First principles thinking involves breaking down problems into fundamental truths to find solutions. Aristotle used it to define reality, while Elon Musk used it to create affordable rockets. Applied to healthcare, it suggests that chronic disease is preventable through exercise, nutrition, and community engagement. Therefore, increasing accessibility to independent gyms, martial arts academies, and yoga schools is the solution to improving physical and mental health on a large scale.
First principles thinking is a way to strip away assumptions and rebuild from the ground up. Instead of accepting what’s been done before, you break a problem down to its fundamental truths and reason up from there.
Aristotle used it to define reality itself. Elon Musk used it to build rockets for a fraction of the cost. And if we apply it to the health crisis in this country, it leads to one clear answer.
When Musk started SpaceX, the assumption was that rockets were expensive because that’s just how aerospace worked. Instead of accepting that, he broke it down. A rocket is just a collection of materials. Aluminum, carbon fiber, and copper. These raw materials are not expensive. The cost comes from the way rockets are built, sold, and utilized. Solution? Manufacture them differently and reuse them. That’s how he got launch costs down by orders of magnitude.
Aristotle took the same approach to reality itself. Instead of relying on myths or inherited beliefs, he broke everything down into substance, cause, and purpose. What is something made of? What brings it into being? What is its function? These questions created the foundation for modern science and logic.
Not to compare myself to Aristotle or Elon, but at Gym Force, we can also apply this first principles approach to the global problem that is our lack of physical and mental health.
The assumption is that fixing chronic disease and skyrocketing healthcare costs requires more drugs, better insurance, new hospital systems, or fancy technologies like wearables and other devices. But if you break it down, that’s not the root of the problem. Chronic disease is mostly preventable. It’s driven by inactivity, poor diet, and lack of real health education. As human beings, we all need movement and connection. The solution isn’t more medicine; it’s more people training in real gyms, under real coaches, where they properly build the habits that last.
That leads to an unavoidable conclusion. The only way to solve this problem at scale is to increase accessibility and membership numbers at independently owned gyms, martial arts academies, and yoga schools. That’s it. Everything Gym Force does is built around this one truth. Advertising campaigns, wellness programs, incentives, partnerships, even subsidization of membership payments when necessary. And over time, it won’t be enough to just fill the gyms that exist. We will need more of them; more places where real coaches build real relationships with the people who need them the most.
First principles thinking doesn’t just lead us down a different path; it leads us to the only possible answer. The independent gym owner.