Performance can be steered.

I started with strength training and Peloton. Today I ride gravel outdoors and head into the mountains. In between lie five years of intensive work on sports and stress science, on nutrition and supplementation. Over the years that has become a system that carries my performance.

This practice changed how I see leadership. What determines energy and clear decisions is remarkably well researched. In elite sport it has been a craft for years. In executive suites it is only just arriving.

What research knows precisely

Two markers say more about long-term health than almost anything else: maximum oxygen uptake, VO2max, and strength, measured simply via grip strength. Both are stronger predictors of a long, capable life than blood pressure. Add to that muscle mass, which with age becomes the currency for independence and resilience.

The good news: all three can be built deliberately. VO2max rises with endurance training, especially intense intervals, by 15 to 20 percent. Strength and muscle follow consistent strength training. That is simply physiology.

Why this concerns leadership

Decisions do not happen in a vacuum. They happen in a mind that is rested or not, in a body that has energy or is running on empty. Under constant pressure, decision quality drops long before anyone notices. Those who maintain the system that makes decisions protect the most important resource in the company.

I have experienced in myself how body and mindset change together. How you stay calm and clear under pressure when the energy is there, and how hard that is when it is missing. Leadership depends directly on it.

This is a question of performance and increasingly a question of leadership. Anyone who wants to keep key people at a high level for years has to take their capacity as seriously as their experience.

What I take from it

I translate these findings into everyday leadership, without wellness language and without dogma. Sleep, movement, nutrition, recovery, stress management: each of these levers is researched, and each can be built into a full calendar. It does not take two hours in the gym, it takes the right priorities.

That is where I support: clarifying priorities and finding the measures that fit your own quality of life.

What I have learned holds for the mountains as for leadership: the state you start in decides the outcome. And that state can be steered. You just have to take it seriously enough to begin.