Jack LaLanne was right.

“Dying is easy. Living is a pain in the butt. It’s like an athletic event. You’ve got to train for it. You’ve got to eat right, you’ve got to exercise. Your health account, your bank account, they’re the same thing. The more you put in, the more you can take out. Exercise is king, nutrition is queen; put them together, and you have a kingdom”.

Kids my age remember Jack LaLanne from his eponymous television show. My mother watched it, and so did I. In what looked like his living room, using a chair, he led women across America in what he called Trimnastics.

“I want to show you how to feel better, how to look better, so you can live longer”.

I found the show interesting, and even at that young age, I was impressed by Jack’s physique. I thought the jump suit and ballet slippers were weird, but he looked strong, and had muscles like Superman.

“I want to show you how you can do it. What a team we’re going to be. I’m not here to entertain you, I’m here to help you”.

LaLanne was the first fitness guru to the masses. His first television show aired in 1958, his last in 1985. By then, it was syndicated, and broadcast nationwide. He wrote books, and recorded a couple of exercise records. He made Jazzercise, Jane Fonda, Denise Austin, and Gilad Jancklowicz possible.

“I know what it is to be sick. I know what it is to be well”.

As a teenager, he was a self-confessed sugar addict. A junk food junkie. He suffered from headaches, and had terrible acne. In 1939, at the age of fifteen, he attended a lecture given by Paul Bragg, a physical culture and alternative foods educator of the day. It changed his life. He gave up sugar, began eating what we now refer to as clean foods, and started exercising.

“You eat every day, you sleep every day, and your body was made to exercise every day”.

LaLanne was more than just a made for TV fitness guru. He was a legitimate athlete. Before he started his show, he owned a gym in San Francisco, which became a local, then a national chain. You might know them as Bally Fitness. He invented the leg extension machine, and the Smith machine, which tracks a barbell straight up and down. For the three big compound lifts, the squat, deadlift, and bench press, the straight bar path challenges the muscles in a different way. Both pieces of equipment are in every gym today.

“People don’t die of old age. They die of inactivity”.

Jack was what Dr. Jonathon Sullivan, the author of The Barbell Prescription, so eloquently calls the Athlete of Aging. On his seventieth birthday, he swam a mile, pulling seventy people, in seventy boats. He lived to be ninety-two, and he trained every day. Two hours, before breakfast. He practiced Intermitent Fasting before it was invented. He ate two meals a day, breakfast and dinner.

“Work at living, and you don’t have to die tomorrow”.

His mission, his ikigai, was to show people that, if they exercised and ate right, that they could look, feel, and live better. Using simple bodyweight exercises, and a chair, he taught his students how to tone their legs, hips, tummies, arms, necks, and chins, so that they could improve their physiques and health, and live long, productive, happy lives.

“Before you know it, success is yours”.

In one episode, Jack stands beside a box labeled 1,000 lbs. The always serious announcer intones, “And now, Jack will lift a thousand pounds”. Jack looks into the camera, into the faces of his students all across America, and explains. He admits that he can’t lift a thousand pound box. He opens it, and removes a five pound weight plate. Then another. He throws them on the floor, and removes another one. His lesson is that what seems impossible is indeed doable by taking small steps, and watching them add up. You don’t affect a big change all at once, but over time, little by little, using a well thought out plan. This advice is common now in modern self-help books. One change here, another there, and, step by step, you accomplish your goals. Simple, and in Jack’s words, easy.

“Your body is a temple, but how many tumble down shacks do you see?”

Jack LaLanne had a mission, and a message. His message was that, through exercise and good nutrition, you could live a long, happy, pain free life. His mission was to show you how YOU could do it.

“Dyng is easy. Living is a pain in the butt”.

Jack was right.