First Lady Laura Bush has shown Americans how she performs her daily fitness regime in the White House gym. Along the way, cameras from the Washington NBC affiliate WRC-TV4 glimpsed an unusual view of the president, lifting weights and working out in the gym.

The president’s need for a daily physical workout came as a surprise to Mrs Bush when they first met. Although she had always walked to school, she was not a natural athlete and used to take little formal exercise. But after she met her husband, his example inspired her to take more.

“I was never an athlete,” she said. “I didn’t take up a sport and I don’t play tennis or golf. But then, when I married somebody who is a natural athlete and is a runner and has been a runner the whole time we were married, I was shamed into starting to exercise.”

The president’s athleticism has been passed onto the couple’s twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna, who had been encouraged to take exercise from an early age. “George and I went to their soccer and the softball games when the girls were little and they now work out all the time,” Mrs Bush said.

The First Lady prefers walking to running and she often exercises by taking a walk around the south lawn of the White House. “This is a great place to walk and I have some friends who will come before work or on Saturday,” she said. “Or I can walk with my dog.”

The television station had previously invited Secretary of State Rice to work out for the cameras and she was shown lifting weights in a gym.

Mrs Bush, however, does not attempt to compete with her husband’s adviser on foreign affairs. “I lift weights, and I mean little weights,” said Mrs Bush. “Not like Dr. Rice. I saw her on your show where she had a huge weight on her shoulders.”

However, the First Lady said she has been working with weights for some years and eventually came to feel invigorated by working out with dumbells.

“Weight lifting does increase your strength and it becomes really noticeable after you’ve done it for a while,” she said. “It took about four years of weight lifting to get there, so it’s not anything fast, but I think that’s part of it.”