“….the rest don’t matter.” Ok so maybe that’s a song about relationships (or maybe that’s just what I think). But the line, I feel, holds a lot of weight.

Throughout my child – from the time I can remember to when I moved out of the house – every morning (starting at 4am) my dad got up, went for a run, made two scrambled egg and called his friend Bob. Then he left for work. This was the framework of his “bones.”

Every. Single. Day.

He’s closing in on 70 now and, like a trainer once told me, at some point we hit the law of diminishing returns. My dad’s knees aren’t what they were. There is a disease that he is fighting (but doing very well!). But his overall health? He has outlived his mom, dad, brother and sister by almost 30 years (family history wasn’t exactly on his side). And done so in peak condition (save for those knees…).

There is a health continuum that covers ones lifetime that James Fitzgerald talk about. On one side is death (and close to it is sickness). On the other side is vitality -> a place where one has reached their maximum physical, spiritual and mental capacity. Health tries to balance the two. The goal, over the course of one’s life, is vitality.

I would argue that’s why most of us come to the gym. To start to move the physical aspect of life’s needle towards health and vitality. It’s why in our programming we have daily options to meet you where you are at and allow you to move at a pace that is necessary for you to move towards health and vitality. We can’t start cycling a barbell if we can’t do the barbell movement to begin with if we still need to learn the stability to control our bodies in a static state.

But James talks not just about the physical aspects of life but also the mental and spiritual. We can have an unlimited membership at a gym but spend no time on our mental health. We can continue to move towards sickness mentally (stress, exhaustion) there but “hey, we go to the gym!” (Sidebar: I’m not minimizing the gym as it can certainly be a part of stress management and providing energy….and I’d be out of a job so pretty sure I believe strongly in the need for the gym).

Enter Bob.

I had no idea exactly what my dad and Bob talked about. All that I know was how pissed off I was when it was Bob’s week to initiate the phone call because the phone would ring at 5am. No one needs a rotary phone going off at 5am.

What I generally know is that they talked through life. Challenges they were experiencing. Successes they had. The joys that middle children bring (oh wait, that was me…I’m SURE that was what they were talking about most of the time). They would ask how they could help each other.

Every. Single. Day.

We can work on the physical. It’s necessary. It’s gives us longevity. But are you taking care of yourself mentally? I’d argue it gives us just as much longevity. Those are part of the “bones.” And when they are good…the rest sort of takes care of itself.

Maybe a question we need to ask is: Who or what is your Bob? Because as much as we need the gym consistently, we need to take care of what’s going on in our heads just as much.