Block Your Workout Before You Block Anything Else
This weekend was the rowing World Championship, and it reminded me of something that few Board Members, Coaches or Investors ever talk about but is critically important to CEO performance: block your workout before you block anything else. I give CEOs the same instruction in the first thirty days, and I was just telling Anna-Marie Makarova, who runs a stellar Swiss start-up called RegCheck, about blocking out time for exercise, so I thought I'd share the data.
Most CEOs I know treat working out as a nice-to-do, but research says it's a high-performance prerequisite. University Hospital Bonn had athletes complete a single session of high intensity exercise, then scanned their brains. What they found: a single workout — even a short one — visibly changed the connection and efficiency between two brain regions. The amygdala (the fear center) and the precuneus (self-reflection and rumination).
In a healthy brain, these two regions usually move in opposite directions — when one lights up, the other quiets down. That balance is exactly what weakens in people worrying or anxiously debating a choice. In this study, a single high-intensity workout session strengthened that opposing relationship, making choices clearer and more effective. One workout produced measurably better brain communication almost immediately.
Caveat: the study was on men. Like most exercise neuroscience, it tells us nothing about the effects during a menstrual cycle or through perimenopause, when hormonal shifts already change mood regulation and stress response. That's a gap in the research, not a footnote (and an interesting open question in this field that Stacy T. Sims, PhD is working on).
I'm not going to tell you exercise completely cures anxiety — the study's participants were already fit and not particularly anxious — but what the study does show is that exercise changes the biological state of your thinking, in real time, not just over months.
For a CEO making high-stakes calls under pressure, working out isn't just wellness, it's also solid decision making infrastructure.
“If the body be feeble the mind will not be strong. Not less than two hours a day should be devoted to exercise, and the weather should be little regarded.” — Thomas Jefferson (who was pretty f'ing productive).
You don't need two hours. Thirty minutes, four times a week, with intensity, moves the needle more than an hour of easy cardio. Put it on the calendar before the first meeting, not after the last one. And if a big decision is looming and your head won't stop circling it — go workout. I've preached to my kids: go for a run or walk before a big test at school. And I've always been known for walking meetings at all my companies. Walking and talking is the most productive form of a stand-up meeting.
The board doesn't see the workout. They see the decision it made possible. Do you have a workout on your calendar?