London, United Kingdom—Reported by Tom Oliver and Nathan Kelly for Elite Traveler, the private jet lifestyle magazine
Wake up, shower, get dressed and jump straight into the car. At the office, after a 6 am conference call with company stakeholders based in Asia, you respond to urgent emails while eating a pastry and sipping coffee before your 7:45 am brief with senior managers.
Good health is an important part of staying at the top of the game for all CEOs
This pattern of meetings, conference calls, texts and emails continues until lunch, when it’s back into the car for two ‘off site meetings’ (with the sandwich-to-go and a quick update from the North American office supplied by the executive assistant). Finally, the day concludes with a Gala dinner—at which you must be seen—followed by a couple of polite excuses that should get you to bed by 1 am. Oh, and you better get ready to repeat the ordeal in four hours and counting. Welcome to the daily routine of a CEO.
Needless to say, this lifestyle can be hectic, full of pressure and hazardous to your health. Lack of sleep, long hours and a lot of sitting around make staying fit and healthy a genuine challenge. However, the need to maintain a good level of functional health is an important part of staying at the top of the game for all CEO’s.
Luckily we here at Tom Oliver Personal Training understand the give and take of being busy and staying fit and have thus developed a quick and (relatively) painless way to keep the pounds down and productivity up.
Posture and Mobility
Sitting at your desk, in the car or at the board table for long periods of time—especially when using computers, tablets and cell phones—can lead to poor posture, which in turn creates muscle weakness that causes back and neck pain.
Take time daily to exercise your neck and upper back muscles with a couple of simple movements to reinforce good posture. In addition, make sure to stretch your chest muscles and the front of your shoulder as these often become tight.
3 x 12 Chin Tucks
3 x 12 Mid Row
Fifteen Minutes of Compounds
If you want to maintain your fitness on a tight schedule, then you need to maximize calorie expenditure and power output while keeping rest periods to a minimum. Use whole body exercises that engage large muscle groups for between 30-60 seconds, sequenced in such a way that affords a specific muscle group recovery time, in order to keeping the cardiovascular system pumping hard.
Example CEO 15 min
Squats: 1 minute
Split Squats Right Leg: 1 minute
Split Squats Left Leg: 1 minute
Crunches: 1 minute
Lunges: 1 minute
Squat Thrusts: 1 minute
Burpees: 1 minute
Jumping Jacks: 1 minute
Sumo Squats: 1 minute
Push Ups: 1 minute
Leg Raises: 1 minute
Step Ups / Stair Climb: 1 minute