Personal Heroes: Jack LaLanne

Quotes:

"The average person who is 70 or 80 is over the hill... They're fat,
they're racked with aches and pains. Then you get people over 90 who are running
marathons, because they worked at living. I have a lot of energy and you know
why? Because I use it. It's use it or lose it, and it's believing in something.
Most people just go through life existing, waiting for retirement. That's the
death knell."

"I train two hours every day. I do an hour and a half of weight training,
then maybe a swim or a walk. I like change. I change my program every 30 days.
You know, you get bored. The only thing I don't change is my wife."

"Sitting around on your big fat gluteus maximus talking about the good old
days. The good old days are right this second. You've got to exercise
VIG-OR-OUSLY! Life is tough. Life is a challenge. Life is a battlefield... .
Life is an athletic event, and you must train for it."

The first thing people notice about the blog is the title. Faith. Flyballs. Most of my posts fall into one of these two categories. I talk about baseball, maybe some of the other sports as well, and then I talk about my faith. Personally, I am somewhat torn by this bifurcation. I really believe the body is the soul and the soul is the body. It is useful to speak of the two separately in one sense and it is harmful in another sense.

"When a person trains once, nothing happens. When a person forces
himself to do a thing a hundred or a thousand times, then he certainly has
developed in more ways than physical. Is it raining? That doesn't matter. Am I
tired? That doesn't matter, either. Then willpower will be no problem." Emil
Zatopek

This is what I mean! The body-soul is not a bar of iron. Iron rusts. Iron rusts to nothing in a sea of air. Iron melts under heat and shatters in the cold. The body-soul is not iron. Push your body, push your soul until it hurts, until it's crying out for you to stop, until it's pleading with you for mercy. Then watch. A little rest and it becomes stronger. Push it again, push it past the familiar, the things it knows it is capable of, thrust it mercilessly into the unknown. It becomes stronger still. Iron does not grow. Steel does not learn. What is a sword compared to the hand that wields it? Iron is not strong. This, this body, this soul, it is strong.

Running the Brooklyn Half-Marathon last week, I was in a world of agony as my hamstrings and calves on both legs started cramping up terribly at the 11th mile. 11 miles! What a worthless distance! But it was beyond the scope of what I had endured up to that point. I had never pushed myself that hard before. But I was pushing that morning. Overcast sky. Freezing wind. Wave after wave of swift, lithe, beautiful runners passing me by, mocking me with their easy pace. Was I pushing my body and training my soul? Was I pushing my soul to train my body? Both questions are misguided.

Stanley hobbled across 2 embarassing miles, 2 of the longest miles he's ever seen. He willed his body towards and then across the finish line. 2 hours 12 minutes 33 seconds.

Yet, it means nothing. I must take myself to that limit again, today, if at all possible. And then tomorrow. Excellence is a habit. Strength is a habit. Endurance is a habit.

My goal in life is perfection. I make no apologies for this brash statement. I want to be perfect in Christ-likeness. This goal serves only as a beacon, something to aim at, to focus and direct all my energies towards. I do not, by any stretch of the imagination, believe that I will achieve perfect Christ-likeness in the years that God allots to me on this earth. But I believe the Holy Spirit will bring me closer today than yesterday and closer still tomorrow than today. And I believe that I must keep pushing. I cannot, at any point, stop pushing.

Recently, I have injured a friend through my inattentiveness. Falling into complacency, I let something go unattended and it damaged our friendship. I am unsure what the final bill will be. Yet, if nothing else, I realize my error. So what do I do now? I must keep pushing forward. I cannot stop. I must keep going forward.

That is why Jack LaLanne is a hero of my mine. I do not think he believes in the Gospel but I know he believes in never having enough. I know he believes that he hasn't yet scratched his potential. I know he believes he can do better. That is what I can learn from him.

I am not the man that I should be or want to be. But I am getting closer. I am hobbling with cramped calves and hamstrings and every step is a world of agony, but I will cross that finish line.