The Body Behind the Ambition

The Operator’s Journal

No. 001

The Body Behind the Ambition

In 2012, a flight of stairs told me something I didn't want to hear.

I was working as an area manager in a manufacturing plant. I was ambitious, working hard and trying to build a career. On paper, things were moving in the right direction.

Then one day I walked up a flight of stairs.

At the top, I couldn't catch my breath.

It wasn't a dramatic medical emergency. Nobody else would have thought much about it. But I remember exactly how it felt because I knew immediately what it meant.

I had allowed one part of my life to advance while another quietly deteriorated.

I was the heaviest I had ever been. My physical condition didn't match the person I believed I was becoming professionally.

Standing at the top of those stairs, I made a decision:

Something had to change.

I didn't realize it then, but getting back into shape would teach me one of the most important lessons of my career.

You cannot indefinitely separate the performance of the leader from the condition of the person doing the leading.

The First Transformation

I started training.

There wasn't anything particularly revolutionary about it. I exercised consistently, became more disciplined and eventually got down to around 187 pounds.

By the time my oldest son was born, I was probably in the best shape I had been in since playing college baseball.

But something else was happening at the same time.

I was finishing my master's degree.

I earned a promotion.

My career was accelerating.

I was becoming a father.

I remember sitting down and writing about that period in my journal because it felt as though several pieces of my life were moving forward together.

Years later, I don't think that was a coincidence.

Exercise didn't earn the degree for me. It didn't get me promoted. And it certainly didn't make the challenges of becoming a new father disappear.

What it gave me was capacity.

More energy.

More confidence.

More discipline.

A greater ability to handle stress.

And perhaps most importantly, proof every morning that I could make a commitment to myself and keep it.

That matters more in leadership than we sometimes acknowledge.

The Career Trap

Then my career continued to grow.

And something predictable happened.

My time stopped belonging entirely to me.

I moved from rotating-shift assignments into larger leadership roles. Eventually, there were periods when 12- to 14-hour days were simply part of running a manufacturing operation.

There was always another problem.

Another meeting.

Another production issue.

Another employee who needed something.

Another number that needed explaining.

Exercise became easier to sacrifice because work always presented itself as urgent.

For years, I told myself some version of the same story millions of professionals tell themselves:

I don't have time.

There's some truth in that.

But not enough.

The uncomfortable reality is that we usually find time for the things we've decided cannot be negotiated.

For many ambitious people, health never makes that list until something forces it onto the list.

A bad doctor's appointment.

An injury.

Exhaustion.

A photograph you don't like.

Or maybe just a flight of stairs.

At 40, the Objective Changes

I'm now entering a different stage of life.

And my definition of fitness has changed with it.

At 25, you can get away with treating your body almost recklessly.

At 40, you begin understanding that you're playing a longer game.

I'm not interested in a crash diet.

I'm not preparing for a competition.

And I'm no longer particularly interested in seeing how low I can drive the number on a scale.

For most of my adult life, weight was the scoreboard.

If the number went down, the program was working.

But that's an incomplete measurement.

Muscle has value.

Strength has value.

Mobility has value.

Energy has value.

The ability to work a demanding day and still have something left when you walk through the front door has enormous value.

So this time I'm measuring something different.

I want to feel better.

I want to look better.

I want my clothes to fit better.

I want to get stronger.

I want more energy.

And I want to maintain the physical capability to live the life I intend to live 10, 20 and 30 years from now.

Interestingly, since beginning this latest phase, I haven't stepped back on the scale.

For someone who spent years using weight as the primary measurement of fitness, that may be one of the biggest changes I've made.

Build Fitness Around Your Life

There's another lesson I've learned: the perfect training program is useless if it doesn't survive contact with your actual life.

I'm training five days a week now.

Wednesday is generally a recovery day because it breaks up the workweek. Friday belongs to the family. Weekends provide more time, so I can do longer sessions and concentrate on larger muscle groups.

It's not the schedule someone designing the theoretically perfect fitness program might create.

It's better.

Because I can actually live with it.

I've taken the same approach with nutrition.

I've historically eaten very little during the day and naturally gravitated toward intermittent fasting. That worked reasonably well when my primary objective was losing weight.

It doesn't necessarily work as well when the objective becomes maintaining and building muscle.

So I've had to learn.

I've increased my protein intake. I've incorporated creatine. I've paid more attention to recovery and started thinking about food less as something that needs to be restricted and more as something that can support performance.

I've also used AI to help structure both my nutrition and training.

That's been an interesting experiment in itself.

Technology can't lift the weight for me.

It can't make me go to the gym.

It can't create discipline.

But it can remove friction from the process by helping organize information, build routines and adjust a plan around my actual life.

Execution is still my responsibility.

It always will be.

Then My Boys Started Coming With Me

Something happened during this process that I didn't anticipate.

My sons started coming to the gym.

They're nine and 13, and baseball is a major part of their lives. They're beginning to understand how strength, mobility and athletic performance connect.

So they ask questions.

Why are we doing this exercise?

What muscle does that work?

How will this make me throw harder?

How will this help me hit?

I get to teach them.

But underneath those conversations, something more important is happening.

We're spending time together.

They're watching what I do.

And I've been reminded of something every parent eventually discovers:

Your children pay far more attention to your habits than your advice.

I can tell my boys that discipline matters.

I can tell them to take care of their bodies.

I can explain the importance of preparation.

Or they can watch their dad go to the gym when he'd rather stay home.

They can see consistency.

They can watch the repetition required to become stronger.

And eventually they'll understand that the lesson was never really about lifting weights.

Leaders Are Athletes, Too

Professional athletes understand something the rest of us often ignore.

Their body is an asset.

They invest extraordinary amounts of time and money into nutrition, training, sleep, recovery and mental performance because their livelihood depends upon their ability to perform.

Business leaders tend to think we're different.

We're not.

Our arena just looks different.

Leadership is physically demanding.

A manufacturing plant doesn't care that you slept poorly.

A difficult employee conversation doesn't become easier because you're exhausted.

A multimillion-dollar decision still requires clear thinking at 4:30 in the afternoon.

Your family still deserves your attention when you get home.

The leader who consistently sleeps poorly, eats poorly, never exercises and operates under constant stress may continue performing for a long time.

Until they can't.

That's why I've started thinking about physical fitness differently.

Your body is part of your professional infrastructure.

Companies perform preventive maintenance on critical equipment because waiting for catastrophic failure is expensive.

We monitor vibration.

We inspect components.

We lubricate equipment.

We replace parts before they fail.

Yet executives will spend their careers preaching preventive maintenance while practicing run-to-failure maintenance on themselves.

There's some irony in that.

Discipline Transfers

The greatest benefit of training may not be physical at all.

It's practicing discipline.

You don't become stronger because of one extraordinary workout.

You become stronger because you perform ordinary workouts repeatedly.

Leadership works much the same way.

Great organizations aren't built by one inspirational speech.

They're built through thousands of small behaviors repeated consistently.

Following up.

Holding standards.

Preparing.

Having difficult conversations.

Developing people.

Solving problems.

Doing what you said you would do.

Then doing it again tomorrow.

The gym reinforces the same principle.

Nobody cares what you intended to lift.

The weight either moved or it didn't.

I'm Not Trying to Get Younger

At this stage of my life, I'm not trying to recreate the 22-year-old college baseball player I once was.

That's not the objective.

I'm trying to build the strongest version of the man I am now.

A better leader.

A better husband.

A better father.

A healthier man.

Someone capable of carrying the ambitions I still have for the next several decades.

That's why the flight of stairs from 2012 still matters to me.

It taught me that deterioration rarely announces itself.

It happens quietly.

One skipped workout.

One bad meal.

One late night.

One excuse.

None of them matter very much individually.

Stack enough of them together, though, and eventually you reach the top of a flight of stairs and realize you've become someone you didn't intend to become.

The opposite is also true.

One workout doesn't transform you.

One healthy meal doesn't transform you.

One disciplined morning doesn't transform you.

But stack enough of those together and something remarkable happens.

You become stronger.

And not just physically.

I've spent much of my career thinking about how to build stronger organizations, stronger teams and stronger leaders.

At 40, I'm being reminded that there's another system worth investing in.

The one carrying me through all of it.