Talk:Jack LaLanne
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page. | ||
| ??? | This article has not yet received a rating on the Project's quality scale. Please rate the article and then leave a short summary here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article. [FAQ] | ||
"for example at the age of 61 he swam the length of the Golden Gate Bridge 20 feet underwater handcuffed and shackled, towing a 2,000 pound boat (a world record)."
- The Golden Gate Bridge is 1.2 miles long. I sincerely doubt that Mr LaLanne did this so I've deleted it from the article. Lisiate 04:35, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The idea isn't to delete something you just don't believe. You're supposed to fact-check. In fact, the event did happen, more or less--except he was towing just a 1,000-pound boat, not a 2,000-pound boat. I have added a list of Jack's accomplishments, as fact-checked on his own Web site. The various feats listed there that he has accomplished are not speculation; these are all well-documented. Whenever he did the many amazing things listed, there were always witnesses, journalists, and cameras to capture it. They're all quite 100% true. Indy 14:33, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm not an expert in the field but a couple of sentences bother me.
The first may be a matter of composition or left out words. "He studied Gray's Anatomy and concentrated on bodybuilding and weightlifting which, in the 1930s, was a revolutionary technique." What was a revolutionary technique? Weight lifting? (I don't think so.) Bodybuilding? (Maybe) or something else. Can anyone clarify?
The second seems plain wrong, but "gym" maybe is misused and what is meant is perhaps a uniqe kind of spa. I don't know, except that gyms have been around a long time. "but in 1936, at the age of 21, he opened his own health spa in California (the first gym in the United States)" Phil ABQ --Phil ABQ 04:18, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)
[edit] categories
Category drunk drivers? Any documentation?
I am wondering about calling his spa the first gym in America. I have seen photographs of a weightlifting center complete with proud musclebound men in the NY city area that were probably taken in the 1890s. I would think that would certainly qualify as a gym.
Weight lifting or strength training has been around for longer than any of us will ever be. Do a little research on ancient Rome and Greece. What one needs to realize is that Jack LaLanne opened the first gym in the United States that was a full service gym. He was a personal trainer when trainers did not exist. He advocated cardio as well as strength training and he integrated proper nutrition as well. Jack was the first to open a modern health club! Prior to Jack, nobody had combined all of these techniques together. Take a look at boxers from the 1930's. They had very defined physiques but for instance, their biceps were smaller, proportionally to the rest of their upper body. The trained themselves for endurance but did not utilize strength training with weights. Every modern health club in the United States owes Jack because he did it right, right from the start and he was met with resistance from the medical community and profesional athletes and coaches. But like many things in life, in the long run, Jack was right. Today it would be tough to find a profesional or olympic athlete that did not strength train with weights. One more point, Jack invented many of the cable pulley weight stack machines, you see today in gyms everywhere, that isolate muscles and muscle groups that would be very hard to work otherwise.
Dan B.
