At 96, Jack LaLanne Says He's Still a 'Nut'

(Sept. 23) -- When you're turning 96 and still as fit as a fiddle, people are invariably going to ask your secret.

Ask fitness pioneer Jack LaLanne his secret for a long life, and you'll get a variety of answers.

One day, he might say, "I can't die. It's bad for business." On another, he'll say, "I can't afford to die. It's too expensive."

Maybe it's fruitless to ask health secrets from a man who celebrated his 70th birthday by swimming 1.5 miles while towing 70 boats with 70 people from the Queensway Bay Bridge in the Long Beach Harbor to the Queen Mary -- handcuffed and shackled -- because to LaLanne, there is no secret: He's been exercising and eating right since he was 15.

Now, 81 years later, LaLanne is still exercising every day, and so is Elaine, his 85-year-old wife.

"I have to," he said. "I'm a nut."

Funny, that's the same term that was used to describe him when, in 1936, he opened the first modern health spa in Oakland, Calif.

It was also the same term that people used when he designed the first leg extension machines, pulley machines using cables, and the weight selectors that are now standard in the fitness industry.

He was also called a nut when he encouraged women to lift weights, which the so-called experts feared would make them "masculine and unattractive."

LaLanne was also called a nut for advocating a vegetarian diet and when he decried processed foods even back in the 1950s.

Time after time, LaLanne has been on the right side of history in regards to physical fitness. So much so that when the National Fitness Hall of Fame announced its inaugural class in 2005, he was one of the original inductees.

So has he ever been wrong?

He doesn't think so, although one might argue that his trademark jumpsuit and ballet slippers that he wore on his TV exercise show for 34 years weren't a great call.

However, argue that point at your own risk with LaLanne, who, despite being a real-life Methuselah, is more of a badass than Chuck Norris. Norris, after all, never swam the entire length of the Golden Gate Bridge, underwater and handcuffed while towing a 1,000-pound boat (something LaLanne did when he was 61).

"What's wrong with the jumpsuit?" he barked. "I needed something to move around in -- and the shoes were comfortable. They didn't have the fancy shoes they have now for exercise!"

LaLanne's legacy is filled with physical feats that put even above-average men to shame, but he also deserves credit as an innovator. His "Jack LaLanne Show," which ran for 34 years, was the very first syndicated exercise show, and he was the first guy to promote the idea of changing an exercise routine every two to three weeks.

Of course, there are millions of guys all over the world who should thank LaLanne for introducing co-ed gyms. But of all the physical feats LaLanne has done, the ones he says were the most challenging involved chin-ups, such as the time when he was 45 and did 1,000 star jumps and 1,000 chin-ups in 1 hour, 22 minutes.

"The chin-ups were definitely the hardest," he insisted.

Even harder than the feat LaLanne did to celebrate his 65th birthday: towing 10 boats carrying 77 people more than a mile in less than an hour?

"You try it," he admonished. "Could you do a thousand chin-ups?"

Sure, if you space them out over a three-year period.

"Look, I did these feats to show that anything in life is possible," LaLanne said. "All of us can be much better than we are."