Just in my lifetime it is amazing to consider the change and improvement in exercise and nutrition.

Most in my father’s generation would wear a suit six days a week, one for church on Sunday. They got up, sipped coffee, ate eggs and bacon, went to work where they would go out for lunch for a steak with a few cocktails. Come home on the train smoking in the smoking car and drinking in the bar car. Have martinis before dinner, eat dinner, read the paper and go to bed.

Maybe on Saturday they tinkered in their workshops or garages or worked on the lawn.

At 12, if you had asked what was more likely for me at age 52, being President of the United States or running three miles and surfing in waves several days a week, I would have said President. And those chances were nil.

My parents and their friends were considered hardcore jocks because they played tennis one night a week. After tennis it was out for deep dish pizza and martinis.

When I was 12, I wanted to join a gym with a weight room. There wasn’t one. The closet gym was in the YMCA in Evanston five miles away. Even the fancy Chicago Athletic Club didn’t have weights. Workout consisted of sitting in the steam or sauna, plunging in the cold pool, getting a shave and then getting dressed.

Then, when I tried to join the YMCA, the counselor there insisted that I was there for counseling as a troubled youth. I wasn’t I just wanted to use their meager weights. One bar bell, one bench and a handful of dumbbells. And a jump rope. The guy in charge would ask me into his office and continually asked what was wrong with my family. He refused to believe me that my family was fine and I was there to work out.

In Seventh grade I got the Sears Bob Mathias weight set. The weights were not bad, they were cement in plastic case. But the weight instruction manuel was a decade ahead of its time. It said you should do three sets of ten to 14 reps. Showed the proper technique for bench press, military press, lateral raises, upright rows, squats, calf raises, curls and clean and jerks.

Although not a wildly skilled basketball player, I was a star because, thanks to the weights, I could touch the rim of a ten foot basket in Eighth grade.

When I was in Eighth grade I started jogging (we called it running, I hated the term jogging) with a friend, Phelps. You couldn’t jog alone, you would look like a crazy person. There was one pair of running shoes made, they were Adidas brand called Italias and they were white with a green stripe with a micro-thin green sole.

People in cars would lean out the window and yell insults at you;

“What are you, crazy? You look like an a-hole.”

The one and only smart thing my high school football coach ever did was see the advantages of weight lifting and, in 1972, had a full-blown weight room installed in the middle of the indoor track. This was unheard of at division one college football programs until the mid to late seventies. Northwestern’s football team didn’t have their own weight room until 1979.

There was no such thing as nutritionists. We were force fed spinach because some idiot checking spinach’s iron content miss-placed a decimal, so my entire generation grew up thinking spinach had ten times more iron than other green vegetables. It doesn’t.

There was an article in the "Chicago Sun Times" that I vaguely remember about Chicago Bears rookies Gale Sayers and Dick Butkus getting brutally teased by their teammates for being sissies and whimps for not smoking and only drinking a few beers.

There was one sporting goods store in town, Fred’s Sporting Goods. In the fall you bought your helmet, shoulder pads and Ridell cleats there. In the winter you bought a basketball and Converse high tops. In the summer you bought your mitt and your Wilson or Spalding baseball cleats.

Think of the movie “Hoosiers.” Now think of Kobe Bryant. We were way, way, way closer to “Hoosiers” than we were to Kobe Bryant.

Gym clothes consisted of grey thick cotton sweatpants and sweatshirts, green New Trier cotton shorts, a tank top New Trier gym shirt, wool socks, converse sneakers (Jack Purcell tennis shoes if you were really hip) and a jock.

Balls and bats and basic gear was all Fred’s had. Once I remember being in Fred’s and seeing a box of Voit scubba fins. Just looking at them made me feel like James Bond.

These are things we were told as gospel truth:

Warming up did not include stretching.

Swimming one hour after eating would kill you.

Distance running was bad for the heart.

If you swallowed your gum it stayed inside your stomach for the rest of your life.

Any less done than well done and a pork chop will kill you.

All the children in Europe were starving.

Nobody flossed.

If you moved out to California, eventually you would turn crazy.

Bacon was good for you.

Smoking, in moderation, wasn’t bad for you.

It was fine to lie out in the sun with no sun screen protection for many hours.

Drinking water during exercise was bad for you.

On hot days you ate salt pills.

A professional athlete was considered old at 26.

The athletic prime was 21-years old.

Seat belts were a fancy luxury.

Lifting weights ruined baseball and basketball players.

It is a miracle that anyone over the age of 50 is still alive.