How Getting Back Into Shape Changed My Work (And My Head)

Ten years ago, I was the guy who used to work out.

Not like an athlete. Just normal. Three or four times a week, nothing fancy. Enough that I had baseline energy and could sleep through the night.

Then life got busy. My job ramped up. Long hours. Travel. The gym membership stayed active but I stopped going. At first it was just a few weeks. Then a month. Then I realized I hadn't worked out in eight months and I'd gained thirty pounds.

I didn't think much about it at the time. I was making money. The job was going well. By all the external measures, I was fine.

But internally? Everything felt flat.

The Things Nobody Tells You About Being Out of Shape 

Here's what being out of shape actually feels like when you're trying to do complex work:

Your brain gets slower.

I remember sitting in a meeting in year two of not training. 45 minutes in, I could barely recall anything that had been spoken. Someone asked me a direct question and I couldn't access the answer I knew I had. The words were there somewhere, they just weren't connecting fast.

It wasn't a one-time thing. This brain fog became normal. By 3 PM most days, I was running on fumes and caffeine. Anything requiring real focus (a complex negotiation, building a pitch deck from scratch, working through a customer objection) required enough energy drinks to raise Red Bulls stock price.

When I was training regularly, that same 3 PM wall didn't exist. I didn't think about it then, but I see now: my brain was getting better oxygen and blood flow. My nervous system had baseline stability. Focus wasn't a battle.

Your emotional regulation disappears.

I had a difficult conversation with a direct report in year three of not working out. Something minor, something that would have been a five-minute coaching moment if I was in a better headspace. Instead, I got frustrated. Impatient. I said something I regretted and had to backpedal the next day.

That rarely happened before. Not because I was naturally patient, but because I had better capacity. Sleep was better. My nervous system wasn't running in low-grade fight-or-flight all the time from cortisol that never fully cleared.

You don't notice this until you're on the other side of it. When you're chronically exhausted and out of shape, you have zero buffer for difficult moments. Everything feels urgent. Everything feels personal.

Your sleep gets worse even though you're more tired.

I was sleeping eight hours a night during that out-of-shape period. But I was waking up at 3 AM. My back hurt. I'd wake up still tired. The sleep felt like work — a thing I had to do to survive the next day, not something that actually recovered me.

Once I got back to training, I was sleeping six and a half hours and waking up actually rested. The quality of the sleep changed. Deep sleep changed. Recovery actually happened.

What Changed When I Started Again

I didn't get back to working out because to look good on Instagram or to "get motivated." I went back because I was tired of feeling tired. I was tired of not having focus. I was tired of my patience being a two-minute resource.

First month back was miserable. I was sore. My cardiovascular fitness was gone. I could barely jog for five minutes without being winded. I kept going. Nothing fancy. Three times a week, thirty to forty minutes. Mostly lifting with some running.

Month two, I noticed my sleep changed first. I was sleeping through the night. Deep sleep came back. I'd wake up without the 3 AM panic wake-up.

Month three, the work changed. Not because I was suddenly brilliant. But because my brain wasn't operating at 60% anymore. Decisions came faster. I could hold multiple complex ideas in my head at once without losing the thread halfway through. That 2 PM energy crash got lighter. By 4 PM, I still had focus.

Month four, my mood shifted. Not in a "I'm happy all the time" way. But the constant low-grade irritation that had become my baseline? Gone. Frustrating things were still frustrating, but they didn't send me into this spiral where I was annoyed for four hours. I could be frustrated and also clear-headed about the next move.

That's when I realized something: I wasn't just a less-fit version of myself. I was a fundamentally different version of myself. My cognition was slower. My emotional regulation was worse. My sleep wasn't actually recovery.

Why This Matters for Your Team

Here's the thing that HR leaders and managers don't talk about enough: a huge portion of the performance problems you're trying to solve with better systems or coaching or accountability aren't actually systems problems.

They're physical problems.

The person who's not performing at their potential isn't lazy. They're sleeping poorly. Their cortisol is elevated all the time. Their brain is operating at 70% because their body is fundamentally depleted.

You can add all the OKRs and one-on-ones and leadership development programs you want. The underlying issue doesn't change.

The best people I managed, the ones who consistently showed up sharp and made good decisions and handled pressure well? Almost all of them had some consistent physical practice. Not necessarily "gym people." But someone who moved their body regularly, slept seven to eight hours, and had some way of clearing stress.

The people who were struggling? Almost all of them had abandoned that. And usually, they didn't even know that was the problem. They thought they were burned out. Unmotivated. Bad at their job. When really, they just needed their body to work.

The Real Cost

When I was out of shape, I was probably performing at 70-75% of my capacity. Not obviously. I still met my number. I still showed up to meetings. But the creative thinking was slower. The decision-making was more reactive. The recovery from setbacks took longer. I was more interpersonally fragile.

If my company had lost me during that period (I had started exploring other options), the cost to replace me would have been anywhere between anywhere to 50%-150% of my salary (between recruiting, training, lost revenue while ramping, etc). The real cost of my degraded performance was probably way higher.

The thing nobody measures is: how much output is lost when high-performing people start operating at 70%? Not because they're lazy or unmotivated. Because their body isn't recovering and their nervous system is stuck in chronic stress.

Your wellness benefit is supposed to fix this, but only if people actually use it. Only if it's structured enough that they stick with it. Which almost no generic wellness program is.

Here's What I Know Now

Getting back into shape didn't make me a different person. It made me more fully myself. The person I was before I got worn down by years of not recovering.

The sharpness came back. The patience came back. The ability to sleep and actually wake up recovered came back.

Your team has people like this. People who used to be sharp and are now operating at 70% because they haven't had a sustained recovery practice in two years. They don't need motivation. They don't need another leadership development program. They need their body to work again.

If you build a wellness program that actually makes this possible (not just available, but actually makes it real) you'll see something shift in your team that no amount of culture work alone can produce.

Better focus. Better decisions. Better recovery from hard conversations and setbacks. More patience. More resilience.

It's not magic. It's just what happens when people aren't chronically exhausted.

P.S. If you're reading this and you recognize yourself in it (the out-of-shape professional who used to be sharper) the barrier to changing this is way lower than you think. You don't need to become a pro athlete. You just need to start moving your body consistently and prioritizing sleep like it matters (because it does). The mental health shift usually comes first. The professional performance shift follows. And it's worth the effort.