David Shaywitz

A comprehensive 2018 review of the scientific literature commissioned by the Department of Health and Human Services reported that physical activity not only helps you “sleep better, feel better, and function better,” but also “reduces the risk of a large number of diseases and conditions,” including dementia, hypertension, diabetes, and a range of cancers.

The report specifically highlights the benefits to individuals who “perform no or little moderate-to-vigorous physical activity.” 

Just adding light-intensity physical activity, the report notes, “reduces the risk of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease incidence and mortality, and the incidence of type 2 diabetes.” Similarly, sedentary individuals who gradually add at least some moderate intensity physical activity “can reduce their health risks.”

(Moderate intensity activities like brisk walking, gardening, and biking under 10 MPH raise your heart rate but still allow conversation; vigorous intensity activities like hiking uphill or running are difficult to do while talking. Light intensity activities include cooking and walking at a leisurely pace.)

This again leads us back to the opportunity of digital fitness, technology platforms like Peloton that seem incredibly good at engaging and motivating users – but generally users who already are at least “exercise-curious,” and often trying to decide between one form of exercise and another.

But how do you motivate exercise in the first place?

I had the chance this week to pose this question directly to executives from three leading digital fitness companies, at a Wharton digital fitness panel moderated by legendary Wharton marketing professor (and self-described fitness enthusiast) Americus Reed. You can watch a recording here.

Americus Reed, Whitney M. Young Jr. Professor
Professor of Marketing, University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business

The companies represented were Nike (in the context of their digital platforms like the popular Nike running club app), Tonal (the digital strength training company that just this week announced a $250M series E raise, at an associated valuation of $1.6B), and WHOOP (the physiological parameter monitoring company used by many elite athletes; Lisa Suennen and I interviewed the founder, Will Ahmed, on Tech Tonics in 2016, here.

The question I submitted, and posed by Reed to the group, was, as I recently discussed, how these platforms think about reaching beyond the already-athletic, to speak to “future former couch potatoes.”

Chris Stadler, head of marketing at Tonal, frames the opportunity this way: “76% of Americans,” he says, “believe strength training is important,” yet most don’t do it. 

Why not?

“Most of them,” Stadler continues, “are either intimidated to go to the gym or don’t have the equipment or knowledge to strength train at home. [The traditional equipment required is] big and bulky.” By enabling strength training from the privacy and comfort of home, and using equipment that occupies a much smaller footprint, he believes Tonal can serve this unmet need. 

This seems logical, though I imagine it’s one thing for survey respondents to passively agree with a statement asserting “strength training is important” and quite another for that same person to feel sufficiently motivated to consider it for themselves. 

Kristen Holmes, the VP of Performance Science at WHOOP, highlighted the health-promoting values she sees in the rich physiological data (including heart rate variability, respiratory rate, sleep dynamics) the program offers.   

This information provides “the keys to the kingdom,” Holmes said, adding, “To the extent that you can understand how your body’s adapting, you increase longevity, you stave off disease, you have higher level of cognitive functioning, physical functioning….”

Fundamentally, Holmes argues, “this isn’t just about athletic performance. This is about owning your health. That is 100 percent what this is about. And every human is responsible for owning their health.”

The hope of improving performance through rich personal data sounds a lot like what drove many “quantified selfers” to embrace wearables a decade ago; yet many (such as, famously, Wired editor Chris Anderson) were disappointed by the lack of utility and value. 

As reviewers of WHOOP such as Mashable’s Tim Marcin point out, there may be too much data for the casual user, leading to what he described as “information overload.” Others have cautioned about confusing information with insight, and worry the platform over-extrapolates from the data it collects, leading to oversimplified conclusions and recommendations.  

In short, while WHOOP may highlight the benefit outside of sports to general users, it’s not immediately clear that the casual user, and particularly the sedentary user, would gravitate to, benefit from, or enjoy this powerful data collection and analysis platform.

In Reed’s framing of the original question, there are three segments to consider: “super hardcore athletes,” “people that are interested in wellness,” and “a group of people who are even before the interest in wellness.” 

This third group, in principle, could benefit the most from activity, and it wasn’t yet clear to me how the emerging technology platforms were speaking to them. 

Then there was Nike.

At first, I had considered it charmingly old school to include a speaker — Vikas Mehta, the CFO of Nike’s $15B direct to consumer business — from this (relatively) venerable shoe company.

Vikas Mehta, chief financial officer, Nike Direct

But as he spoke, I was reminded that this popular consumer brand, famous for encouraging us to “just do it,” clearly knows a thing or two about how to attract and bring into the fold even the most sedentary among us.

According to Mehta, Nike is especially focused on targeting three important population segments: kids, women, and the underserved. 

Kids, he pointed out, have been moving less and less since the pandemic began. It’s also in childhood where life-long interest in and attitudes towards activity may be first formed. The Nike apps offer specific programs for parent/son and parent/daughter dyads, to encourage intergenerational participation.

Mehta also seemed concerned about ensuring women remain engaged in athletics, engagement Nike seeks to sustain and promote with its app. Mehta was particularly pleased to report that during the pandemic, more women than men reported completing runs on the Nike App.

Finally, Mehta emphasized the importance of engagement with underserved communities, and the need to create “resources and opportunities where we can see a higher involvement.”

While reflecting on what was said, I was reminded of the same dialog we hear about digital in the context of biopharma. 

Digital technology offers tremendous potential to transform the industry, but who will drive the change? Will it be digitally-native upstarts, who really understand their technology, and hope to find a focused, useful application, or will it be the incumbent behemoths, who have extensive experience in drug development, and are trying to figure out how to adapt to and embrace the new, less familiar digital technologies.

It’s difficult — especially as someone already excited about fitness — not to be intrigued by the sexy, tech-enabled, still somewhat niche offerings of WHOOP and Tonal, but from a population health perspective, you can’t help but think companies like Nike and Apple may be onto something.

I’m especially intrigued and excited by the promise of pilot efforts like Time To Walk, offered by Apple Fitness+. I can easily envision this deliberately constructed audio walk accompaniment expanding into an important “fitness media” category of its own, including video (including VR) as well as audio; this has exceptional promise for sustained consumer engagement.

Finally, it’s interesting to think how companies might encourage consumers to progressively ramp up their participation and engagement. Peloton provides a particularly informative example of how this might work. While of course best known for their expensive stationary bikes (and associated, engaging classes), they have expanded not only to include other expensive exercise machines like their treadmill, but, significantly, to welcome consumers who may not own any exercise equipment. 

Peloton bike owners need to fork over about $39 a month to subscribe to classes, but anyone can subscribe to the Peloton app for $13/month. This app, like its competitor, the Apple Fitness+ app, offers a range of exercises for all levels of users. Moreover, to get the most out of the Apple app, you need an Apple Watch; Peloton, one imagines, hopes to use the standalone app to draw users in, then collect the big money later on, when the customers are engaged, motivated, and ready to upgrade.

As captured so vividly by Reed’s palpable excitement, this is a remarkably exciting moment for digital fitness – and perhaps, ultimately, for population health. The sheer volume of chronic disease – heart disease, diabetes, depression and more – shows us the value in even a little bit of prevention that could come from improved physical fitness.

It’s encouraging to see the velocity and variety of innovation, embracing software and hardware, technology and media. It will be even more encouraging to see these technologies impact our happiness and health at scale.

David Shaywitz

Digital platforms such as Peloton and Tonal have clearly learned how to use emerging technologies to cultivate healthy exercise habits and a loyal base of fitness-focused customers.

These same technologies would seem ideally suited – if presented in the right way – to coax more people off the couch in the first place. 

This represents an enormous health — and market — opportunity, as well as a notoriously difficult challenge, one that remains largely unsolved.

The digital fitness world I see reminds me so much of the academic sports medicine and “human performance lab” world: inhabited largely by the already-fit and exercise committed. 

The concern is whether there’s something a bit hermetic about this – if you spend your life living among the fit and fit-obsessed, it may be easy to lose touch with the many who avoid exercise but desperately could use some. 

Research efforts aimed at exploring and extending the extremes of human fitness, say, or reducing injuries in athletes may uncover principles and insights that apply to the rest of us, but there may also be important learnings that require dedicated focus on the exercise-avoidant, who are unlikely to find their way into a sports medicine clinical center.

To adapt a phrase, and a mindset, from Pete Buttigieg: both sports medicine and digital fitness need to spend a lot more time thinking about how to embrace “future former couch potatoes.”

Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation

While campaigning for the 2020 Democratic nomination for President (he now serves in the Biden Administration as Transportation Secretary), Buttigieg famously emphasized the importance of speaking not just to Democrats and swing voters, but also to traditional GOP voters – or as he termed them, “future former Republicans.” 

For Buttigieg, this wasn’t just a slogan but a strategy. Unlike the many candidates from both parties who tended to cling to media perceived as friendly, Buttigieg enthusiastically, and deliberately, appeared on Fox, for example, which he described as an opportunity to get in front of voters who might not otherwise have a chance to hear his views directly.

The analogy to fitness feels especially apt. While nominally embracing all comers, many digital fitness platforms – and sport medicine researchers – remind me of the Republicans who do appearance after appearance on Fox, or the Democrats doing the same on MSNBC or CNN. In both cases, the politicians are targeting their appeal to viewers most likely to respond. 

While I understand the appeal of such “fan service” from a business perspective (essentially, the customer acquisition cost is far lower), ultimately both industry growth and population-level health impact will require broadening the outreach.

Moreover, unlike with politics, where evidence suggests we cling incredibly tightly to political affiliation as a core part of our identity, fitness status identification is likely to prove far more malleable. Many exercise-avoidant people, I suspect, might be even happier to re-identify themselves as exercise initiates if they found an activity that sufficiently engaged them.

In summary, from a health perspective, it seems like there’s a huge segment of the population that could benefit from digital fitness if only they were deliberately approached.

Remarkably, the view from Wall Street seems strikingly similar. 

Aarti Kapoor, who follows the health and wellness space closely at a top investment bank (you can catch an enlightening discussion with her here) tells me that “the majority of institutional capital over the last few years has gone towards digital fitness concepts in the premium segment, which are targeting consumers who are already focused on fitness (if not ‘fitness enthusiasts’ or athletes).” 

The category has attracted significant interest from investors. In 2020 alone,” Kapoor reports, “digital fitness concepts that received significant capital investments included Hydrow (June 2020), Mirror (June 2020), Tempo (July 2020), Tonal (September 2020), Zwift (September 2020), Strava (November 2020), and Echelon (December 2020) among others.” 

She notes that most of these companies sell a platform that requires “a hefty multi-thousand dollar upfront purchase of equipment / hardware followed by ongoing monthly subscription fees.” 

Wirecutter (the go-to product review website, owned by New York Times) reports similar figures, noting that between the initial equipment cost and recurring monthly subscription feeds, “Becoming a member of the Peloton pack is an investment: roughly $2,500 for the first year and nearly $500 each year thereafter. And that’s for the base model.”

Kapoor adds that institutional investors were comfortable with these companies because the investors felt that “the ‘sunk cost’ of the upfront hardware purchase … makes for a stickier consumer base in the long-term.” 

In contrast, she points out, institutional investors remain wary of digital fitness offerings that involve “content only” (i.e. no equipment like a Peloton bike). While content-only offerings come in at a more manageable price point for customers, and are relatively easy to scale, Kapoor says investors worry these products won’t be especially sticky, leading to lots of churn as customers surf from platform to platform to platform.  

One brick-and-mortar company that has done incredibly well by targeting first-time fitness customers is Planet Fitness. Kapoor says the company has built “robust brand equity on the premise of a welcoming, non-intimidating environment (coined the ‘Judgment Free Zone’).” 

According to Kapoor, Planet Fitness, with more than 2,000 locations and more than 15.5 million members, “has demonstrated an unmatched ability to offer broad demographic appeal catering to 80% of the U.S. population that does not belong to a gym — for example, approximately 35% of new members have indicated that they are first-time gymgoers.”

Planet Fitness relies both on local marketing as well as a well-conceived national campaign that astutely targets new customers through commercials that position the brand as an approachable alternative to competitive boutique cycling classes (this “Bike of shame” ad) and high-end gyms populated by buff narcissists (this “Mirror guy” ad).

Looking at the category as a whole, Kapoor ultimately lands on the exact question that I’ve been fixating on: “Where is the Planet Fitness of the digital world?” 

Such an offering, in targeting “future former couch potatoes,” seems remarkably promising from both the perspective of both health and economics. 

It’s an opportunity that’s in plain sight, for those who are looking.

David Shaywitz

Astute TR readers might have noticed that I’ve been writing a lot about digital fitness lately, in contrast to digital pharma. 

This is deliberate, and represents an evolution of my thinking.

I was first drawn to digital health over a decade ago, in the context of a translational medicine training program for medical scientists that I developed with Dr. Denny Ausiello at Massachusetts General Hospital.  This initiative was called PASTEUR – Patient-Associated Science: Training, Education, Understanding, and Research. The core tenet was an emphasis on the patient-participant in medical science.  Our tagline was “Our patients as partners in discovery.”

Our focus on better understanding the patient experience led us to an early interest in digital health and digital technologies. Here seemed like an excellent way to connect with patients, leveraging their smartphones and other digital tools to help advance clinical understanding and accelerate biomedical discovery. We established CATCH – the Center for Assessment Technology and Continuous Health — to explore applications of these emerging technologies.

When I moved to California in 2010 for a biotech role, I was also really excited about the opportunity to immerse myself in the culture and expertise of the Valley.  I was especially eager to explore how my sense of the needs of healthcare matched up with the possibilities afforded by the emerging technologies that were being developed all around me.  You couldn’t grab a coffee in town without overhearing energetic pitches and animated discussions; so many smart engineers and entrepreneurs were seeking to extend technology into new markets, including healthcare.

Yet I was struck almost immediately by what felt like a disconnect between my understanding of biology and medicine and the view that seemed so prevalent out here, a solutionist perspective that often underestimated the messiness of biology, the deep humanity of medicine, and the often perverse market incentives of various healthcare stakeholders. I said as much in 2011, with a shot across the bow entitled “What Silicon Valley Doesn’t Understand About Medicine,” and have returned to this theme quite often since.

The potential for digital technologies in healthcare remains extraordinary – and extraordinarily difficult to harness, at least in some of the areas we care most about: using digital technologies to come up with important new drugs, on the pharma side, and iteratively leveraging experience to continuously improve the care of patients (the ideal of the learning healthcare system), on the care delivery side. 

Despite some important, authentic progress (protein folding prediction comes to mind) – and an almost unfathomable amount of extravagant expectation and incessant, endlessly escalating hype, the goals remain largely aspirational, as Derek Lowe, in particular, has expertly chronicled.

In a range of roles – including chief medical officer of a healthtech startup, senior partner at a pharma corporate venture group to which I tried (unsuccessfully) to add a digital vertical, and my current work advising senior pharma execs about digital and data – I’ve developed a deep appreciation of how difficult it is to bring emerging digital technology into legacy organizations. Change is hard. Especially at more senior levels, pharma tends to be extremely cautious and skeptical.

I’ve come away with a particular sense of awe and admiration for the digital/data champions within pharma organizations, who often have nominal, high-level organizational blessing but typically very little ground-level buy-in.  Not only are their efforts often received with polite skepticism, but when something does succeed, there are often others who immediately rush in to take credit. This is the exact response to innovation Safi Bahcall describes perfectly in Loonshots. 

It’s also, by the way, exactly – exactly – the same thing I’ve heard from top doctors working in leading tech companies.

Stanford Business School professor Jeffery Pfeffer would surely shake his head knowingly and say this represents typical organizational power dynamics. As usual, Pfeffer would be right. The inconvenient truth: if you’re a data science person in a biopharma organization, or a medical person in a tech company, you can find yourself without a meaningful power base, and struggle accordingly.

I remain extremely bullish on the long-term opportunity for digital and data in biopharma and healthcare, though it promises to remain a brutal and painful struggle for the next decade. The good news – the best news – is that we are beginning to train a cohort of physician/data-scientists and biologist/data-scientists, experts who are intrinsically bilingual and who recognize and incorporate data science as an intrinsic and vital component of the medical science of the future.

Erik Reinertsen, director of data science and engineering, Prometheus Biosciences

An example in biopharma is Dr. Erik Reinertsen, a whip-smart physician/data scientist from Emory and Georgia Tech who interned with me in venture capital, went on to do some fine work at the Broad Institute, and is now leading data science efforts at Prometheus Biosciences.

Or consider Dr. Griffin Weber, a physician-data-scientist from Harvard and a standout example in care delivery who Lisa Suennen and I interviewed on our last Tech Tonics episode.

Perhaps not surprisingly, my advisory work has tended to focus less on product strategy than on organizational executive coaching, and I plan to continue counseling data science champions within biopharmas. 

At the same time, I am finding myself increasingly drawn to consumer health in general, and digital fitness in particular, as it seems to represent an expression of digital health that is already positively and palpably impacting lives – right now, today — and seems poised to meaningfully impact so many more people in the future.

Griffin Weber, Associate Professor of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School

It’s difficult not to be struck by the foundational role regular exercise plays in the lives of so many physicians, scientists, and entrepreneurs I know and admire – and the role exercise has played in my own life – including helping me lose 80 pounds several years ago (and keep it off), as well as helping me stay both fit and centered during this last tumultuous pandemic year.

I’ve also been impressed both by the engagement so many have with exercise, as well as by the opportunity that exists to use technology to bring exercise and a sense of community to the many people who’d benefit from exercise but find it difficult or daunting.

The opportunity to leverage emerging digital technologies to improve both physical and mental health by offering engaging and compelling fitness experiences seems too powerful to ignore, and too promising to be reserved only for those who are already athletic.   

For years, doctors have advised their patients to exercise more, with almost zero expectation that anyone actually would. As Harvard anthropologist Daniel Lieberman points out in Exercised, we didn’t evolve to pursue pointless activity. 

Even so, the many physical and psychological benefits associated with exercise (after all, we didn’t evolve to sit at desks all day long either) suggest the wisdom of this timeless medical advice. 

The challenge and the opportunity before us: leveraging digital fitness technology to turn the tedium of prescriptive exercise into engaging, delightful, and healthy activity.

We can do this. Eye of the tiger.

David Shaywitz

Whether you are an “exercist,” who relentlessly talks up the benefits of regular exercise to anyone who will listen, or instead are like the vast majority of people and conscientiously avoid exercise, you will find something appealing in the recently published Exercised, by Harvard anthropologist Daniel Lieberman.

Those who assiduously avoid unnecessary exertion – pretty much the definition of exercise – turn out to have years of evolution on their side. According to Lieberman, “let’s go strenuously exert ourselves for the next half hour, just for the heck of it” is a sentiment no living creature has ever expressed (at least until quite recently). 

Instead, movement was always purpose driven – to find food, escape predators, procreate, celebrate, socialize. No wonder, then, that few are thrilled to hop on a treadmill and plod drearily, step by tedious step, to absolutely nowhere.

On the other hand, throughout the history of our species, a lot of activity was baked into life –including through old age.  (Yes, old age. “Contrary to the widespread assumptions that hunter-gatherers die young,” Lieberman writes, “foragers who survive the precarious first few years of infancy are most likely to live to be 68-78 years old.”)  

Today, with the ubiquity (at least in the United States) of electricity, running water, and grocery stores, you can meet many of your essential needs with little physical effort. 

The problem, Lieberman argues, is that there is now an overwhelming amount of data pointing out that exercise is good for you – really, really good for you. While not a magic bullet (cue Jim Fixx invocation, as Lieberman dutifully acknowledges), exercise seems to help forestall a surprising range of diseases, and can improve cognitive performance (including perhaps through improved sleep) and elevate your overall sense of well-being.

While the mechanisms underlying these benefits remain to be worked out (unless you accept the reductionist explanations offered by Lieberman, which I suspect even he might acknowledge are frequently tidy and simplistic), the underlying message is compelling. 

As Lieberman summarizes, Michael Pollan style:

• “Make exercise necessary and fun
• Do mostly cardio but also some weights
• Some is better than none
• Keep it up as you age.”

Given the pronounced benefits of exercise across the lifespan – and the particular benefit for those who may be older, less fit, or both – it seems mystifying that leading digital fitness programs seem intent on targeting primarily those who are young and already fit, or at worst, fit-adjacent. The toned models who famously (or infamously) grace Peloton ads are clearly positioned as aspirational examples – “This could be you if you sign up today!”

While some non-exercisers have surely been inspired to join Peloton, many users (especially during the pandemic) would otherwise be exercising in a boutique class. Home cycling may be more convenient, but it’s attracting many of the same customers, or at least seems to be pulling from the same pool of (relatively young, fit — and affluent) customers.

My mind keeps returning to the vast majority of people to whom these ads are clearly not speaking, and who, when they see these ads, are likely put off by and discouraged by depictions of such dissimilar people.

Yet many of these same disaffected viewers, as Lieberman reminds us, could benefit profoundly from exercising more, and while fancy digital fitness equipment is hardly required, the ability of technology to afford users an engaging, compelling experience and a sense of community also should be utilized to serve the enormous population of older and/or less fit customers as well. 

This feels like an obvious and compelling business and health opportunity that so far seems to have been all but ignored.

One physician who has locked onto this need is Dr. James Beckerman, a cardiologist in Oregon who I knew from my internal medicine training at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, although we had largely lost track of each other since then. It turns out, he is now focusing his efforts on encouraging exercise and building communities – including an inspirational and apparently highly impactful effort known as “Heart to Start.”

As you watch this video – and you should – not only will you feel authentically inspired, but the contrast between the very real participants in this video, and those featured in the typical digital fitness commercial couldn’t be more striking.

(And if you find yourself thinking “Gosh this could be the basis for a TED talk,” turns out – you’re right. Beckerman gave one on the topic, in 2017 – enjoy it here.)

You don’t have to be Yenta the Matchmaker to see the possibilities. 

• Imagine if the cutting-edge technology that has delivered transformative products like Peloton could be channeled toward the millions of far less fit people who might be interested in getting healthier.
• Imagine also that such a platform could help foster the sense of community and connection that Beckerman’s participants clearly savor — and that Peloton’s current user base, for example, already enjoys.
• Imagine what could be accomplished just by bringing these existing technologies to an established population – the remarkable possibilities for the health and well-being of participants. 
• Imagine the upside for the business able to deliver this.

Seems time to stop imagining and start working.

David Shaywitz

I recently discussed the rise of digital fitness, and specifically how companies like Peloton are succeeding by delivering an engaging experience.

The new crop of digital fitness companies have figured out how to make health-promoting activities that are intrinsically tedious – like riding a stationary bike – into something compelling and sustaining. A New York Times writer, Amanda Hess, captures the essence of this magnificently in her piece, “Your Brain on Peloton.”

I was reminded of another important component of healthy activities this week when I was chatting with my barber (as one does), and asked about his fitness routine. He told me he goes to his gym 3-4 times a week, and has for years. 

I wondered what gets him there each day. Simple, he said. He has a group of buddies there.  Sometimes, he says, they’ll go for drinks afterwards, or their families will go over to one another’s house afterward for dinner. 

In short: he’s motivated by a sense of community.

An anecdote is hardly data, but the idea that healthy behaviors may be linked to interpersonal influences is well established. 

An influential paper published by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2007, for example, examined decades of Framingham Heart Study data, and concluded that “obesity may spread in social networks.” They note “people are embedded in social networks,” which “suggests that both bad and good behaviors might spread over a range of social ties.”

Another Christakis paper, from 2016, looked at two years of Gallup surveys for clues about the influence of social networks. Analyzing the data, Christakis and colleagues concluded that individuals who tend to associate with a lot of heavy people are more likely to want to lose weight, but are less likely to be successful. Conversely, associating with thinner people is linked to more successful weight loss.   

“Gains and losses of even a single social tie with a thinner or heavier individual show important links to the probability of obesity,” the authors of the 2016 paper wrote. In other words: the probability of obesity increases with additional ties to heavier people and decreases with additional ties to thinner people, and vice-versa.

A very readable overview of the “power of community” in cultivating consistent healthy fitness behaviors, by industry analyst Anthony Vennare, can be found here.

My barber’s story also reminds us of Clay Christensen’s advice: make sure you understand the problem to be solved. In Christensen’s classic (and perhaps not so healthy) milkshake example, many customers purchasing a shake from a fast-food drive-through turned out not to be looking for a tasty beverage so much as for something to occupy them in the morning, while they were driving to work. 

By recognizing this initially obscure need, the vendor was able to increase sales by making the shakes thicker (to last longer) and adding bits of fruit (to make it more interesting).

Which brings me back to what the real issue is for the barber at the gym. He’s apparently not looking for the most efficient or effective workout. Instead, he’s looking for camaraderie, while engaged in a healthy activity. These social factors are often what draw customers to the gym, and keeps them coming back.  While these individuals may achieve a healthy outcome, their pursuit of physical health is only one motivator, and often not the primary one.

Of course, not everyone is motivated in the same way. Many people are drawn to exercise explicitly for the physical benefits (such as better endurance, an improved cardiovascular risk profile, a beach body, or wanting to keep up with the grandkids). Some then discover significant mental health dividends along the way.

As modern life becomes increasingly busy, with ever more demands on our attention, “exercise time” may represent our last protected space, a cocoon of time we give to ourselves.

Over the last several years (as I’ve discussed here and here), and continuing through the pandemic, I have savored my morning exercise routine. I’ve used that time — whether sweating inside on the treadmill, elliptical, or weight machine, or outside on my bike — to lose myself in audiobooks and podcasts. I avoid work during this early hour, never checking email or text messages, and avoid all but the most essential calls. I love this daily routine. I find it grounds me, and puts me in a relaxed and positive mindset – an ideal headspace – to start the day. 

I’m certainly not alone.

I also recognize that many people — including me — would have a really tough time taking an hour out of each day for reflection, meditation, or other self-soothing activities. For many similar Type A’s, it would feel difficult to justify, and easy to encroach upon. 

Yet because the time is allocated for an activity that’s both nominally health promoting and physically unpleasant (at least compared to sitting on the couch), it somehow seems easier to rationalize – a modestly uncomfortable sacrifice made in the name of disease prevention. 

In short, exercise creates the permission structure to give ourselves the headspace we so desperately need.

In short, exercise creates the permission structure to give ourselves the headspace we so desperately need.

This also makes me wonder how much of the benefits attributed to the physical aspects of exercise may actually come from the state of mind that exercise enables us to inhabit. Parsing the relative contribution of each seems difficult. 

The bottom line is less ambiguous. Whether you go to the gym to socialize and wind up exercising (delighting your cardiologist), or jump on the bike to stay fit and wind up rejuvenated because of your protected “me-time,” (pleasing your psychiatrist), the results are joyously similar: a healthier body, a happier mind, and a better you.