TIMES COLONIST	C11
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2003

Obituaries

WILLIAM ORBAN

Fitness expert created famous 
5BX program
By CHRIS COBB
Can West News Service

OTTAWA — William (Bill) Orban was often called a pioneer, but it’s a description that barely scratches the surface of accomplishment he packed into his 81 years.

He was a scientist, a professional football player, and a junior A hockey player good enough to be the first Canadian accepted, in 1941, into the University of California’s physical education program.  And if you wanted demonstrations on how to do the perfect pushup or sit-up, he would be the man to see.  In fact, he wrote the book on it literally.

Orban, who died Saturday after a 12 year battle with cancer, had a doctorate in exercise physiology and spent his entire working life and retirement years studying the athletic capabilities of human bodies - from young, elite athletes to elderly people in wheelchairs.

In the late 1950s, while with the Department of National Defence, he devised the 5BX (5 Basic Exercises) fitness plan, a revolutionary method that debunked the notion that a person needs sustained, rigorous exercise to become fit.  His theory was simple: spend 15 minutes a day, three days a week, repeating five simple exercises and you’ll get fit.

Orban’s 5BX booklet was met with a barrage of skepticism and criticism, but the federal government sold a remarkable 23 million copies, in 13 different languages.

The program, which he originally developed as a fitness regimen for the Royal Canadian Air Force, is now part of conventional fitness wisdom and was the forerunner of ParticipAction, the 1970s federally sponsored nationwide fitness campaign.  The widely used Canada Fitness Test is a modification of his work.

Despite the booklet’s phenomenal success, Orban, a public servant, didn’t get a penny in royalties.  He didn’t even get a bonus.

The son of Hungarian immigrants, Orban was born April 21, 1922, in Regina, where he developed a passion for sport, especially football and hockey. He played for the Regina (now Saskatchewan) Roughriders in 1941 and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers four years later.

After the football season, a hockey scholarship took him to the Berkeley campus of the University of California, where he was to study civil engineering and boost the fortunes of the university’s hockey team.

It was his contact with the university’s athletics department that sparked his passion for physical education.  He dropped civil engineering, began studying basic human kinetics and helped the university’s Golden Bears hockey team clinch its first championship in five years.  	His less than gentlemanly treatment of opposing players earned him the nickname Wild Bill.  He stayed a year at Berkeley, before returning to Regina to marry his childhood sweetheart and join the military as a physical training instructor.

In 1949, Orban was a member of McGill University’s first graduating class in physical education, after which he became director of athletics at Montreal’s Loyola College and a member of the Canadian Association for Health, Physical Education and Recreation.  He studied for his PhD at the University of illinois which, in the 1950s, was at the leading edge of “energetics” the study of how the body uses energy.

For two years from 1956, he worked for the recreation branch of the RCAF in Ottawa specifically to work on a fitness program for air force members.

The program had to be simple, take as little time as possible and be easily adaptable for everyone, from supersonic jet crews to office workers. He developed The 5BX Plan for Physical Fitness, which the government published in booklet form.  Millions sold and the government made millions of dollars in profit but, until later editions were printed, his name wasn’t even mentioned in the booklet.

The astounding popularity of the program was an important vindication.

“Everybody in the field assailed Bill when 5BX came out;’ Dr. Jean Kozak, a fellow researcher, said.  “It took tremendous strength of conviction to withstand that onslaught but, in the end, he was proven right.  Bill saw what no one else had seen before.

Orban’s expertise became a much sought-after commodity and he subsequently became adviser to most of Canada’s major sports bodies, including the Canadian Olympic Association and the national hockey team.

He was chairman of the National Conference on Health and Physical Fitness workshop in 1973, from which the ParticipAction program emerged.

He was dean of physical education at the University of Saskatchewan from 1958 to 1966.  From 1968 to 1976, he was dean of faculty of human kinetics at the University of Ottawa and was a professor of kinanthropology until 1987.

In Orban’s case, the word retirement was a misnomer.

He dedicated his later years to the study and encouragement of active living in seniors.