Folks, having attended the Corporate Athlete training program the other day, I recalled a very good summary written by PLT (Patrick) sometime in 2005. Sharing with you folks the " skinny" he wrote =)...enjoy...
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Corporate Athlete: The Basic Principles and Learnings - by Patrick Lockwood-Taylor
A number of you have asked about my Corporate Athlete experience. As such, I thought it would be useful to document and share some of my learnings. I have found it to be a very rewarding program. I am thinner, fitter, more engaged across more of the more important things in my life, and can sustain my attention and energy far longer. if you are interested in why, read on ...
This shares some of the basic principles from Corporate Athlete: I have tried to distill 2.5 days to two pages or so.
The basic mission of Corporate Athlete is to teach students to sustain high performance “during the storm.” By that, our individual capacity is expanded beyond the storm; Each storm can then be managed effectively. The basic premise:- the pathway from ordinary to extraordinary is the energy you bring to the time you put against a given issue/need. This is full engagement. 75% of people are assessed as disengaged; they have insufficient energy capacity and poor energy management skills.
The program objective therefore, to build and sustain energy capacity to perform in all high stress situations. To improve energy mngt skills individually and organizationally. Manage energy, not time, is the ethos.
There are four governing principles:
1) Full engagement means drawing on four distinct dimensions of energy : physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. To increase energy you have to increase each source.
2) Full engagement requires that we balance energy expenditure with energy recovery in each of the four sources. How can you recover in each cell for 10 minutes?
3) Full engagement requires that we push beyond our normal limits, in each source, training like a corporate athlete every day.
4) Full engagement requires positive rituals that become automatic over time.
There are three barriers to instilling the Corporate Athlete in each of us.
1) Personal barriers to achieving full engagement. This could include lack of confidence, multi tasking, indecisiveness, etc (these can be derived from broad based 360 feedback from peers, family, suppliers, customers, etc.)
2) Nutritional barriers to achieving full engagement.
3) Fitness barriers to achieving full engagement. (If you want to develop detailed feedback for the more personal barriers section, I will happily work with you individually on how and when we do that. The W&DP feedback is the perfect occasion.)
For the nutritional piece, here’s the skinny (sorry=) ) It’s all about keeping your glucose within tolerance limits. When you understand how glucose works you understand 75% of nutrition. If you don’t eat enough your glucose depletes. You will feel grumpy, disengaged and impatient, unable to concentrate as your body moves to a self preserve / highly selfish mode. (Ever had that?? Some people say you become unapproachable—it’s just a physiological reaction. Funnily enough, we often see it when children get hungry-they start to misbehave, become highly irritable.) Your body then takes nutrients from your muscles (and not fat cells) increasing your body fat %. Worse, it then initiates a chemical reaction forcing you to crave food. Result you gorge food, much of which goes to fat.If you over eat the reaction is not dissimilar: your glucose shoots up, the body produces insulin to break it down , causing you to feel drowsy and irritable (ever had this after a big meal??) Net effect from both, is, your body fat % goes up and your ability to fully engage, reduced!
Here’s the principles:- Eat light and often.- 80/20 rule. No more than 20% of what you eat should be “want” foods (those with low nutrients Vs quantity of calories.) The other 80% are need foods. (That’s 4 or so handfuls of want foods a day!!!)- Eat every 3 hrs (+/- 1 hr.)
- Eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. Eat 5 handfuls of food per meal. 1 protein (size and thickness of palm of hand); 2 grain; 2 fruit and veg. Physiologically, this is what your body needs. If not balanced, then food gets broken down into glucose quicker, spiking your glucose and initiating the cycle above. Substitute want foods (and each glass of wine!) for grain allocations. Drink alcohol with meals.
- Snack with low glycemic foods (I have lists) at 100-150 cals.
- Eat 1 hour before going to gym.
- Eat for what you will be doing over the next 2-3 hours.- Don’t binge. The body does not recognize that you have not eaten for a few hours so it’s NOT OK to binge. Think of I like medication: if you miss taking a tablet it can be dangerous to double dose to compensate. The metabolism also doesn’t work that way ! Your glucose will spike, and the excess will be deposited as fat. L
Fitness:
Fitness plays a critical role in making you a better more effective person in relation to those things that matter to you.
The principles here are straightforward:- exercise is good for you as it reduces fat, stress, etc; but, in the corporate athlete context, it increases your energy capacity and thus engagement potential. Other characteristics are faster recovery times, greater tolerance (of storms, stress,etc.)
There are 3 expectations:
1) 30 mins interval training 3 x pw. This is where you run/row/ride etc hard for 3 mins, mid/high for next 3 mins etc up to 30 mins. It’s all about getting your heart to target heart rate for the full 30 mins (THR= .)
2) Ideally 2x 30 min weight lifting sessions pw.As you pass 30, you lose 2% of your muscle mass every year (increasing your % body fat.) You have to offset this through resistance training (ie lifting weights.)
3) Flexibility training: stretch down after each exercise session using a broad range of stretches.
If you can, you can combine an interval and resistance session.
From dream to reality: you have to create the positive rituals to habitualise the Corporate athlete behaviours.
95% of what you do is habit; to create new ones requires intervention and commitment.
These need to be linked to a higher order personal goal to be enduring.
For example:
Vision: To be fully engaged in my life’s priority areas all the time.
Mission: To use exercise and nutrition to lose weight and build energy levels.
Action step: Follow 3x 5 handful rule from today. Become a member of gym and do a 30 min session per day by leaving home 30 mins earlier and starting work 10 mins later.
Measurement: 30 day; 60 day.
That’s about it. Whether you follow any of the above is entirely voluntary. But the people I know who have followed the program have enjoyed and prospered through it in their own way.
Apple anyone? =)
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