Jack LaLanne
Jack LaLanne was a mythical creature who did his stuff more than a half century ago. He was an evangelist for health, fitness, pride, discipline, mind over matter, the sheer joy of being in a well-tuned body. Watch a few of his old TV clips. He was non-stop enthusiasm. A few minutes of him and you’re looking for some iron to pump and some spinach juice to drink.
He performed amazing physical feats. On his 60th birthday, he swam from Alcatraz to the mainland, a mile and a quarter thru rough currents, while in handcuffs and towing a half-ton boat. He once did over a thousand pushups in 23 minutes. Jack LaLanne was a long-time presence on television, preaching the gospel of a muscular body, demonstrating his routines, showing us how to do it, challenging the prevailing mythology of exercise. Back in the day athletes weren’t supposed to lift weights. The thinking was that it would make you “muscle-bound.” It would limit your flexibility and make you prone to injury. That was the accepted opinion. Coaches and phys-ed teachers bought it. Jack demolished it. Look at athletes now. Formidable specimens like LeBron James. Nobody is going to muscle him out of the paint, yet his fine skills, his shooting touch and his footwork, are impeccable.
Jack also changed the game for women. Any kind of weight work for women was unseemly. Show any muscle definition and you were probably a dyke. Jack preached women into the gym. He showed them what to do there. They emerged stronger, healthier, more confident in their bodies. Now the gyms are full of women, busting their asses.
Jack LaLanne died at the age of 96 of pneumonia. There are several tales about the circumstances. He had a gym in his home and started every day with a workout. One tale is that he died there, with a dumbbell in his hand. By this time he had his own mythology. He had admirers, keepers of the flame. A mythology grew up around him, which he abetted. Such myths tend to include fictions, but does it matter? The fictions can sweeten the tales. Sometimes they can let the truth shine more clearly. Sometimes of course they obscure it.
You know how it is, George Washington and the cherry tree. Most of us geezers know this one from back when we were kids. The story went that when George was a kid he damaged a cherry tree with a hatchet. When confronted, he said, I cannot tell a lie. I did it. This story was complete fiction, but it got told thru the centuries to teach kids to respect the truth. Did it? Or did it sanction hypocrisy? Or did it pass thru our flexible young minds with barely a ripple?
What matters, what doesn’t? Does it matter whether Jack LaLanne died with a dumbbell in hand? If he influenced you to lead a healthier and a richer life, does the dumbbell matter?