The Truth

This week’s psyche is a no brainer: it’s Jack LaLanne’s 96th birthday. Yeah, yeah, the guy from the juicer commercials, as all you pop-culture-ites now know him, was—and still is—the MAN in the world of fitness. He almost single handedly invented the fitness movement and practiced what he preached in the most profound way. His birthday challenge accomplishment are not only legendary but were so far ahead of their time that none have been repeated. At his 95th birthday party (I was lucky to be able to attend) Arnold Schwarzenegger summed him up pretty well:

“Come to the beach and do some chin-ups with me, Arnold,” he’d say to me. “He didn’t tell me that we were going to do chin-ups for one hour straight without stopping!”

Here are a series of posts I wrote on Jack last year, in order:

Join the Jack LaLanne Challenge (great quotes!)

Preaching the Here and Now (more great quotes!)

Happy Birthday Jack! (includes a list of his birthday challenges--you won't believe them)



Now that I just re-read them I can no longer sit still. I wish I had a 50 degree pool to strap myself into but, instead, I’ll just head out to my gym.

"I train like I'm training for the Olympics or for a Mr. America contest, the way I've always trained my whole life. You see, life is a battlefield. Life is survival of the fittest." Then he segued into a mantra I'm sure I heard dozens of times as a very young boy: "How many healthy people do you know? How many happy people do you know? Think about it. People work at dying, they don't work at living. My workout is my obligation to life. It's my tranquilizer. It's part of the way I tell the truth--and telling the truth is what's kept me going all these years." - Jack LaLanne