The fit are better able to climb corporate ladder



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The fit are better able to climb corporate ladder

By JOHN BRILEY, The Washington
Posthttp://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/living/health/14240380.htm

Although corporate executives might seem to inhabit their own universe
("Johnson! Get me the ZIP code for Planet Wealth!") they face the same
challenges in finding time to exercise as those who toil in the cube
farm. But suits who do manage to exercise regularly, according to newly
collated data, perform much better at their day jobs than their
sedentary counterparts.

The data were collected from thousands of executives who have attended
corporate leadership seminars since the early 1990s at the Center for
Creative Leadership in Colorado Springs, Colo. Participants completed
questionnaires, as did their immediate subordinates and bosses. The
researchers conducted health assessments on participants, gathering
such data as cholesterol and triglyceride levels and resting heart
rates.

Researchers divided the participants into two groups based on their
self-reports: exercisers and non-exercisers. The former included those
who had been working out regularly for six months or more. The latter
included those who had been inert for six months or longer, plus those
who occasionally dabbled in activity.

The key finding: Exercisers scored better than non-exercisers in all
leadership categories, including credibility, leading others and
interpersonal savvy. They also got superior marks for organization,
productivity, optimism, dependability, flexibility, energy and staying
calm.

The exercise group also had significantly fewer health risk factors
than non-exercisers -- even if they were literal, in addition to
figurative, heavyweights.

"That's the most interesting thing," says study author Sharon
McDowell-Larsen, senior associate and exercise physiologist at CCL. "If
you were a regular exerciser, even if you were obese, some risk factors
were attenuated."

Diastolic blood pressure, HDL cholesterol, triglycerides and glucose
dropped with increased exercise, regardless of whether participants
were overweight. Example: Lean non-exercisers had triglyceride levels,
on average, of 125; for obese exercisers, the average was 128 -- a
negligible difference.

"There is too much emphasis on exercise to achieve a certain body,"
McDowell-Larsen says. "It should be exercise to get fit."

Jim Loehr, CEO of the Human Performance Institute in Orlando, which
studies executive behavioral patterns, agrees.

"Fitter equals healthier. All our data show that. Anything that affects
one's ability to mobilize energy will have a big impact on their
ability to perform at the highest levels."

Non-exercisers listed "lack of time" and "work conflicts" -- sound
familiar? -- as their main impediments to working out. But the data
showed that exercising execs spent an average of 59 hours per week at
work while the more sedentary group dedicated 57.6 hours to their jobs.

Explanation? The CCL researchers wrote "One of the most important
characteristics of regular exercisers is that they [make] exercise a
priority."