Dan Lurie, early proponent of bodybuilding, dead at 90 ROSLYN, N.Y., Nov. 9 (UPI) -- Bodybuilding pioneer Dan Lurie has died of unspecified causes in Roslyn, N.Y., his family said. He was 90. Lurie -- who died Wednesday -- was known in the bodybuilding world as a tireless promoter of the sport and a walking billboard for strength who once knocked out 1,665 pushups in 90 minutes, The New York Times said Saturday. Although not as well-known as among mainstream audiences as contemporaries like Charles Atlas, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Joe Wieder had, Lurie was considered a celebrity among the muscle crowd and a key figure in the growth of bodybuilding, the newspaper said. Lurie was born in Brooklyn with a heart defect that kept him out of World War II and the Golden Gloves boxing tournament. He turned to weightlifting as a means of building himself up and also worked as a furniture mover for his father. "To further build my muscles I would carry a piece of furniture up two or three flights of stairs and then exercise on the way down," he once wrote. I had put together several routines that called for certain exercises to be done at certain times. For instance, one routine would require 25 push-ups on the landing of the stairs before I returned to the truck for more furniture. Lurie owned a chain of gyms in New York in the 1940s, a barbell company and a bodybuilding magazine.