Fitness: the state of being suitably adapted to an environment; survival.

There is a scene in the movie Ip Man, a film named after the man who served as Bruce Lee’s martial arts instructor and mentor, in which a character asks Ip if he’s been training lately. As the question is asked, the Japanese invasion of 1937 is underway in Foshan, China. Families, including Ip’s, are helpless as their villages are raided and pillaged. Those still alive hang on for dear life to a single grain of rice. Ip’s answer? He’s not training. To train means energy expenditure and therefore the need for additional food, he says. Here is a martial arts legend, a man whose love of training comes second only to love for his family, admitting that training is a selfish act. And yet, even in the act of non-training, Ip Man is working on his fitness. He is adapting to his current environment; he is increasing his chances of survival. Times have changed, but the truth still burns through: training is a luxury. Our definition of fitness – of barbells and cross-country skiing and Pilates – has morphed into something entirely different because of our country’s wealth. This is all to say that there are actual concerns in this world worth bitching about. Getting to the gym should never be one of them.

In Thailand, workers are trafficked in from Burma to fuel America’s growing demand for shrimp. The ability to work on physical fitness doesn’t even cross the minds of these people. Their scapulae look a day or two away from bursting through their skin. Their life is survival; our ability to “train” is because ours is not.

We live in a world so interconnected that the blade in your smoothie blender could come from a slum in India where workers without masks spend their days breathing in paint fumes from a nearby factory. Our ability to train and take exercise seriously is like the imported marble staircase, the filet mignon, the automated car wash.

There should be no such thing as “dragging yourself to the gym.” Training time is essentially a silver spoon, a byproduct of our being born into a society where our basic needs are nearly always met and where our problems stem more often from controlling the greed and gluttony that can grow from abundance rather than building upon something we’re lacking. When you’ve got the time to train, do it with both ferocity and grace, do it not because “you deserve it” but because you’re fortunate enough to have such an opportunity. This reframing of mind can allow you to simultaneously maximize your training time while also avoiding the mental hurdles we’ve all faced in our training.

For nearly three years, I’ve lived in Asia and I must say that the American culture of fitness is far different than anywhere I’ve ever been. In China, for example, groups of office workers wake at 4:30am and all head to a parking lot to do their Tai Chi together. Their fitness is as much about connecting energies with their coworkers as it is about moving the blood and maintaining physical health. In Thailand, most fitness gyms are not so much about health as they are about showing off economic status and building confidence by looking in the mirror – I’ve watched in awe as men lined up to do dumbbell curls and then all applied hair gel in between sets. In India, few locals have the time to work out, but those who do have been heavily influenced by the musclemen of America. Posters of Ronnie Coleman and Jay Cutler adorn the walls. Many of the men here have bought into the machismo gimmick and the result is that weight gainers and getting huge at whatever cost is big business and, again, a sign of wealth. Regarding the latter, even women are featured on the five-pound tubs of weight gainer. Big is great, fat or not.

Next time you step onto the mat or into the squat rack, take not just your chalk and workout notebook. Take with you Ip Man’s lesson. Take with you the true definition of fitness. Take with you the world.