Luke Carlson is a Vistage member and speaker, exercise physiologist, former NFL strength coach, competitive marathoner, and one of the most respected experts in evidence based resistance exercise. Luke recently met with my Vistage groups to help us dispel some fitness myths and design an intelligent exercise program that would require no more than two 30-minute exercise sessions a week.  I have worked with Luke to outline a few of the most dangerous myths below.

Myth 1.  “Cardio” is the key to weight loss.

Mythbuster 1.  If your goal is weight loss, the most effective approach is always a combination of improving your eating habits and then recharging your metabolism by increasing muscle mass via strength training.

Go to any health club and you will see scores of people laboring on treadmills, elliptical machines, and spin bikes.  Ask them what their goal or objective is and they will tell you that they are trying to burn calories or lose weight.  What they fail to understand is that while they are burning more calories during the one-hour that they are exercising, their body is actually burning fewer calories for the remaining 23 hours of the day following their workout.  The reason?  After we perform a bout of cardio or aerobic exercise, the number of calories we burn the remainder of the day, known as Energy Expenditure due to Physical Activity or simply “EEPA” decreases.  Stated otherwise, after we perform a bout of cardio, we find a way, both consciously and subconsciously to be less active and expend less calories the rest of the day.  In controlled experiments, subjects who exercise 60-minutes per day expend no more calories at the end of the day compared with subjects who perform no cardio whatsoever.

Don’t believe it?  Here is another factoid: People who train for and then run a marathon (often with a hidden intent to lose weight), despite hundreds of hours of running (and literally tens of thousands of calories expended), on average, end up weighing the same or more on the day of the marathon compared to before they started their training.  Additionally, they fail to improve their body fat percentage.  This is in no way denigrating cardio. Instead, we simply need to understand that cardio isn’t very effective for weight loss; the primary benefit of cardio is improving your cardiovascular system and health, as its name suggests.

Myth 2. The best way to increase muscle mass and muscle strength is by strength training several times a week.

Mythbuster 2  Doing resistance training more than twice a week will generally slow your results, and for most executives, you will get 85% of the benefit doing resistance training only once per week.

We reap the many benefits of strength training not during the training session itself, but during the recovery from the training session.  The training session should be viewed as the stimulus, and in order to respond to the stimulus, we need to make sure we provide adequate rest and recovery.  As Luke explained, building strength is similar to building a callus.  If you rub a spot on the back of your hand with a piece of sandpaper every few days, you will soon build up a callus (the callus is a response to a stimulus).  If you were to rub your hand too frequently, you will gain a blister rather than a callus.  It is often our fervor for producing better results that impedes our progress.  With strength training, less is more.

Myth 3. The best way to increase your strength is to perform three sets for each exercise.

Mythbuster 3. One properly performed set of each exercise will stimulate all of the health and muscle building benefits of strength training.

Muscles can’t count, so it doesn’t matter if you end up with 7 reps or 17 reps; instead, focus on continuing each set to the point of “momentary muscle failure”; the point where another perfect rep can’t be performed. The main focus should be to lift and lower the weight slowly, thus eliminating momentum.  This makes the exercise more effective as it maximizes the tension on your muscles while also making the exercise safe because the forces your joints are exposed to are minimized.

Luke Carlson’s exercise prescription for the busy executive:

• Strength train once or at most twice per week, with each workout consisting of one set of 8-12 exercises done to momentary mujscle failure and lasting approximately 30 minutes.
• Strength train once or at most twice per week, with each workout consisting of one set of 8-12 exercises done to momentary mujscle failure and lasting approximately 30 minutes.
• Perform one to two high intensity interval cardio training sessions per week, with each session lasting 30 minutes. You can walk/run or use an elliptical, bike or treadmill.  Warm up for 5 minutes and then do 10 two minute intervals where you exercise as hard as you can for 30 seconds and then rest for 90 seconds.  As your conditioning improves, exercise as hard as you can for 1 minute and then rest for 1 minute.  The key to improving over time is to keep increasing the intensity of your workouts by increasing your speed, the incline of your treadmill, or the resistance of your elliptical.   Finish off your workout with 5 minutes of light exercise or cool down
• Lead an active lifestyle and do activities you enjoy and consider leisure rather than “working out.” It can be biking, walking, golfing, or playing with the kids.  The key is that it shouldn’t feel like a chore.  If you love to run or jog, do it.
• This total time commitment of 1-2 hours of focused, intense exercise per week and an active lifestyle will maximize fitness, stimulate a myriad of health benefits, and bolster an executive’s performance.

Luke’s Mythbusters have inspired myself and eight of my Vistage members and several of their spouses to try out his methodology at the Discover Strength gym. We have been pleased with the results thus far and we are spending the extra time previously devoted to the treadmill with our families and friends.

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To kick off my monthly Vistage Executive Peer Group meetings, I often start by having members mention a business and personal highlight for the month.  This serves to reconnect everyone and helps members transition to a day of working “ON’ the business rather than working “IN” the business.  Last week Jim Glomstad, General Manager of SporTech, mentioned that Valentines day was a pretty big deal for his family because of his daughter Carly.

When Carly was four, she read a book about a girl that loved Valentine’s day so much she spent days making Valentine cards and goody bags and delivered them to everyone in town via her little red wagon.  Carly loved the idea of doing something that would make many people feel special, and she decided to imitate her storybook hero in real life.

Carly raised $450 in her first year which allowed her to distribute 125 goody bags to kids at a crisis nursery and seniors at assisted living residences – people who she thought might need to feel special. That was 6 years ago, and she has expanded her outreach every year. This year she raised nearly $5,000 and delivered 500 goodie bags and cards while also funding a kids connection scholarship and donating to the crisis nursery.

She has her own website, (carlyvalentine.com) and last year she was featured on Kare11. She has raised almost $20,000 over the last 6 years.

 Here are some leadership lessons I think we can all learn from this 4 year old:

1.  Communicate a compelling vision – Carly wasn’t content to deliver a few goodie bags on her own street.  She wanted to cheer up kids who were sick and seniors who may not get any visitors.

2.  Go all in. Carly was willing to invest her life savings ($48.76 from her piggy bank) to make her vision a reality.

3.  Create a vision larger than yourself. Carly inspired her parents, her family, her kindergarten class, and her girl scout troop to join her in her mission.

4.  Follow your passion.  Carly truly loves making people feel special, which fuels her willingness to do whatever it takes to get the job done and grow her outreach every year.

5.  Have great mentors and a strong support system.  Carly couldn’t have done this without the support and coaching of her parents, Jim and Tina Glomstad.

Thank you to the Glomstad family for being great role models and an inspiration to us all!

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A fan who understands what legacy is really all about out reached out to Manning through a letter in the Denver Post. Laurie Lattimore-Volkmann shares, why Manning’s legacy was secure well before Sunday’s game.  Click here for the one page letter written from the perspective of a mother and a life-long Broncos fan.

Shaun White won back to back half pipe snowboarding gold medals in the Torino and Vancouver Olympics and he was the favorite coming into yesterday’s finals in Sochi. White ended up finishing just off the podium in 4^th place, but he was gracious as ever in congratulating the winner. Kare11 just ran a neat story that illustrates the profound impact that Shaun White has had on a local Twin Cities boy. White’s 4^th place finish in Sochi will make him no less of a hero in Jet’s eyes.

Take a moment to reflect on your legacy as a leader in your company.  What would your people say about you?  What one thing would you like to change starting today?

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Within a couple of days of the Yahoo announcement, Best Buy’s new CEO, Hubert Joly, made the same call by putting an end to the practice of ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) that Best Buy had popularized, and which allowed employees to work at home as long as they were achieving their objectives. The new Best Buy policy does allow for some telecommuting exceptions at management’s discretion.

During my one-to-one coaching sessions with my Vistage CEO Peer Group members, I have found a wide range of opinions on this.  Some say this totally validates their distrust of work at home policies.  Others recognize that they have scores of geographically distributed people productively working out of their homes, and that centrally locating these people is not feasible or desirable.  In either case, telecommuting is probably not going away entirely, and we need to better understand in what situations it works and how we can make it more effective.

That is where you come in. So kind readers, please reply to this post with your comments.

In your experience when has telecommuting worked well? When has it failed?  What are some best practices you have put in place to make it better? 

I am looking for your brief observations and quick stories of a paragraph or less in length. In a couple of weeks I’ll summarize your answers and add some insights of my own on how to get the most out of telecommuting.  Thank you for participating!

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As a Vistage Chair, my “Spring Training” was at the International Think Big Conference in Dallas last month.  I joined 400 other chairs from around the world to practice our fundamentals of running meetings, processing issues, coaching CEOs, and building strong groups with the best of the best. I further refine these fundamentals with fellow chairs in the twin cities at our monthly chair meetings.  This continued focus on practicing the fundamentals of great coaching and leading peer group meetings is one of the things that sets Vistage apart from other CEO peer group organizations.

Last week a CEO in one of my peer groups was trying to decide whether he and his partner had lost their ability to bring in business because their revenues were behind plan. They had always been highly successful in the past, and there were plenty of opportunities in the pipeline.  Further questioning by the group led to the insight that they were spending a lot of time on opportunities that were outside of their sweet spot. The group helped him better define his target customer so he could focus his sales and marketing efforts there, rather than chasing opportunities that were outside of their core.  Finally, they suggested that he and his partner go on a few joint calls to make sure they were executing good sales fundamentals, and had not fallen into some bad habits.

So, when was the last time you went to spring training?  Just because you have been in your role a long time does not mean you are doing it better now than you were earlier in your career.  Find a mentor, coach, or peer group that can help you periodically practice the fundamentals that have made you good at what you do.

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        Career transition is on the minds of a few of the CEOs in my group as they think about what they would like to do next.  As the CEOs of their companies, they have a lot of options–do they continue to grow the business in their current role?  Do they hire someone to run it for them, and focus on new product development or other activities that they really love? Do they sell the company and start a new one?  Or do they retire?

        Daniel Pink talked with us about how he decided to become a writer.  He continuously heard from others that he should just follow his passion.  The problem was, he couldn’t really identify anything he could say he was passionate about.  After casting about for quite a while, his wife suggested that rather than look for his passion, he should just focus on what he does and how he spends his time.  As he thought about, he had always been a writer.  Before being the lead speech writer for President Clinton, he was always writing articles, whether it was for the high school or university newspapers, trade publications or associations.  No matter his workloads or deadlines for his day jobs, he always found time to complete his volunteer assignments on time, even if it meant doing them after midnight the night before a packed agenda.

And so, he decided to become a writer.  He said that writing a book takes him about two years — one for research and one to  write the book.  It is hard and frustrating work, especially when you have a goal of 60,000 words, you spend all day writing 600 words, realize it’s crap, tear it up, and start over.  When he is in the middle of writing a book, he would seldom say that writing is his passion, but it is what he does.

So next time you are helping someone think about their next life chapter, don’t just ask them about their passion–ask them what they do.

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The article features 3 examples of how investing in executive education has produced mutually beneficial results for the employees and their companies across various industries.  The article highlights Michael’s support of Digineer manager Erin Wright in her participation in the Minnesota High Tech Association (MHTA) ACE Leadership program.

A significant financial and time commitment were involved in completing the ACE Leadership Program and both Michael and Erin are seeing the positive impact of Digineer’s investment.  Michael’s commitment to developing his people extends beyond just the leadership team.  “Lacey makes sure Digineer employees have the time they need to learn and experience in both formal and informal environments.  In fact, most of the 125 Digineer employees have been or are currently involved in a variety of continuing education programs.”

What a great model to aspire to – congratulations Michael, and thank you for setting a high bar for all of us.

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It is also just plain rude.  As author Dave Crenshaw points out in his book The Myth of Multitasking:  How Doing it All Gets Nothing Done, “Multitasking is a polite way of telling someone ‘I haven’t heard a word you’ve said.’”

One of the ground rules we use in our Vistage Executive Peer Advisory Meetings is something we call the “Airplane Rule”.  During the meeting, all cell phones and email devices are switched off.  We allow time for email and phone calls during breaks, but during the meeting time we want everybody to be fully present and engaged.  I find our meetings are incredibly more productive than ones I frequently experienced in the corporate world.  Try turning off your phone at your next meeting.

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Last week we had Steve McClatchy, CEO of  Alleer, help us do just that.  Most of us had been through various time management programs, and understood the “importance vs urgency” distinction when prioritizing tasks.
However, all too often, urgency trumps importance, and deadlines tend to dictate how we spend our time.  This keeps us in a reactive, rather than a proactive mode, which means most of our time is spent managing or maintaining our businesses, rather than leading and improving our businesses.

Here are 10 game changing tips from Steve McClatchy:

1.  There are two major categories of tasks — Gain Tasks ( “A” priorities) and Prevent Pain Tasks (“B” & “C” priorities).  

“Gain Tasks” produce the greatest results in terms of achieving your goals and improving your life or business.  They are things you really want to do, they are motivating, and accomplishing them is energizing and creates the feeling of balance in your life.   However, you don’t have to do them, you can’t delegate them, and they are never urgent.  These should be your “A” priorities.  The only person that can place an “A” on your task list is you.  Everyone else’s “A”s are your “B”s and “C”s

“Prevent Pain” tasks are things we “have to” do,  and are maintenance tasks which keep us where we are.  They will eventually all become urgent, and can burn us out.  Prevent Pain tasks are “B” priorities if their results are being recorded and “C” priorities if no one else will know if we completed them or not.  Delegate “have to” tasks whenever possible.

2.  Intersperse your “A” tasks with your “B” and “C” tasks throughout the day.

This will help you accomplish your “A”s, energize you to accomplish your “B” and “C” tasks,  and will create the feeling  of balance and movement toward your goals.  If you do your Prevent Pain tasks first, you will never get to your Gain tasks and will experience burnout.

3.  Schedule your “A” tasks on your calendar to assure they get done.  

People make decisions on how to use their time,  based on their calendar, not their task list!  Getting your “Gain”tasks on your calendar dramatically increases the probability that you will complete them.

4. Have one location to record all of your tasks, appointments, contacts notes and emails.

Keep it with you always, on your smartphone, tablet or PC, and get rid of all floating pieces of paper.  For each task or email, touch it only once and decide to :
—  Do it now if it takes less than 2 minutes
—  Do it later and schedule it on your calendar or to do list.
—  Don’t do it ever.
—  Delegate it

5.  Create daily and future to do lists using tasks in outlook, lotus notes, etc. by entering the date the task is to be started and when it is due.  

This is the key to delegation, goal achievement, and stress reduction.  Don’t overwhelm yourself and kill your productivity with one giant to-do list.  By using an outlook task list, you can parse your master to do list into 365 daily to do lists (one for every day of the year) by simply putting in a start and completion date.  Don’t waste time looking at tasks you are not going to get to today.  For more ideas, go to: http://www.alleer.com/Article-TMTip1.htm

6.  Keep ONE calendar!

You can still keep communication calendars (like work and home), but everything on a communication calendar needs to be on your calendar.  You will save yourself an unbelievable amount of time and aggravation if you and your spouse can access one another’s calendars through outlook, google or iCalendar.  Make sure everything syncs through the cloud.   If you have non-compatible devices (PC/Apple) and don’t have an exchange server, you can “rent” one over the cloud for about $6/month at sherweb.com.

7.  Keep great notes!

For a low tech option, keep one spiral notebook that you log all notes chronologically by date.

Tablet computers are ideal for this purpose.  The main challenge is retrieval, so keep it simple and take notes where you can always quickly find them.  For example, create an outlook contact for each of your employees, and keep a running journal on all of your conversations in the notes section of each contact.  You can also record performance examples there, along with topics you want to cover the next time you talk.  Do the same for all of your peers, boss, customers, and even your kids.

There are also applications like onenote, evernote, and notes that let you take notes by date, topic and contact.  The advantage with these applications is that they sync with all of your devices so that they are always accessible.

8.  Become a power user of Outlook, Lotus notes, or Apple apps.

Learn to drag emails into tasks, calendar and contacts so that you have that information when you need it — When you are working on it or when you are in a meeting.  You can also drag tasks into your calendar so you can easily schedule them

Turn your standard emails and templates into “signatures”.  You can have over 75 different signatures that contain full emails.  The advantage is that when you need to send a standard email, you can click on “new” and then right click anywhere on the signature, which will generate a drop down box with all of your signatures.  Click on the one you want, change the salutation and anything else you want to customize, and then hit send.

9.  Implement email protocols and best practices.

Email, while a great tool, can be an incredible personal and organizational waste of time.  When you calculate all of the time it takes to set up, address, write, and edit an email, most people are only communicating at 5 – 10 words per minute.  Contrast this with texting, which is 10 – 20 words per minute, Instant messaging, which is 30 – 40 words per minute, and voice mail, which is 150 – 250 words per minute.

Huge amounts of time can also be saved by having people limit their distributions lists and by not hitting “reply all” on their responses.

Finally, make sure you are managing your email, and not letting it manage you.  Turn off your email new item alert window and sound — You have enough interruptions.  Check it a couple of times a day, and otherwise, stay focused on accomplishing your “Gain” tasks for the day.

10.  Manage interruptions to stay productive and accomplish your “Gain” tasks.

The key, says McClatchy, is to limit the interruption to the 2 minutes of actual work required by the interruption, which usually falls into 3 categories:  A task someone wants you to complete, an appointment they want you to schedule, or an exchange of information.  For some great tips on how to do this directly and in a way that builds rather than hurts relationships, go to Managing Interruptions.

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