I've heard that one way that successful ibankers stay on top of their game is through rigorous exercise. I was a former high school letter cross country and track runner. At what times in the day during ~90 hour work weeks do ibanking analysts head to the gym if possible? Does it really depend? It seems that they would have to compromise their sleep in order to do this.
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You'd be surprised how much downtime you have. There is so much inefficiency in the process management at large banks (less so at the top boutiques) that you will often have hours free mid-day or late afternoon. If you're at one of the BBs that has a gym in-house, get a membership. If you're not, get a membership at a 24-hour gym with a location near your office and a location near your home (office is more important). If you're at one of the sweatshoppier boutiques, God rest your soul.
The big thing is your mentality. If you make the commitment to staying healthy, you will. That means pushing yourself out the door for a 20-minute run when you get home every night unless you're coming off an all-nighter. That means going for a longer run or lift first thing on the weekend mornings when you have a full day's work ahead. That means adjusting your diet (this is the biggest thing); it's easy to gorge yourself with Seamless and the post-midnight meal allotment, but stay healthy. If you commit to taking care of your body, you can get through the analyst stint in excellent shape.
I remember during my summer I chose to focus more on maintaining my strength than worrying about weight or definition. (I was lucky to be at one of the banks with a gym inside.) I lifted regularly throughout the summer; all my lifts improved, but I gained 8 lbs. and got some skin over my abs. I was okay with that though, because it taught me firsthand what I needed to know: how my body would react to banking in my analyst stint, and what I needed to adjust when I wouldn't have senior year to get myself back in peak condition.
Now, practically speaking, you aren't going to get to exercise every day. For me, the best times are late morning, late afternoon, and early nighttime. Mornings are jammed: cleaning out the inbox and turning comments that came overnight. Then there's often downtime before lunch (a lot of other analysts will just come in at 11am or noon and prefer sleep to fitness) and I will step out to exercise. Post-lunch there's always meetings and calls, but if you're lucky and don't have incredibly busy staffings, there's usually time before dinner to get away. Immediately after dinner you're going to get meetings with seniors who want to pile the workload on you before they jet out of the office, so you'll be tied up with that for a bit. You do the work and pass it off to your associate and have some time (typically before 11pm/midnight) before he turns it, so there's time then.
Long story short, as long as you are efficient about managing your workload (getting things done promptly, spending a few hours on weekends making sure your week is looking ship-shape instead of shelving everything until Monday morning, not goofing off on fantasy, shopping, or news sites for hours each day, etc.), you can find time to exercise during the working day. Failing that, you just have to push yourself to sacrifice some sleep so you can stay fit. For me, it's a worthwhile tradeoff. I perform better with 4 hours of sleep and an hour of exercise daily than 6 hours of sleep and bloated. Your mileage may vary.
Wouldn't that also be highly dependent on the group, you're in? I don't know what your experience with this is, but I know that some groups view someone going to the gym as them not working at "full capacity", as retarded as that sounds.
Depends by person. At my summer stint (for 3 months, so not 2 years) I didn't exercise much but watched my diet relatively close. I am the type the person that loses energy through exercising despite being a varsity bball player back in HS. So figure out if exercising helps your productivity and energy to plan according.
When I summered, I woke up at 5am and went to the gym. If I got out before midnight, I'd go to the gym then.
Join a 24 hour gym. I used a NYSC that had hours of ~5am to midnight. Even then, sometimes I wished I could workout in that 5 hour window. You'll often leave work at 2am so pissed off you want to blow off some steam at the gym.
I'll add a caveat: I have had "early-waking" insomnia for years. So when you wake up at 4am and can't get back to sleep, going to the gym then is a productive alternative to staring at your ceiling for a few hours.
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