Six appalling facts about fitness expert Jack Lalanne:
- At age 40, he did 100 handstand push-ups in under six minutes and 1,033 push-ups in 23 minutes.
- In the same year he swam between Alcatraz Island and Fisherman’s Wharf while handcuffed, and swam underwater the length of the Golden Gate Bridge with air tanks but no fins, towing a 2,000-pound boat. Seriously.
- In his sixties, he began to swim with shackles as well as handcuffs. For the bicentennial he towed 13 boats across a Southern California bay, and in the year he qualified for Social Security he towed 6,500 pounds of wood pulp across a Japanese lake.
- At age 69, his chest still measured 47 inches, his waist 27 inches.
- At 70, he towed 70 boats across Long Beach Harbor.
- LaLanne is now 91 years old, but he still gets up at 5:30 every morning to spend two hours working out in the weight room and the pool.
“I can’t afford to die,” he says. “It will ruin my image.”