As with the other wellness vectors I talk about in this blog, social health is a big one with a large variety of topics to talk about.  I’ll start this category, of course, with a post about the gym – what else right?

I was first introduced to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in a book called I Can Read You Like a Book by George Hartley who has an interesting history in the field of interrogation and did a kinda cool History Channel part-documentary type thing called We Can Make You Talk. He’s all about the interrogation thing and uses the hierarchy of needs essentially as a tool for breaking people.  The reason I’m posting about this is because it’s a very popular framework in psychology, sociology and even some corporate management and leadership courses   To add to the diversity here, I’m going to tie it to the gym.

How can the stages described in the model, the pyramid to the left, better help us understand the deep satisfaction many people get with everything from individual workouts with earbuds in blasting their music, to coordinated group workouts focused on getting a high intensity cardio pump?

Let’s take a look at what I believe are the relevant stages, and if this is interesting for you, I suggest you go read some more about either in the brief wikipedia article I link above or in the original 1954 book Motivation and Personality.  

I see the benefits, or the attraction depending on whether you are into cause or effect, starting with Safety.  In this model Safety refers to personal, physical, economical and health/well-being aspects.  There should be little argument that increasing one’s fitness level generally results in increased health/well-being.  And according to the model, once one’s Safety needs are met, the next basic human requirement is Love/Belonging. This goes beyond intimacy, friends and family though; it’s about the basic human need to belong to something.  It can be a clique, a group or club, a sports team, a gang it simply doesn’t matter.  Human beings have a basic need to belong.  A good gym will provide a sense of community though its design and layout, the demeanor of the staff and the structure of its programs.  Take my group personal training classes for example.  There are 8-10 of us that are pretty much regulars and we all know each other by name, enjoy the fitness program we all participate in together and probably most importantly of all share a sense of accomplishment each and every time we complete a class.  Whether we know it or not we are gaining a sense of belonging in this way and meeting one of our fundamental human needs.

Next up the pyramid is self-esteem.  Once we’ve met the lower needs, our next basic need is for respect.  We want to be recognized for both our efforts and our accomplishments as this provides us with a sense of value. When we can gain traction with this need in conjunction with belonging, helping others in a group exercise class get one more pushup for example, we are fulfilling two basic needs, our need for belonging and our need to be recognized for our efforts in helping others.

Moving further up the pyramid is an exercise I’ll leave for others but I wanted to share this bit of information in hopes that it will get more people thinking about some of the social values around health and fitness; its not really a stretch at all…