Bob Weir stays strong and fit with Crossfit, Tabata workouts, and three-hour concerts.
THERE'S A LOT GOING ON HERE. Bob Weir, 72-year-old founding member of the Grateful Dead, is running around Jiffy Lube Live amphitheater in Bristow, Virginia, on a 95 degree day in June. “We’ll start off by going for a trot,” he said a few minutes ago, after stepping out of his tour bus wearing a sleeveless tee, capri-length sweats, and toed shoes. He looks like a Civil War general who’s really into CrossFit.
Bob likes to say you need to do three things to be happy. You need to “dedicate your life to the pursuit of a sense of purpose.” You need to meditate, which he did on his bus right before this interview. And you need to work out, which he’s doing right now, although we’ve paused for a moment while he positions himself at the bottom of the vast, steep grass hill that makes up the back of this open-air concert venue.
Bob was aware of the counterbalance, though not acutely. “I admired Jerry because he didn’t give a shit about any of that, and I think he admired me because I did. I admired his ability to just say, ‘Fuck it. I’m going to suck down a couple of cheeseburgers and a pizza and a couple of White Russians, and I’m going to be fine about that.’ Working out was just too much effort and too much pain.”
Bob walks over to the wheeled metal cart full of workout equipment that accompanies him on every tour and grabs a 20-pound mace and does halos over his head to loosen his shoulder and upper-back muscles. He orbits the mace around his head and then moves to a kneel and then back up again to do the other side. Over and over. His workouts focus on rotation and mobility. A lot of shoulder work. A lot of stuff that targets his posterior chain—his back and glutes.
But he’s starting to see the power of the mission now. “This is something guys my age can do, and it will make an immense difference in what they call your golden years if grace and happiness are goals of yours.” Other than a little arthritis, he feels good these days. “I remember looking in the mirror in my 20s and thinking, Holy shit. I’m ripped! That was probably the peak of it. I’m getting to a place now where I’m rivaling that. I’m pretty happy with what I’ve got going now.
Bob wants to point out, though, that it’s not exactly him doing the quarterbacking. “When I walk onstage, I leave the building. The guy people take photographs of is not there. I’ve pretty much taken leave of the regular world. It’s another place entirely. Things are different there. I’m a combination of the characters that come and visit us in the songs and the storyteller who brings these characters around.
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