Justifying the Gym

So I am driving to work this morning, as I do a couple of times a week, and I notice (as if for the first time) all of the gyms, packed into little stripmalls along my route.
Wow, there are a lot of them. Almost as many as Starbucks shops.
And I think to myself......wow, we must be really fit as a society. There are enough gyms that we can all have memberships, and if we are all working out....well there you go, one incredibly fit and healthy population. Right?

And yet everyday I read something about how overweight we are, how we are a society of lazy channel surfers, dying from high blood pressure and lack of exercise.

So it all comes together in my head. It's a feel-good. It's not real. We know we are screwing ourselves health-wise. We know we should be taking the time to really live and get exercise as part of that living (not a supplement). But we don't do the real, to-the-root, right thing. Instead we accept another life failure and try to 'make up' for it by spending 20 minutes at the gym. And that is only some of us. Many of us just by a membership and then grumble about not having the time to spend at the gym. Either way, we feel healthier?

And if you look at the purpose of fitness, it is even stranger. Why are we concerned with being fit? To live longer healthier lives? Obviously, there are better ways than the gym, as I just alluded to. To look better for others? I will be honest and tell you that I think a 'chiseled' gym body is unnatural and funny looking. To be in good shape if you ever need to use your fitness? Maybe, but if I think about it, I am more apt to need the ability to walk several miles from my broken down car than to need the ability to bench press 300 pounds from a table. And guess what? A 20 minute workout at the gym does not prep you for a multi-hour walk to the gas station.

So, we build gyms, and join gyms and sometimes even go to gyms, in an effort to replace a little bit more 'real life', and in doing so, we lose.

We lose the experiences of the real world and what it offers. We lose the variety of challenges the world offers and replace them with known circular motions (exercise machines). We lose the mental growth and stimulation that occurs in the real world and replace it with monotony and repetition.

Yeah, I never really thought about it before today, but I find the gym concept for the layman quite silly. For serious sports folks and training, sure. But to stay in shape and replace 'normal' activity, I wonder how we ever got suckered into that one.

Later-E