PlankFit LLC

Get Connected - United Senior Services

I'm still teaching this class at United Senior Services here in Springfield!

Plus: Wednesday water aerobics!
Arthritis Exercise on land (Monday and Wednesday mornings) and water (Tuesday and Thursday afternoons)!

More classes coming soon!

Hi again all!

If we met at TBB's event last week, welcome!

Things have been super busy lately at my job (I'm a fitness instructor/lifeguard at ) and haven't had much time to pay attention to this page.

I promise that's all fixing to change

I'm sorting out some details, but I'll be releasing a video soon...

Stay tuned...

PlankFit is at Hocus Pocus!

The good old days, weren’t. They were full of bigotry far worse than today. Yet exceptions exist. One was Jack LaLanne. In more modern times, there was the fat-shaming train wreck gameshow The Biggest Loser, but in those occasionally good old days we had The Jack LaLanne Show.

--On This Day in History S**t Went Down: September 28, 1951--

I spent a decade as a fitness writer, authoring columns for the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune. Believe when I say that The Biggest Loser was a prime example of how NOT to get healthy. It was sick, twisted, unsustainable, and it’s amazing no one died. Conversely, Jack LaLanne was a fitness innovator. He came on the scene as technology was allowing Americans to become more sedentary and convinced people of the benefits of regular exercise. He opened one of the first weightlifting gyms in the U.S. in Oakland in 1936. Many medical experts of the time scoffed. They alleged that lifting weights would cause hemorrhoids and erectile dysfunction, and that women would look like men and athletes would become muscle-bound.

Jack inspired people with amazing physical feats to show what a body could do. When he was 42, he did 1,033 push-ups in only 23 minutes. On his 70th birthday he swam a mile through the strong currents of Long Beach Harbor while towing 70 rowboats carrying 70 people. While handcuffed. Holy s**t.

Jack broke new ground in fitness, and people paid attention to him because of it. He completed these feats seemingly as a challenge to the rest of the world that said, “Let’s see you do that!” And he really did want us to do that. His TV show began broadcasting locally in San Francisco on September 28, 1951, and was nationally syndicated in 1959, running until 1985. It was enthusiastic and inclusive, encouraging people to do what they could, to seek enjoyment in movement and healthier eating. LaLanne often spoke of how exercise was supposed to be enjoyable, not some endless drudgery of ah I f**kin’ hate this make it stop. His ever-present smile spoke volumes, and his exuberance for fitness inspired many. Jack taught us that if you didn’t use it, you were going to lose it. But he also worked to convince many older people that if they had lost it, it was never too late to get it back.

Jack was motivated to help others because he had experience with being both physically and mentally unhealthy. As a teen he described himself as a “junk food junkie” who suffered from bulimia. He lacked direction, dropped out of school at 14, and was prone to episodes of violence. “I was a miserable goddamn kid,” Jack said. “It was hell.” Jack’s father died at the age of 50 from heart disease, but the young man was inspired by a lecture on diet and exercise and it changed his life, then he changed the lives of many others.

Jack LaLanne lived for 96 years and was active, spry and almost superhuman right up to the end.

Those who cannot remember the past … need a history teacher who says “f**k” a lot. Get both volumes of “On This Day in History S**t Went Down” at JamesFell.com/books.

Down to 207!

The research is paying off!

So I've been steadily losing weight in small increments since, essentially, the beginning of summer. After a plateau I hadn't been able to break in more than a year, I finally made it through!

This is what kept me sidetracked after I posted about my fitness journey: I was embarrassed that I couldn't get my weight to go down, no matter what I tried.

I almost gave up.

So many times, I'd look at the scale, see the numbers, and just deflate. So many times, I'd say "screw it" and then eat my feelings.

Even that experience has value. It gave me time to reflect, to understand, to reevaluate.

And now I'm almost ready to launch my first program.

Also, I'll be putting together a collection of my recipes that helped me break my plateau.

Stay tuned!

That's my water aerobics class at Splash Zone! Come out and see me Monday and Wednesday evenings, or Tuesday and Thursday mornings! It's so fun, you won't even know you're exercising!

Working on something big y'all.

It's been a while since I posted, and yeah, things are a little rough at the moment.

So I'm trying a different tack.

What if I came up with a specific program for a specific result?

I mean, I'm still open to doing custom workouts, but this would be a little more generalized and just geared towards a goal.

The problem is narrowing it down.

What do I work on first?

It's hard to distill almost 6 years of professional knowledge and experience, plus a lifetime of just plain interest in fitness overall...

So i need some help.

Weight loss seems to be a big one.

Any other suggestions?

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