Why Businessmen & Entrepreneurs Should Live Like Pro Athletes
The Athletic Businessman Archetype.
What do men like George Heaton, Dom Iacovone & Greg Lavecchia all have in common?
It’s not that they all run successful 9 figure brands.
It’s not that their companies are collectively worth a billion dollars.
And it’s not the fact they all have strong personal brands & are role models for up & coming businessmen…
It’s that these men live like professional athletes.
Their training, nutrition & recovery are all dialled no differently to someone like Cristiano Ronaldo.
They understand health is their billion dollar asset that should be protected as viciously as their profit margins.
They understand that building their bodies isn’t just about having a six-pack, but to build a durable body that can handle pressure, stress & the unpredictability of building a legitimate company.
We’ve seen this same approach taken by Jeff Bezos, from pencil neck to jacked billionaire.
And Mark Zuckerberg, from awkward tech nerd to someone who trains martial arts, surfs & appreciates the importance of elite health.
If some of the most successful men on the planet are prioritising this, then shouldn’t you?
In this article, I’m not only going to prove to you that every businessman, founder & entrepreneur is an athlete, but I’ll also give you three actionable pillars you can start applying today, to do exactly that.
BUSINESS & SPORTS ARE BOTH IN THE ARENA
I’m not saying you should live like an athlete as some kind of cute analogy.
Any man who works in competitive field, runs his own business or is paid based on his performance is already a form of athlete for these 3 reasons…
1. YOU HAVE COMPETITORS TRYING TO TAKE WHAT YOU’RE BUILDING
An athlete has an opponent across the field actively trying to dominate them.
Businessmen have the same level of competition, if anything it’s more ruthless.
Whether that is lawsuits, having your intellectual property blatantly copied - which I have had happen to me many times, but you can’t teach this sauce ;).
The arena of business is as competitive and cut throat as it gets, and if you can’t handle the arena, you’re going to get swallowed alive by the bigger sharks in the industry you work in.
2. YOUR PERFORMANCE IS JUDGED IN A PRESSURE COOKER ENVIRONMENT
Professional athlete’s get scrutinised for 1 bad performance. They don’t get any do overs and the pressure is often the difference between a winner and a loser.
Conor McGregor in his prime is a perfect example of someone who was able to relish the pressure cooker environment of the UFC, and he often mentioned their are many studs in the gym that are world class, but as soon as the lights come on, they’re toast.
Business is no different. You don’t get any do overs in a negotiation.
A client you have upset or a launch that you’ve poured thousands into only to flop.
Founders operate in ‘game day’ conditions every single day of their lives.
3. YOUR BODY IS YOUR VEHICLE OF PERFORMANCE
This is a point that most don’t connect.
Everyone understanding that an athlete’s output is a summation of his physical and cognitive state.
Sleep
Nutrition
Recovery
Nervous System Regulation
A businessman’s is no different.
The quality of your thoughts, decisions and actions are all down stream of the exact same elements mentioned above.
It’s not until guys start burning out, having brain fog, losing focus and ultimately losing money, that they look at this as something to fix…
Your body is the hardware your entire business runs on.
Look at these conditions…. Competition. Real time performance pressure. A body that’s the direct instrument of your effectiveness.
The difference between an athlete and a man is business is few and far between…
Living like an athlete doesn’t require you to become a monk, add four hours of training to your day or turning your life into a wellness retreat.
It requires 3 specific pillars, let’s start with pillar 1:
PILLAR 1: CORTISOL REGULATION
STRESS MANAGEMENT
An athlete’s training & recovery is often periodized down to the week, sometimes down to the day, by a coach who’s tracking exactly how much stress the athlete can absorb before they start getting sick, injured & break down.
Why should a businessman’s approach be any different?
A lot of ‘health advice’ in the business space, shows you:
Sauna sessions (which are a stressor on the body)
Cold plunging (which is once again, a stressor on the body)
High Intensity Interval Training (stressor again)
High Intensity Gym Training (stressor again)
These categories are no different as a stressor than:
A bad client call
A missed deadline
A red month
Your body can’t tell the difference between training stress or business stress.
It’s all cortisol, and it’s all nervous system related.
So if you’re already dealing with high stress / high cortisol environments, adding these other methods just pour fuel on the fire.
SO WHAT SHOULD YOU DO INSTEAD?
The goal is training that supports your parasympathetic nervous system. The ‘rest & digest’ system.
In practice, that looks like:
Building your aerobic base through lower-intensity cardio — zone 1 & zone 2 work, easy cycling, incline walking. This builds a massive reserve of work capacity without adding to your cortisol load. It will also help improve the quality of your sleep & aid in ‘active recovery’. Low hanging fruit for this is buying a cheap walking pad & combining your deep work blocks with standing desk + walking intervals.
Prioritizing mobility work in the areas that desk work destroys — thoracic spine, hips, and the forward-head, rounded-shoulder posture that comes from ten hours a day hunched over a laptop. This isn’t optional flexibility work. For a lot of my clients, it’s the difference between training pain-free and constantly nursing a new tweak.
I used to think flexibility and mobility training was a waste of time, but for people sitting at desks for hours a day, it can be a game changer.Saving high-intensity work for when your total stress load can actually absorb it — not stripping it out forever, just sequencing it. High-intensity training has a place. It just isn’t every day, and it isn’t during your hardest business quarter. I speak more about this in the ‘high stress’ & ‘low stress’ sequencing in this article here.
None of this means training soft. It means training smart enough that your body can actually adapt to it, instead of just adding another layer of stress on top of a nervous system that’s already maxed out.
PILLAR 2: AUTOMATE YOUR NUTRITION
You think Michael Jordan has ever cooked a meal in his life?
Pro athlete’s don’t need to think for a second what they are going to eat. They have team dieticians and support staff doing that for them.
Why? So they can focus on what is important. Performing their sport.
Founders & entrepreneurs are paid to make decisions that move the business. Not whether they are going to have chicken or beef for lunch.
So why are you not automating this part of your life (if you have the means of doing so)?
Whether that is:
Finding a meal company that curates meals specific to your exact goals and requirements
Teaching your wife / girlfriend to help automate this part of your life
Getting fresh meals delivered to your door through some nutrition service
What I often see is my clients will ‘forget to eat’, will order shitty food from Ubereats or Door Dash & fall into a chronically poor nutritional state.
Then they wonder why they feel like shit all the time & don’t have energy or feel burnt out…?
Every time you stand in front of the fridge with your finger in your belly button wondering what you’ll eat, every time you scroll a delivery app, every time you’re cooking a new meal from scratch.
THAT IS DECISION FATIGUE.
You can only make so many decisions each day, would you rather be making decisions around a new marketing campaign, a new offer or client fulfilment systems… Or what you’re eating tomorrow?
Outsource and delegate the same way you would any other lower leverage task.
PILLAR 3: MAXIMALLY EFFICIENT ROUTINES
I’m sick to death of seeing all of the performative routines and protocols that you see on the internet.
No one who is busy has the time to:
Meditate
Journal
Write a gratitude list
Sun their nuts
Drink a kale smoothie
All before the sun rises…
Protocols for anyone in business need to be short, sharp, and allow you to get maximal ROI out of the limited time you have.
That same above routine can be condensed down to:
Wake up
5 minute walk
Hydrate with electrolytes
Eat breakfast
Get to fucking work.
You’ve condensed 2 hours of bullshit into a 10 minute protocol that you can action no matter whether you’re at home or on vacation in Split, and it gives you all of the same upside.
You don’t need to hubermanmaxx.
You don’t need to Bryan Johnson maxx.
Find short, efficient protocols and pull the levers that move your life and business forward effectively.
In my experience, the longer you delay starting the work, the more anxious you will feel, and often these productivity ‘hacks’ are disguised procrastination.
I can almost every protocol that fits this criteria in the Peak Potential Protocol, which you can check out here.
Cheers.
Jack Krucial