In 1936, he opened the nation's first health and fitness club in Oakland, California,[11] where he offered supervised weight and exercise training and gave nutritional advice. His primary goal was to encourage and motivate his clients to improve their overall health. Doctors, however, advised their patients to stay away from his health club, a business totally unheard of at the time, and warned their patients that "LaLanne was an exercise 'nut,' whose programs would make them 'muscle-bound' and cause severe medical problems."[11] LaLanne recalls the initial reaction of doctors to his promotion of weight-lifting: