Exercise
When exercising, he worked out repetitively with weights until he experienced "muscle fatigue" in whatever muscle groups he was exercising, or when it became impossible for him to go on with a particular routine. "Training to failure" is now commonplace. LaLanne moved from exercise to exercise without stopping. To contradict critics who thought this would leave him tightly musclebound and uncoordinated, LaLanne liked to demonstrate one-handed balancing. His home contained two gyms and a pool which he used daily. He also dismissed warmups, calling them "shtick" and "something else to sell": "15 minutes to warm up? Does a lion warm up when he's hungry? 'Uh oh, here comes an antelope. Better warm up.' No! He just goes out there and eats the sucker."
He continued with his two-hour workouts into his 90s, which also included walking.
He often said, "I'd hate to die; it would ruin my image." and "If I died, people would say 'Oh look, Jack LaLanne died. He didn't practice what he preached.'" When asked about sex, LaLanne had a standard joke, saying that despite their advanced age, he and his wife still made love almost every night: "Almost on Monday, almost on Tuesday, almost on Wednesday..." He explained his reasons for exercising:
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. 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.
He also added "I know so many people in their 80s who have Alzheimer's or are in a wheelchair or whatever. And I say to myself 'I don't want to live like that. I don't want to be a burden on my family. I need to live life. And I'd hate dying; it would ruin my image.'"
LaLanne summed up his philosophy about good nutrition and exercise:
Living is a pain in the butt. Dying is easy. 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 and nutrition is queen: together, you have a kingdom.
Read more about this topic: Jack LaLanne, Personal Health Routine
Famous quotes containing the word exercise:
“If we pretend to respect the artist at all, we must allow him his freedom of choice, in the face, in particular cases, of innumerable presumptions that the choice will not fructify. Art derives a considerable part of its beneficial exercise from flying in the face of presumptions.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“In order to cultivate yourself and to drop no lower than the level of the milieu in which you have landed, it is not enough to read Pickwick and memorize a monologue from Faust.... You need to work continually day and night, to read ceaselessly, to study, to exercise your will.... Each hour is precious.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled—because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)