7 Reasons Why Physical Fitness is Your Key to Business Success

7 Reasons Why Physical Fitness is Your Key to Success in Business

Being physically active has always been an important part of my life. I used to cross country ski competitively. And I’ll periodically sign up for a longer running race.

Recently, I’ve begun to build more of a structured fitness training plan for myself as I feel the benefits playing out in my own life.

I’ve been fascinated by research around fitness training in how it relates to longevity, business performance and mental health.

So, incase you need a few more reasons why you need to have a fitness plan in place I’m giving you 7 reasons why physical fitness is your key to business success.

1. Why Physical Fitness is Your Key to Success in Business: Physical Fitness Helps Develop Positive Mindsets and Improves Mood.

We all know there are ups and downs in business. Amidst the rollercoaster that is business it helps to cultivate a relatively unwavering attitude toward your business.

This starts with your mindset. Research shows that exercise improves mood by releasing endorphins. Having regular, challenging exercise as part of your daily life modulates the downs of business by regulating your response to stress over time.

2. Why Physical Fitness is Your Key to Success in Business: Physical Fitness Increases our Overall Health and Happiness

Exercise in general and resistance training specifically increases muscle mass.

Our muscle system is thought of as the largest organ in the body.

Why do we need muscle? Oh let me count the ways! Healthy muscle helps us age strong and gracefully. Experts agree that muscle health increases overall health, cognitive function and focus.

Healthy muscle can help regulate blood sugar effectively which is key to long term health and short term feelings of alertness and energy.

While I tend to think health is 50/50, meaning we have 50% control and 50% random chance, we may as well put in our greatest effort to max out the 50% we do have control over.

You do have control over going to the gym, swimming your laps or going for that run!

Plus, we can’t deny the fact that training our bodies allows us the physical bodies we deserve. Like Nike founder, Bill Bowerman, famously states, “If you have a human body, you are an athlete.”

As business owners we can all appreciate the marketing genius here. But also what better way to think about our bodies than as an athlete?

3. Why Physical Fitness is Your Key to Success in Business: Adequate Physical Fitness Increases Longevity and Healthspan

Our physical fitness increases our longevity and healthspan, which is the number one precurser to business success. You can’t have a healthy business without a healthy owner, manager and employees.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon underlies the importance of fitness when she says that long term health is the limiting factor in business success. In fact she encourages entrepreneurs across the board to increase their training.

Can you train for 2 hours per day? How about 3? Sounds like a stretch, doesn’t it?

Increased training will not only increase your health but it will also force you to constrain your time for increased efficiency. You will become an efficiency master.

4. Why Physical Fitness is Your Key to Success in Business: Daily Fitness Training Forces You to Focus Your Time

What happens when we put time into fitness and direct time away from work?

Magic happens.

You find the time to get the stuff done or you prune the unimportant stuff off your schedule.

You will quickly have to weed out all the time wasting nonsense you do each day.

Scrolling, no more time for you.

Ten email checks per day, no more time for you. You will be forced to batch activities, focus and constrain.

After a training session, you sit at your desk rejuvenated and ready for focus. You will be amazed by how much you can actually get done in one focus time when your body and brain are primed from adequate exercise.

When you’re an employee, you may have to tread lightly here but if you work for yourself, you are in control of your time.

Creating constraint in any system is freedom. You can use your training schedule to create this constraint on your business input. It’ll give you loads back in benefits.

5. Why Physical Fitness is Your Key to Success in Business: Your Physical Training Will Teach Your Invaluable Lessons to Use in Your Business

If you’ve been in business for any length of time, you know there are continual ups and downs.

The joy of business is always mirrored by the stress and fear most of us come to face regularly in business.

This is the number one lesson I learn again and again the hard way.

I used to have this idea, and I’m guessing you did too, that if we just fine the “one right thing”, our business will take off and it’ll be easy. Or that our business should just be one success after another. Folks, I’m here to say that it just isn’t so.

As I grow my business alongside my physical fitness training I’m continually struck by how my physical training parallels my business practice.

There are delightful days when I’m meeting all my sales benchmarks and I’m crushing another long run.

Then there are days, weeks and even months when I’m nursing an injury or missing my target sales numbers.

Training teaches me that tenacity is the most important skill when it comes to fitness and business.

You have to continually pick yourself up, make decisions about where to start and then re-start again and again.

6. Why Physical Fitness is Your Key to Success in Business: Physical Training Teaches You How to Set, Go After, and Adjust Your Goals

I’ll be honest, the skill of setting goals and going after them in a systematic way is something I learned later in life.

Continually I am amazed by the parallels by business goals have in relation to my fitness goals.

One of my biggest takeaways here is that while it’s important to focus on the big end goal, it’s even more important to focus on the task goals. What are the small daily steps you need to be doing in order to meet your benchmarks?

The “run for 10 minutes” leads to “run 5 miles” eventually.

The “sell one 10.00 item” leads to “sell 2, 10,000.00 items” eventually.

7. Why Physical Fitness is Your Key to Success in Business: Your Physical Training Builds Confidence and Self Esteem

First off, let’s define these terms. I’ll turn to my mentor (although she doesn’t know it) and role model Brene Brown to help me here.

Confidence, she says, feels similar to happiness in the sense that it’s a feeling of a kind of pleasure.

Happiness is the pleasure related to your external surroundings or circumstances.

Confidence is taking pleasure in yourself. Confidence is a sense of certainty in your abilities. It comes from an understanding of what we have done and can do.

After running that first mile you will have a new found confidence in your body.

After having done 10 push ups, 3 times you will have a greater sense of confidence in your body.

Conversely, if you’re starting a new business you don’t yet have confidence in selling the thing. This is where you get to borrow from your fitness training - you know you just have to start. You just have to do the one push up every day for a week and then you can do two and then three and then so on.

This, my friend, is how you build your business. One push up at a time.

To take it one layer deeper, I think the most important part of confidence building here is not that you did the pushups or ran the mile but it’s that you made a plan, stuck to it and did the work every day in order to reach the goal or build the thing.

If you’re interested in further reading and listening, here are some resources I’ve found incredibly helpful:

Forever Strong by Dr. Gabrielle Lyon

Podcast link for Amy Porterfield’s interview with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon

Podcast link for The Huberman Lab’s interview with Dr. Andy Galpin