Hamster wheel

Sometimes I think about all the people working out across America (and now Canada), their feet going in neat ellipses, their hands reaching up and down, up and down. I think about how they're moving but not actually going anywhere, and I think about how the image is downright Sisyphean: repetitive movements that have no purpose but to exert the mover, like rolling a rock up a mountain only to have it roll back down. (Come to think of it, Sisyphus must have had a great quads.) Some people (say, Dante) think this is the essence of Hell (where Sisyphus was): doing something over and over again whether you want to or not.

I think the pervasiveness of gyms must be a sign that we're living in an age of excess. We have so much extra energy (in the form of calories) hanging around our bodies that we have to go somewhere and do something to get rid of it. I never hear this argument brought up in all the environmental chit-chatter going around: Are gyms a waste of energy? Aside from the energy it takes to light and cool these cavernous spaces, there's all this energy people are expending, often to overcome the resistance of machines powered to resist them.

Every now and then, I hear of efforts to put this energy to use. The easiest way is obviously to bike, run, row, or whatever-you-do-in-the-gym your way to and from work, to and from errands, wherever the default would normally be "drive". With the suburbanization of our cities, though, and people living farther away from their places of work, I can see this often isn't practical.

Some engineers and would-be engineers have also tried to harness this energy by hooking up machines to other machines. Take these students from MIT, for instance. They're powering their laptops by biking. An interesting idea, though it's hard not to think of that scene in The Matrix where Morpheus talks about humans being used as batteries and holds up a Duracell.

But beyond these considerations, the main beef I have with gyms is that I think they actually undermine, yes undermine, the public welfare. As long as exercise comprises activities dissociated from our everyday lives -- monotonous activities at that -- it's always going to be something we can either do or not do. Drive to the gym, wait for a machine, strain and grunt for thirty minutes while people stare at me? Or stay at home and eat Cheetos? Hmm, that's a tough one.

Riding my bike to work, I can ride with either less intensity or more, but I can't not ride (unless I pay money to wait for then ride an overcrowded city bus, that is). I might sometimes skimp on the push-ups or sit-ups in the morning, but there's only so much I can skimp on a four-mile bike ride, especially when it's effectively my only way to get to work. What I'm advocating is this: Exercise as necessity, not just convenience. We need more than bigger, fancier gyms. Or actually, maybe we need less.