2023-10-14 02:29:55
Elaine LaLanne’s exercises often begin before she even gets out of bed. Lying on the covers, she does two dozen razor crunches. At the bathroom sink, she does bent-over push-ups. After dressing and putting on makeup, she walks uphill on a treadmill for a few minutes and does lat exercises on a machine. “Twenty minutes a day and I’m ready,” she said at her California home.
But his greatest daily feat of strength, he says, happens above his shoulders. At 97 years old, LaLanne reminds himself every morning: “You have to believe you can.” She said that belief had not only kept her physically active through injuries and emotional obstacles, but had also helped her live the life of someone decades younger. “It all starts in the mind,” she said.
LaLanne’s habit of speaking in aphorisms (“It’s not a problem, it’s an experience”) is the product of a lifetime of trying to inspire people to improve. For nearly six decades, she was the wife and business partner of Jack LaLanne, widely considered the father of the modern fitness movement, whose US television exercise program aired from 1951 to 1985.
While Jack was a natural showman—he rose to fame performing stunts on a California beach in the 1930s—Elaine preferred to work behind the scenes, managing his empire, which included fitness equipment, foods and supplements, as well as a chain of gyms with more than 100 branches.
However, since Jack’s death in 2011, Elaine (whom her friends call LaLa) has quietly cultivated a following of her own. She runs her family’s remaining business, BeFit Enterprises. She has published two books in the last four years and is developing a documentary and a feature film with actor Mark Wahlberg, who will play Jack.
Major players in the fitness industry have long sought his advice. “She’s almost like a second mother to me,” said bodybuilding legend Lou Ferrigno. At the Idea Health & Fitness Association’s annual conference in July, a steady stream of fitness professionals stopped LaLanne to take selfies. For more than a decade, she has presented the Jack LaLanne Award, an industry lifetime achievement award.
“A lot of our members come for it,” said Amy Thompson, CEO of Idea.
After all, in 1926, when LaLanne was born, few Americans made exercise part of their lives, said Shelly McKenzie, author of “Getting Physical: The Rise of Fitness Culture in America.” Nearly a century later, she is “testament to the effectiveness of a lifelong exercise habit,” McKenzie said.
Raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Elaine dreamed of a career in entertainment. In the mid-1940s, she left for San Francisco, where she worked her way into television, eventually becoming producer and co-host of a live daily variety show. One day in 1951, a local bodybuilder’s press agent called and said that her client might do air push-ups for an entire program. Sure enough, Jack LaLanne did it, lifting and lowering her 5-foot-10 frame for a full 90-minute program while the hosts continued as usual.
Elaine fell in love not only with him, but also with his beliefs regarding eating whole foods and exercise. He made her think: “I don’t want to be old when I’m old.”
With Elaine’s television experience and Jack’s charisma, LaLanne’s star rose and he eventually hosted “The Jack LaLanne Show” in Los Angeles, which became the first national series dedicated to diet and exercise. While people who worked with the LaLannes say she was the backbone of the empire, Elaine deflects credit.
LaLanne said he had slowed down since he turned 92. She has also fallen several times over the past decade. But the physical strength she gained in the gym helped her recover, she said.
“You have to move,” he said. “If you don’t move, you’ll get numb.”
By: DANIELLE FRIEDMAN
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6931161, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-10-10 21:50:08
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