumbbells. His ‘no excuse, just do it’ attitude inspired the world to at least try exercise.”
2. Weight training is a key component of a fitness regimen. “He popularized the whole notion of fitness before we recognized it as a crisis situation,” says Christa Costas-Bradstreet, physical activity specialist at ParticipAction, the national not-for-profit organization dedicated to supporting active living. When LaLanne first began recommending weights in the 1930s, he said that physicians opposed his advice, warning it would cause heart attacks and lower sex drives. “People thought I was a charlatan and a nut,” LaLanne said in a posting on his website. “Time has proven that what I was doing was scientifically correct — starting with a healthy diet followed by systematic exercise, and today everyone knows it.”
3. Fitness is for everyone. “He taught that physical activity was something for all ages, irrespective of socio-economic status and ability,” Costas-Bradstreet says. LaLanne invited women into his health clubs, and also encouraged the elderly and the disabled to exercise. “I share the great passion for bringing women into the gym environment that Jack LaLanne pioneered,” says Craig Ramsay, author of Anatomy of Exercise and trainer on Bravo’s Thintervention.
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