3 Key Tips for Optimizing Your Physical Health as an Entrepreneur Learn more about the "The Three Bs" to optimize your physical health as an entrepreneur.
By Andres Tovar Edited by Chelsea Brown
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Entrepreneurs and business leaders are the backbone of a thriving economy. These high achievers spend their lives building and scaling successful enterprises. With such demanding day-to-day activities, many of these go-getters find themselves with a high-performing bank account at the expense of their physical health.
Many would argue that the solution is simple: Get a trainer, go to the gym, and eat healthily. However, those who prescribe this type of game plan are forgetting that an entrepreneur's lifestyle is not that of the average person. Like an athlete, business leaders and entrepreneurs have an intense and focused mindset. Their lifestyle is not the same as everyone else's, and their health plan likely isn't either. However, having a plan in place to protect personal health is necessary for an athlete or entrepreneur to meet their goals.
The purpose of this article is to introduce three specific resources that allow business leaders to personally optimize their physical health. These three tools, or "The Three Bs," are blood work, biomechanics and biofeedback:
Related: Why Entrepreneurs Should Make Fitness A Priority
Blood work
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This pearl of wisdom is widely used by those in both the medical and professional realms — and for good reason. Whether you are protecting your health or business, thinking ahead is critical to longevity. Prevention of possible threats also minimizes the impact of potential long-term repercussions.
Blood work is one of the best means of prevention when it comes to health. Blood work is an effective hedge against potential diseases, health risks and the inevitable side effects of aging. Blood work clearly identifies vitamin-mineral deficiencies and the unique needs of your body as you age.
When having blood work done, find an expert. Many doctors use blood work to look for life-threatening diseases alone. The blood work you need digs deeper. You need a doctor who will look at the whole picture instead of immediate concerns alone. The greater purpose of blood work is to understand your deficiencies and create an action plan to help you feel your best.
Jonathan White is the founder of T3 Body, a coaching company that specializes in working with business leaders. While interviewing White, he stated that blood work is a crucial first step he utilizes to help his clients reach peak performance.
"Blood work needs thorough attention," said White. "We use blood work to identify exactly what our client's body needs from a nutrition and supplement perspective. We do a biomechanics screening to assess their mobility, flexibility, range of motion, pre-injury history so that we can best customize a training solution and then the biofeedback is an ongoing weekly measurement of their sex drive, energy, mood, appetite and digestion to ensure all the work that we do upfront is working effectively."
Related: 6 Ways to Grow Your Business By Focusing on Personal Health
Biomechanics
Discovering and fixing your biomechanics is the key to giving your physical body longevity. Performance researcher, Duane Knudson, says, "Biomechanics provides key information on the most effective and safest movement patterns, equipment, and relevant exercises to improve human movement."
Understanding your personal biomechanics will give you the data needed to train safely and obtain the most optimal performance from your physical body. However, paying attention to your biomechanics does more than simply allow you to perform fully at the gym.
In order to move fully, you must develop functional strength in your muscles. Functional strength differs from traditional strength training because it focuses on everyday movements and mobility. Proper knowledge of biomechanics, along with functional strength training, will help you build useful muscles that will let you move freely throughout life.
Remember that your muscles are also metabolic currency. The stronger and healthier your muscles, the more effective your body is at managing carbohydrates and fat. Finding an expert to do a biomechanical screening is a great way to reveal weak links and lessens the risk of injury during workouts. Training safely is of paramount importance to a business leader or entrepreneur's continual success.
Related: 10 Ways to Stay Healthy While Running a Company
Biofeedback
The final "B" is biofeedback. Biofeedback involves using a subjective scale to survey your biomarkers. Biomarkers include mood, energy, libido, appetite and digestion. Tracking changes in these biomarkers will help you determine the effectiveness of the lifestyle and biomechanical adjustments you are making.
"Through biofeedback training, a subject can be made aware of an otherwise unconscious physiologic function, such as his heart rate, and learn to alter it voluntarily," says Herbert Benson, bestselling author and Harvard Medical School associate professor. "[A subject] uses a device that measures the function — heart rate, for example — and 'feeds back' to him information corresponding to each beat of his heart. He can then be rewarded (or reward himself) for increases or decreases in his heart rate and thus learn partial heart rate control."
To track your biofeedback, use a scale of 1 to 10 to measure your hunger, desires, libido, energy, fatigue level, sleep quality, stress and temperament swings. You may consider tracking your biofeedback with an app or professional. Both resources can help you identify patterns and suggest solutions.
Listening to your biofeedback is also one of the best ways to maintain consistency in your health endeavors. It is always easier to quit or take longer than anticipated "breaks" when your body is working against you. However, biofeedback will help you track what your body is telling you. Using this internal data, you will find clarity on where you're at and where you need to go to make adjustments. Monitoring your biofeedback over long periods of time is a motivating experience.
Being fully aware of your overall health and identifying when professional help is needed, is an empowering step to becoming the healthiest version of you. Again, having a plan in place to protect personal health is necessary for entrepreneurs to meet their goals — and using "The Three Bs" as tools is a great place to start.
