- Duane Carlisle trains NFL CEOs and officials. He is a former coach for the San Francisco 49ers.
- He said high performers are focused on getting better and obsessed with data.
- They are also always committed to doing the best they can, he said.
This essay as stated is based on a conversation with Duane Carlisle, a San Jose, California-based performance coach who trains some of the most powerful people in sports and business, from NFL officials to CEOs. . He is the former head strength and conditioning coach for the San Francisco 49ers. His clients, many of whom require him to sign confidentiality agreements, include leaders like Sasan Goodarzi, Intuit’s chief executive. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
I work with CEOs, high profile executives and NFL officials as a high performance coach. These people have to be alert at all times, and being physically fit contributes to that, making them alert, focused and resilient.
My goal is to get you to achieve what you didn’t think was physically possible.
I have about seven clients at the moment, and I go to each of their home gyms about three times a week to train them. In fact, I’ve designed many of my clients’ home gyms for them.
When we are exercising, they turn off their phones or leave them in another room. Our training time is 100% your time and they are completely focused on your fitness goals.
For them, it’s about overcoming the status quo. By helping them do that physically, I’ve learned a few things about how they work.
The first thing is that these people are incredibly driven; they are big achievers. I compare them to professional athletes. Training them is no different, and a big part of that is efficiency.
They want to make every second count; time is of the essence. So my training sessions maximize effort. We are never waiting or resting. If one muscle group is recovering, another is warming up or pushing to the max. Not a minute is wasted. Their time is extremely valuable, so they make sure to be efficient with it.
If you want to train like a CEO or someone in the NFL, set a goal you want to achieve and create a balanced training plan that maximizes your time.
Second, these CEOs and executives are obsessed with improvement. At the end of the day, that’s what they want. And to do that, they have to put in the effort. It’s no different from business, where we’re constantly evaluating, reassessing, reassessing, and adapting to meet the goal.
They want to make every second count; time is of the essence.
I have learned a lot from my clients during my decades of coaching. One of my former clients, Eric Yuan, CEO of Zoom, told me in 2017 that success is about making people happy. He told me that he will be successful if he focuses on helping his clients achieve what they want. Sasan Goodarzi, the CEO of Intuit, has given me a similar idea: Put the needs of my customers or customers first.
It’s an incredible gift to be able to learn from some of the brightest minds in business.
Lastly, high performers focus on metrics and data. Numbers are important. Like business metrics, they track trends in your personal records, body composition, fat loss, and strength gains. They track everything. It is super important to them.
When we’re not training together, they supplement their program with workouts I design for them. Almost all of my clients train six days a week.
They are also always committed to doing things to the best of their ability. They walk in and say, “Coach, what do you have for me?” They ask, “Am I doing this right? Is my form good?” It’s about being the best you can be.