Your fitness regime reflects what you do in your business life

How can you motivate a team if your fitness consists of jogging around the block day in day out? If you follow the same pace and the same routes in your business life, how can you lead your team in a cutthroat, ever-changing world?

If you simply jog, sit in machines, and bicep curl,  learning a mix of Olympic lifting, gymnastics, intense metabolic conditioning, and therapy based mobility always gives you the “life” edge.

It’s simply my experience that people who are prepared to learn how to deadlift, pull up, clean, snatch, lever,  muscle-up  and human flag are mentally and commercially more resilient and effective at work.

The people who standout are the people who learn. 

It’s of course fantasy to believe that the stronger person or the former athlete , is necessarily,  better at work. I know many people who train the same way every day,  who have a closed negative, mindset.

Equally, I’ve seen a slight runner learn olympic lifting, and add it  to their fitness regime and that repertoire expansion reflected it’s self in their growth mindset. If you can learn to snatch, you can get your team to focus on a new task. If you can try and fail to nail the muscle-up or a handstand, you are genuinely resilient, and it shows! 

If your gym work is a jog, a few bicep curls and a simplistic stretch, often that’s how you do your work!

It’s sort of the same with those who suffer from chronic pain. Back, knee and heel pain is often caused by sloppy movement habits, poor mobility practices, a lack of  intelligent strengthening and a failure to gain insight into your current situation. How you deal with your own pain can be an interesting reflection on how you help others!

If you have a colleague who proudly stands in front of you and says “ hey I do the same boring stuff day in day out, I don’t change or vary what I do  I don’t look for success or improvement, I just plod away” may be working with the person will be just like that. 

Equally they may say, “ I ignore my body when its in pain, I take no personal responsibility for my physical condition . I ignore any feedback about doing stretches or mobility, I’m happy being weak and tired” maybe they will treat your clients, and your initiatives in the same way?

I should say some of my clients have chronic illnesses and they really know how to self manage and train.  That effective self kindness shows in the way they manage others.

To be clear,  my suggestion is that  the way people approach fitness can be an excellent compliment to developing a growth mindset. There is something in learning how to tackle new challenges, in new ways that makes you more effective. As a client said to me recently “ I was terrified learning the handstand, then I thought, maybe my team is as frightened of our new venture. I’ll break it down into tasks and drills as you did for the handstand”.