Sep 1, 2008 12:00 PM

Dr. Kenneth Cooper has made an indelible mark on the way exercise is viewed throughout the world today, but his biggest mark on the world may be yet to come.

Correction: An earlier version of this story overstated the amount that Dr. Kenneth Cooper spent on lawyers' fees to fight foreclosure on the Cooper Aerobics Center, Dallas. He actually spent $800,000 on lawyers' fees. We apologize for the error.

Dr. Kenneth Cooper speaks swiftly, barely taking a breath between sentences. However, he is by no means a fast talker — someone who tries to affect or persuade with deceptive talk — according to his friends and family. That contrasts with the former opinions of many in the medical community who, almost 40 years ago, thought Cooper's views about exercise and preventive medicine were hogwash.

The Oklahoma-born and bred 77-year-old who founded the Cooper Aerobics Center in Dallas is now known worldwide as the father of aerobics, having coined the term aerobics in 1966. He is the author of 19 books on fitness (the first being “Aerobics” in 1968), an international lecturer, a fitness researcher, a one-time co-host of a radio program about healthy living, and a physician to celebrities, politicians, athletes and lesser-known people. His long-time patient and friend, President George W. Bush, twice asked him to be U.S. surgeon general, once in 2001 and again in 2006, but Cooper declined both times.

Despite his success, Cooper, at one time, was almost run out of Dallas. How he went from one extreme to the other is a story of perseverance, determination, family support, faith in divine guidance and belief in his calling. His contributions to the industry and the way he persevered to bring those contributions to the forefront are the reasons Club Industry's Fitness Business Pro selected him as this year's recipient of the magazine's Lifetime Achievement Award.

Cooper's philosophy is that it is easier to maintain good health through proper exercise, diet and emotional balance than to regain it once it is lost. That philosophy was behind the creation of the Cooper Aerobics Center, which includes the Cooper Clinic, the Cooper Institute, Cooper Concepts and the Cooper Fitness Center, plus the Cooper Aerobics Center at Craig's Ranch in McKinney, TX.

“My goal originally was to combat the No. 1 cause of death in America — that's deaths from cardiovascular disease — and to increase longevity,” Cooper says.

To help him carry out this mission, the medical doctor and researcher founded the Cooper Aerobics Center in 1970. At the time, the center consisted of a two-room, two-employee medical practice and his research practice. The research part of his business allowed Cooper to collect data on patients in his medical practice who agreed to participate and to research the exercise's effect on health and longevity. Since those humble beginnings, the research conducted there has given scientific validation to the tenets now promoted daily in clubs around the world, says Todd Whitthorne, president and CEO of Cooper Concepts, a division of Cooper Aerobics Center. Whitthorne adds that many of those tenets, especially that aerobic conditioning is good for cardiovascular health, are based on the early pioneering work of Cooper.

“It's the science behind the message that Dr. Cooper has provided to the industry and the world,” Whitthorne says. “Yes, we know that exercise is good, but why is it good? Not just Dr. Cooper, but other institutes, too, have shown us why, but Dr. Cooper is a true pioneer and had the vision and understood, before many people did, the vital importance of exercise.”

That importance comes down to “squaring off the curve,” meaning that instead of people's health declining gradually as they age and then die, they can keep their health strong until their final days.

“My dad preaches ‘squaring off the curve.’ What good are the longer years if you don't have your health?” says Dr. Tyler Cooper, who works with his father at the Cooper Aerobics Center and is CEO of Cooper Life, a division of the broader organization. “My dad is truly the father of preventive medicine. I believe preventive medicine is going to reshape health care.”

Tedd Mitchell, president and CEO of the Cooper Clinic, has worked with Cooper for 18 years and says that Cooper has helped the medical community understand the role of prevention and that exercise is in fact medicine.

“You can dose it like you do a blood pressure pill,” says Mitchell. “The development of the exercise prescription is a huge contribution he's made.”

Because of his work, Cooper has received more than 70 awards and honors, including the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service, the C. Everett Koop Health Advocate Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. In 1982, the London Times also named Cooper one of the 75 “greatest” people in the world in the preceding 20 years.

Path to Acceptability

Despite the accolades heaped on Cooper, his path hasn't been free from dark times.

Cooper spent two years as a surgeon in the Army and 11 years as a researcher in the Air Force, where he developed the 12-minute fitness test, the treadmill stress test and the Aerobics Point System. These tests helped him coin the term aerobics (defined by Webster's Dictionary as conditioning of the cardiopulmonary system by means of vigorous exercise that seeks to increase efficiency of oxygen intake). He expounded on the importance of aerobics in his first book in 1968. Two years later, he left the Air Force and moved his family to Dallas to start a preventive medicine practice and research institute.

At that time, the idea of preventive medicine was foreign to medical professionals and the general public. Many physicians in Dallas expressed concern that Cooper was trying to put them out of business. Some of them tried to talk their patients out of going to Cooper. Many physicians asked how a doctor could make a living taking care of healthy people.

He showed them how, Mitchell says. However, that didn't come until after several difficult years.

“It was not easy for Ken during those times,” says Millie Cooper, his wife of 49 years. “People were saying he wasn't a real doctor.”

They were also saying that his practice wouldn't last.

At one point, the lack of patients and the ridicule from other physicians became so bad that Cooper considered leaving the practice and re-entering the military, but Millie asked him if he truly believed in prevention. He said yes, and she told him to follow his heart.

Eventually, Cooper's book helped him develop more clientele from Texas and from around the world. He received thousands of letters and dictated the answers to Millie, who typed the responses as she had typed each of the drafts of his first book.

Cooper's office at that time was so small that he couldn't stretch out a patient on the table, Millie says, prompting a patient from Caracas, Venezuela, to say that he'd have to wait until Cooper had a bigger office before he would send his friends to Cooper. His friends wouldn't be impressed with the small office.

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