Gyms don’t manufacture health. Health is a complicated outcome influenced by activity levels, sleep quality, nutrition, environmental conditions, quality of life, stress among other factors.

Gyms produce strength outcomes due to the adaptations they can produce with movement.

Those outcomes can translate well to everyday life. Squatting deep is useful because of what it does for knees, hips, ankles and spine. You can enjoy doing a heavy squat too. Those two things can coexist. This is the case for all movement.

When our ancestors had to undertake repeated activity in the pursuit of food, shelter or a mate, they became good at those specific tasks. And the adaptations to those tasks were very specific strength capacities. And our ancestors were lean because they didn’t have enough food. Not because they were jacked from planned deficits and surplus of activity. They moved much more to earn their capacity to consume far fewer calories than we do today. There was nothing romantic or glorious about this painful reality.

And these are the same outcomes we fetishise when our ancestors had to drag food or chase prey. We romanticise movement for survival as some vaunted raison’d’etre for our design. But in all probability, our ancestors were probably getting injured a tonne. There was plenty of overuse. And of course we were dead by our mid-30’s.

So here’s how you can see a gym: it’s just a tool like a spear, levers, pulleys, bow and arrows or a cave. Something you can choose to use to improve quality of life, joint health and retain physical capacities as you age.

And your life will never resemble your ancestors. It’s a whole new environment with very very different set of demands for what it takes to thrive and survive.

So instead of romanticising our rough and brutal past riddled with random death and diarrhoea, just think of how privileged we are in having our pick of protein, surplus of calories and getting the activity choices we get with all the leisure time we have not fighting for food or shelter.