The body is the boardroom: Cardio = Finance: Managing Your Energy Reserves for the Long Haul

Co-written by Mike Pincus

Here's a number that might change how you think about efficiency: ten minutes of jump rope burns as many calories as 30 minutes of jogging. It's the most efficient form of cardio available—and the hardest. Maximum return in minimum time. Exactly what most leaders are looking for.

This is the seventh installment of Body is Your Boardroom, where we explore what founders and executives can learn from elite athletes about sustaining peak performance. We've been working through seven disciplines that make up your body's operating system, each one mapping to how you'd run a high-performing company.

Today's discipline is cardiovascular fitness. And in our framework, cardio is your body's finance function.

Why Finance? Why Cardio?

Think about what finance does in a company. It manages cash flow, energy reserves, and long-term sustainability. It ensures you can operate not just this quarter, but for years to come. It's the system that keeps the lights on when things get hard and resources get tight.

Cardio works the same way in your body. It manages your endurance, your mental stamina, and your ability to sustain pressure over time. It's what ensures your brain and body can perform not just in sprints, but for the marathon of building a company or leading an organization.

A marathon isn't won in the first mile. It's won at mile 23, when everyone else hits the wall. That's when cardiovascular fitness—both physical and mental—makes the difference.

Beyond Burning Calories

When most people hear "cardio," they think about weight loss or burning calories. But for executives and office workers, that's not really the point.

Cardio is about keeping the engine running efficiently—especially the brain. It's about mental endurance, stress recovery, and sustained cognitive performance. It's about whether you can maintain focus and clarity through long cycles of uncertainty, not just whether you can run a 5K.

It directly improves brain performance. Cardiovascular exercise increases blood flow and oxygen delivery to the brain. Your brain is an oxygen-hungry organ—it consumes about 20% of your body's oxygen despite being only 2% of your body weight. Better cardiovascular fitness means better fuel delivery, which translates to sharper focus, faster processing speed, and improved memory. All things you want working at full capacity during long meetings, strategy sessions, and high-stakes decisions.

It counteracts the hidden cost of sitting. Even people who work out regularly are at risk if they sit for 8-10 hours a day. Prolonged sitting is hard on your cardiovascular system in ways that strength training alone doesn't fully address. Cardio specifically improves circulation and heart health, combating the vascular downsides of your desk-bound workday.

It trains stress resilience at a physiological level. When you do cardiovascular exercise, you're essentially practicing stress and recovery. Your heart rate goes up, then comes back down. Over time, this trains your nervous system to recover from elevated stress more efficiently. You develop better emotional regulation, lower baseline anxiety, and increased resilience under pressure. It's stress inoculation—you're training your body to handle it better so you can bounce back quickly between intense moments.

It eliminates the afternoon crash. Regular cardio improves aerobic efficiency and how your body accesses energy reserves. The result is fewer energy crashes and more consistent mental stamina throughout the workday. You're not running on fumes by 3pm. You have sustainable energy that lasts.

Cardio and Strength: Two Systems, One Body

We covered strength training in the previous episode, so let me clarify how these two disciplines work together. They're solving different problems, and you need both.

Strength trains the structure. It builds muscle, bone density, and joint resilience. It improves posture and injury resistance. It increases metabolic rate and enhances physical confidence. It's your operational foundation—the infrastructure that holds everything together.

Cardio trains the delivery system. It improves your heart, lungs, and blood vessels. It enhances oxygen and nutrient delivery to the brain and muscles. It builds mental endurance and stress tolerance. It improves recovery between meetings, workouts, and stressful events. It's your financial reserves—the capacity to keep going when things get tough.

If you're only doing strength, you might have a strong structure but poor endurance and stress recovery. You'll tire mentally faster, and your cardiovascular system won't support sustained performance.

If you're only doing cardio, you'll have good endurance but you're not building the structural foundation that prevents injury, maintains posture, and supports metabolic health.

Office professionals need both systems working together. One builds the structure. The other ensures the system can run efficiently for the long haul.

The Mental Endurance Factor

Here's what might be the most important insight about cardiovascular training for leaders: it's more about the mind than the heart.

Can you sustain pressure for long periods and find peace in that pressure? Building a company isn't a sprint—it's a marathon. Sometimes multiple marathons back to back. Cardio trains your ability to stay in the game mentally when things get hard.

Leaders need stamina for sustained vision. Focus over time. Resilience through years of uncertainty. The capacity to keep going when everyone else is ready to quit.

This isn't about beating your competitors. It's about beating your last performance. You're only competing with yourself.

And this connects directly to everything else we've covered in this series. Poor cardiovascular fitness affects your sleep quality—cardio helps regulate circadian rhythm and improves sleep depth. Better sleep means better executive function, impulse control, and mood. Poor cardio means you can't recover from stress as quickly. Your energy crashes. You're running on empty when you need reserves most.

Cardio is the financial system that ensures you can operate for the long haul.

The Practical Protocol

So where do you start? Assuming the goal is overall health with an emphasis on lowering blood pressure and managing stress—common priorities for most executives—here's the progression.

Start simple. Three days a week. Twenty minutes of walking. Rate of perceived exertion around 5 on a 1-10 scale, where 1 is strolling on the beach and 10 is a lion chasing you. Weather permitting, walk outside—there's added benefit to being in nature.

First, increase intensity. In about 3-4 weeks, you'll notice your heart rate doesn't get as high as it did when you started. Your perceived effort will drop to around 3.5. This means you're getting in better shape. Time to walk faster. Same 20 minutes, but you'll cover more ground. Continue until you reach a comfortable effort level of 7 or 8.

Then, increase duration. Once you've maxed out intensity, extend from 20 minutes to 30 minutes. Pay attention to recovery time—how long does it take your heart rate to come back down after you finish? The better shape you're in, the faster the recovery. This translates directly to the boardroom. Your body will handle stress better.

Finally, increase frequency. If you need more cardio after maxing out intensity and duration, add a fourth day. But don't increase frequency until you've progressed through intensity and duration first. There's a sequence here—respect it.

And if time is truly limited? Jump rope. Ten minutes equals 30 minutes of jogging. It's demanding, so build up to it, but for maximum return in minimum time, it's hard to beat.

How Cardio Connects to the System

Your body runs like a high-performing company, and cardio—your finance function—touches every other department:

• Sleep (Funding): Cardio helps regulate circadian rhythm and improves sleep depth and efficiency.
• Stress (Risk Management): Cardiovascular training builds your capacity to recover from stress faster.
• Nutrition (Supply Chain): Better circulation means more efficient nutrient delivery throughout your system.
• Hydration (Human Resources): Cardio increases your body's demand for proper hydration—the two work together.
• Mobility (Strategy): Improved blood flow supports tissue health and recovery.
• Strength (Operations): Cardio and strength are complementary systems—one builds structure, the other ensures efficient delivery.

When your finance function underperforms, the entire organization feels it. Cardio isn't separate from the other disciplines—it's the circulation system that keeps everything connected and running.

The Bottom Line

The question isn't whether you have time for cardiovascular fitness. The question is whether you can afford to lead without the mental endurance, stress resilience, and sustained energy it provides.

Leadership is a performance sport. And the best athletes train their delivery systems as seriously as their structures.

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Body is Your Boardroom is a series featuring Mavi Viljoen of QED Investors and performance coach Mike Pincus, exploring what founders and executives can learn from elite athletes about sustaining peak performance. Seven disciplines. One body. Your boardroom.