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Iโm going to make the case for a regular exercise practice being the single most effective strategy for career success.
Of course written by a career personal trainer as this article is, youโd be forgiven for rolling your eyes at the title and what you might assume are my motivations for writing it, but bear with meโฆ I may actually be about to talk myself out of a lot of business, you see Iโve worked with literally thousands of people from all walks of life, and Iโve been privy to see how they performed, thought, and acted with and without exercise playing a major role in their lives, Iโve also been fortunate enough to spend hours of one on one training sessions with very successful people, and hear first hand what exercise has meant for them personally and professionally.
Of course, Iโve also built my ownย online personal trainingย service with a considerable international client base, an endeavour that at times has seen me, on the wrong end of healthy choices due to the effects of overworking and under-resting in order to burn the midnight oil to deliver the best online fitness service possible.ย
I estimate the sum of these training sessions to be in excess of 10,000 coaching hours and that’s in person, so it’s probably twice that when my online work is taken into consideration. My conclusion is that exercise is the single most effective driver of success Iโve ever seen. I know, pretty convenient considering thats what I sell, but give me 5 minutes and Iโll explain why, and if you take the advice in the paragraphs below, chances are youโll never even need the services of someone like me.
In my view the main benefits of exercise are two-fold. Firstly, I believe that the act of daily exercise actually cultivates many character traits that are useful in oneโs working life, but also extend to personal relationships and, somewhat more esoterically will be reflected in those moments where we slow down enough to afford ourselves an honest internal dialogue.
The video below outlines my method for making exercise a daily habit:
The second major benefit comes at the autumn of oneโs career (unless you make it big super early) and it’s at this stage when people generally seek my coaching program, as what I do is basically help people who arenโt happy with the way things are physically, change that state of affairs, of course, specific circumstances and goals arrive in various forms e.g Iโd like to.. lose weight, gain muscle, get fitter, be better at sports etc, but ultimately delivering health & fitness is about two things. Helping people regain confidence and helping people cultivate a lifestyle that naturally affords them more energy.
Before we discuss the character-building traits health & fitness delivers, letโs see what kind of company weโre in, this is a short list of just some of the notable business icons that famously keep a regular exercise practice:
Richard Branson
โI seriously doubt that I would have been as successful in my career (and happy in my personal life) if I hadnโt always placed importance on my health and fitnessโ
Oprah Winfrey
โI try to do something every day that allows me to feel active“
Mark Cuban
โThat I will find a way to get [a workout] done, I think, reflects how relentless I can be in the business world as well”
Ariana Huffington
โFearlessness is like a muscle. I know from my own life that the more I exercise it the more natural it becomes to not let my fears run meโ
Personal development lessons learned from exercise:
Planning
Getting the desired results from your work in the gym requires a lot of prior planning. You have to make sure that your food is prepared, your kit is ready, that you know what time youโll get to the gym and what youโll do there. Advanced preparation is incredibly powerful in other areas of life too. Consider the advantage of preparing a comprehensive task list for the week each Sunday evening, what would that do for your productivity? Another great example is the amount of time you save by preparing your bag each evening before bed, rather than rushing around frantically in the morning, it can change your entire day. Endeavour to plan each day ahead of time and make it a success and you will soon find that enough of these days stacked back to back soon add up to great things, just like working out.
Loss of ego
Sometimes in the gym, depending on the stage of a workout it becomes very difficult to do ostensibly very easy things. For example, a drop set, where you go from lifting heavy weights to very light weights and struggling hugely on the light ones. Anyone could walk in and see you struggling with tiny weights unaware of the larger workout youโve already done. Iโve seen a lot of people squander their workouts because they were trying to look too cool and competent in the gym, or trying to lift weights that were clearly too heavy and getting nothing out of it. The reason for this is ego. This really is a metaphor for your road to success. People aren’t going to see the hundreds of hours youโve clocked up in the background, they are only going to see the moves you make on the surface. Some of these moves wonโt work out perfectly the first time, and to the outside world, it will look as if you have failed. This is fine, failure is not the opposite of success, but rather the pre-requisite for it. Never lose sight of the fact that all setbacks are temporary and no oneโs opinion can harm you anyway. Lose your ego, push your boundaries and fail big and publicly if you have to, you will look back on it and laugh when you have attained your goals.
Delayed gratification
Achieving health & fitness goals is often a long process, significant change certainly doesnโt happen overnight. Developing the ability to delay gratification is crucial. This is the skill of rejecting immediate temptations in favour of a greater reward to be claimed later. This is key to life in general, it can be the difference between those that really achieve their lofty ideals and those that fall by the wayside. The Ability to delay gratification also divides those who are able to live within their means and those who are not. Learn to delay gratification if you are serious about reaching the top, if you can do that youโll come through all sorts of economic downturns, even recessions undeterred.
Sacrifice
If you want to attain and maintain a great-looking lean and toned physique it stands to reason that it isnโt going to come easily. You simply aren’t going to be able to eat whatever you want, you must eat healthy nutritious food. You cannot overconsume alcohol and you have to make time to exercise. This can mean putting off some social engagements and skipping a few indulgences, it stands to reason that if the lifestyle youโve been living hasnโt gotten you where youโd like to be, something is going to have to change in order to get you there.
Any goal that is truly worth dedicating yourself to is going to involve sacrifice. The process of achievement is really quite simple when broken down into its component parts. First, you have to decide what it is that you want, then you must determine what it’s going to cost to get it (sacrifice) then you have to decide to pay the price. Once youโve done that, your half way there. Thatโs it, it really is that simple.
Not a bad list of character traits honed through exercise, as an employer myself certainly a list of traits that inspires interest and faith in a person’s ability to get things done, in an ethical way, and in my view, equally as impressive as any qualification or academic accolade. So you can see then, that a regular exercise practice offers a fantastic sandbox for legitimate life skills.
The other end of the spectrum
As I mentioned earlier, for the most part, in my line of work I meet people at the other end of the spectrum, those who have already followed their ambition to achieve success. Typically theyโve gained a degree of financial comfort, accolades and perhaps even garnered esteem in their chosen fields. However in my observation ambition comes with its rewards, but also a heavy price tag.
All too often the enviable results of ambition come at the cost of oneโs health. Itโs no secret that high stress, long working hours, eating on the go and sleep deprivation are commonplace in workplaces today and believe me this takes its toll, Iโm speaking from personal experience, Iโve run myself into the ground more than once.
This toll lands not just on superficial things like body composition thatโs an easy fix, but also on facets of health that can be far harder to correct, health risks rise with poor lifestyle choices, we know that, but thats not really the point Iโm making.
My call to action here is really about the opportunity cost of not firing on all cylinders. Can you imagine the increase in creativity and productive output you would have with optimal baseline energy levels? And if you manage a team, even a workforce can you imagine the impact on your organisation?
Imagine waking up not just feeling driven to succeed, but actually fresh, pain-free and clear of thought. Imagine a steady, reliable stream of energy all day long, no mid-afternoon lull. These benefits arenโt limited to work alone, consider what all that extra energy and mobility would mean for your personal life.
Iโm asking you to think about those things because visualising things that mean a lot to you, and actually feeling them through, rather than thinking them through can be very powerful, itโs actually how I teach many of my clients to workout on days where they really donโt feel motivated to, because anchoring a powerful emotion to access later is a more reliable tool than sheer motivation or will powerโฆ.they waver, core human drives donโt.
This Video explains the truth about how motivation works in health & fitness:
2 Powerful examples of the real reasons people exercise:
Having the energy to do the things you love (with the people you love)
Having the energy and mobility to play games and sports with your children and grandchildren. Indeed just taking steps to be around and healthy longer for family members is an incredibly meaningful goal.
Having the fitness levels and mobility to keep doing outdoor activities like hiking and cycling, youโll want to be able to do these things in your retirement, start protecting that ability now.
To feel more attractive (and confident)
Wanting to feel more attractive, or have greater confidence in or out of a committed relationship, of course, aesthetics help, but so too does confidence and self-esteem, and that comes from keeping the appointments we make with ourselves on a regular basis. When your partner knows that if you say youโll do something, you mean it, youโll see what that can do to ignite desire.
Both of these can be used to drum up the initiative to work out when you know it would be in your best interest to do so, but for many of us, excuse after excuse still presents itself.
How to make exercise benefit your life
The key is to use exercise as a dynamo, in other words as a tool to create energy. Workouts donโt need to be gruelling, at least not at first. If you were in debt, you probably wouldnโt go out and put a whole bunch of purchases using money you didn’t have, on a credit card, think of energy levels in the same way.
Tougher workouts can be used as a stress buster, which Iโm sure will come later, but initially, workouts should be calibrated lightly enough to allow your body to gradually become more efficient and not get completely overwhelmed. Over time this will produce more energy, this way you are using exercise as what we call a โhormetic stresserโ, essentially you are using the stress of exercise to buttress yourself against the demands of your working day. The caveat to this is that this only works if you can actually recover from the stress induced by exercise, which is aided by proper sleep and nutrition. If you donโt meet that requirement, exercise can become just another stressor adding to your burden, hence the term โover-trainingโ
You can learn more about overtraining in this clip from myย podcast, with Professor Greg Whyte OBE where he outlines the signs and symptoms to look out for.
Over time youโll get all of the benefits of enhanced efficiency, focus and energy, your body will ache less, youโll start to feel more mobile, youโll sleep deeper and wake up with more energy.
But more importantly than that, youโll be able to rest easy in the knowledge that you are taking care of your body, and health. My career as a personal trainer has given me a unique insight into how working hard plays out. Iโve worked with everyone from the college student yet to receive their first pay cheque to the 100 million pound business owner at the top of their field. What Iโve observed is that first of all, weโre all the same, no matter the heights we ascend to, or where weโve come from we all get stiff joints, the occasional digestive issue and feel the effects of stress.
Iโm still yet to meet someone at the top of their game who isnโt accustomed to working 16-hour days, or at least wasnโt for a good deal of their career, but I think even that can be done in a healthy way if you love what you do, and donโt let it supersede your lifestyle choices.
The biggest lesson Iโve learned both through osmosis and personal experience, is that if you sacrifice your health in the pursuit of success and career development, there may come a point where you wish you could trade everything youโve worked for in a second for a clean bill of health. Iโve been told this in as many words by my clients in their more reflective moments, my aim and plea to you in this article is to not let it get to that.
The irony is that it isnโt even as if working on your health & fitness is going to make it less likely that youโll achieve your career and business goals, as weโve discussed itโs actually quite the opposite. The difference will be prioritising yourself, and sticking to your healthy intentions consistently. A good trainer or coach can help you tune up the finer details like schedule, building workouts and what kind of meals to eat, but that’s all minutia.
To make it happen, you need to make a shift internally. Perhaps this article wonโt be enough to drive that shift, perhaps it will take a shot across the bow, it did for me. In any event, I wish you the best with both your health and your career, and may they form a symbiotic relationship that catapults you to become all that youโve envisioned for yourself.
Iโll leave you with a quote from Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of 200 million dollar advertising agency Veyner Media. โF*ck, money, F*ck all of it, you know whatโs really important? Healthโ