Elite athletes lessons applied to our own world.

"Exponential” - probably the most awesome and highly-relevant book I’ve read in recent years, has helped me answer some of my own questions as I continue my personal development journey. 

I first met the author, James Hewitt, around four years ago whilst at a British Swiss Chamber of Commerce event at which Dr Aki Hintsa was the guest speaker. I left the event that night massively inspired, excited, and a notch more determined to keep moving forward. 

It has been two years since James and I spoke. Prior to that, we occasionally met in Geneva coffee shops to discuss personal development and our findings around nutrition, exercise, or some work-related developments. Since then, James has continued his journey fully immersed in that world, with one very special output being - ‘Exponential’ a small but extremely valuable taste of life being coached by the performance experts at Dr Hintsa’s clinic.  

With the Hintsa method, Dr Hintsa believes that first and foremost it’s important to deeply understand ‘your core’ before exploring, and working on, your outer areas of wellbeing.

Dr Hintsa believe in asking three simple-seeming questions - pushing many of us beyond our comfort zone given we’ve likely not asked ourselves these before. 

• Do you know who you are?
• Do you know what you want? 
• Are you in control of your life? 

Once you have fully understood your purpose and answered the three questions in depth, James walks use thorough the six major components of our wellbeing - activity, sleep/ rest, nutrition, biomechanics, mental energy (create meaning for the core, main area of development, social environment), general health. There are examples of how to apply these whether in the sports, or business world.

Through extensive work with elite athletes and the positive results that followed, the Hintsa team been able to apply fresh new techniques into the business leadership world. For example, the best athletes structure their time carefully to ensure they get the correct mount of training, and rest. They also focus their training largely on low intensity training, with short high intensity periods - something we should be aware of in the business world where most of us function in middle gear nearly all the time - not a very effective way to function. 

James also discussed several ways to focus on achieving positive outcomes - things that he’s been in discussion with Mika Hakinnen, and other F1 drivers, many times. Another great note is that an inspired colleague can produce as much as 2.25 satisfied colleagues in a workplace.. the question is then, how do you become an inspirational leader? Thoughts around this are shared in the book, so I’ll leave you to dig into it in more detail… 

Definitely worth adding Exponential to your New Year’s book list, as well as Dr Hintsa’s “The Core”. 

I’d like to note that I’m not affiliated to James in any way, except through the previously mentioned coffee chats and emails.