Jim Loehr and Tony Schwarz have worked on fitness training with players such as Pete Sampras, Jim Courier, Sergi Bruguera, Gabriela Sabatini and Monica Seles. They assert that the physical demands of executives dwarf those of professional sportsmen.
This may seem like a remarkable statement till we think about it a bit more deeply…Professional athletes spend 90% of their time training to be able to perform 10% of the time. They build very precise routines for managing their energy for optimum performance – diet, eating patterns, sleeping, working out, mental preparation, relaxation and getting connected to their purpose. Executives on the other hand are expected to fight fires ten hours a day and remain at peak engagement levels for this duration without any comparable routines.
Professional athletes enjoy an off season four to five months a year to heal and recuperate whereas most high flying executives typically take 2-3 weeks of Blackberry punctuated vacations.
Athletes typically have a peak career of around 10-15 years whereas executives can expect to keep working at the same unrelenting pace for 40-45 years without any significant breaks.
Management is a relatively new field compared to sports and today’s modern executives are starting up a learning curve traversed by sportsmen many millenia ago. If today’s executives do not learn to take time to recuperate, their health will break down repeatedly and potentially, eventually catastrophically. Nor will they be able to perform at the level they are truly capable of. Now will they be able to fully enjoy their work or indeed their lives.
According to Dan Millman, a champion gymnast and author of personal development classic ‘Peaceful Warrior’ there are three questions we need to ask ourselves – Do I get enough sleep? Do I eat healthily? Do I exercise three times a week? – and if the answer to any one of these 3 questions is “no” it indicates that somewhere, somehow our priorities got mxed up.