Being elected president forces a man to take inventory of his life, so Barack Obama
has trimmed his schedule to the bare essentials. He's not in the White
House yet, but gone are the hours he once spent reading novels,
watching television and obsessing over the daily transactions of
Chicago's sports teams. He eats out only once every few weeks. He
visits friends rarely, if at all.
But one habit endures: Obama has gone to the gym, for about 90
minutes a day, for at least 48 days in a row. He always has treated
exercise less as recreation than requirement, but his devotion has
intensified during the past few months. Between workouts during his
Hawaii vacation this week, he was photographed looking like the
paradigm of a new kind of presidential fitness, one geared less toward
preventing heart attacks than winning swimsuit competitions. The sun
glinted off chiseled pectorals sculpted during four weightlifting
sessions each week, and a body toned by regular treadmill runs and
basketball games.
The more Obama's life intensifies, friends said, the more he relies
on the gym -- which is why he might be taking office in the best shape
of his life. The gym is where he releases stress, maintains a routine
and thinks without interruption. He sometimes wears headphones and
barricades the outside world.
"He does it every day like clockwork," said Marty Nesbitt, one of
Obama's closest friends from Chicago. "He doesn't think of it as
something he has to do -- it's his time for himself, a chance for him
to reflect. It's his break. He feels better and more revved up after he
gets in his workout."
To accommodate Obama during the 18-month presidential campaign,
aides arranged workouts for him in several dozen states. The staff
called gyms a few days before his arrival and persuaded them to close
late or open early to oblige the candidate's schedule. Once, on July
17, Obama visited a gym three times within 16 hours. Other days --
often before primary election nights -- he flew in half a dozen friends
to play a few hours of pickup basketball.
For the small group of reporters tasked with following Obama's every
move, his fitness has become a running joke repeated in the stories
they file. They sit at McDonald's while he exercises in Hawaii. They
eat calorie-rich scones while he sweats at Regents Park. One reporter
for the Christian Science Monitor, filing his report about one of the
president-elect's gym trips last month, noted: "While Mr. Obama worked
at maintaining his lithe look, your pear-shaped pooler spent quality
time at a local coffee shop."
Obama still suffers from one vice -- smoking -- although he has
worked hard to quit since he started the presidential campaign. He's
down from three or four cigarettes each day to what he terms the
occasional "slip."
When Obama visited the White House in November, he toured the gym
with President Bush and talked about exercise, said his wife, Michelle.
It is one interest the two men share. Bush equipped Air Force One with
a stationary bicycle, and he spends weekends biking with friends --
with anyone and everyone, really -- at Camp David. He has often said
that exercise has helped him cope with the pressures of the job.
Several presidents have found creative ways to stay in shape while
in the White House. John Quincy Adams swam in the Potomac, Theodore
Roosevelt boxed and Herbert Hoover invented his own sport -- an awkward
combination of volleyball and tennis -- to play at 7 each morning.
Harry S. Truman installed a horseshoe pit. Bill Clinton liked to jog
and then head for breakfast at McDonald's.
Obama, who favors a post-workout snack of a protein bar and organic
iced tea, has already disclosed some of his own plans for his new home.
He wants to build a full basketball court where he can hold games on
the White House grounds, and to maintain his usual routine of
exercising at least six days a week.
It's a schedule he started as a 22-year-old student
at Columbia University in New York, and it immediately transformed him.
In his 1995 autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," Obama said he was a
casual drug user and an underachiever until he decided to start running
three miles each day. He stopped staying out late, fasted on Sundays
and became a voracious reader, spending most of his time alone in his
apartment reading classic literature and philosophical texts.
Physical fitness yielded mental fitness, Obama decided, and the two concepts have been married in his mind ever since.
"It's always been a priority in his daily routine," said Christopher
Lu, a marathon runner who worked as Obama's legislative director in the
Senate and was named Cabinet secretary last week. "I think it's an
example of how disciplined he is. It's one of the things that really
keeps him balanced."
By Eli Saslow
Located at Washington Post