It shows the importance of the gym.

Being elected president forces a man to take inventory of his life, so Barack Obama has trimmed his schedule to the bare essentials….

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….

The more Obama’s life intensifies, friends said, the more he relies on the gym….

“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.

“That’s one of the first things you learn working for him: You better make sure he gets his workout,” said Jim Cauley, who managed Obama’s 2004 U.S. Senate campaign. “If there isn’t any time, he’s not going to feel his best that day. If he only gets 30 or 40 minutes, he’s still not really happy.

“You have to make time for him to exercise, at least an hour or so. You block it out and put it on the schedule, because that’s what makes him happy.”

Since the election, Obama’s daily schedule has revealed an intense focus…

But every morning around 7:30 he traveled by motorcade to the gym at Regents Park, a luxury apartment complex where his friend Michael Signator owns a condominium on the 18th floor, and where he usually worked out with Reggie Love, a personal aide and a former Duke University basketball player, or with Marvin Nicholson, his travel coordinator.
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Even Obama’s closest friends said they marvel at how he has maintained his commitment. He went to Regents Park at 9 a.m. the day after his victory rally in Grant Park, on Thanksgiving Day and hours before traveling to Washington for his first tour of the White House. On Friday, Obama rushed to the gym before boarding a plane for his 12-day stay in Hawaii. He woke up the next morning on vacation, went to a gym and exited 45 minutes later in a sweat-soaked gray shirt.
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Obama … 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.
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“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.”