IB monkeys - how are you guys fitting in the gym and b-school/recruiting prep?
Cant seem to find time to achieve these consistently during the week, even as an associate. Helpful if you can share examples of your daily routine that worked
A bunch of people on here are about to tell you to just go harder and wake up earlier, go during lunch etc. etc.
I'm going to fill you in on a little secret no one wants to admit....life is about tradeoffs. At a certain point, you can't do it all and you have to give up some things to achieve other things. If not permanently, at least for a period of time.
So yes. Try to optimize your schedule and get some pointers from others. See if you have any more dead time that you are wasting on Netflix etc. Can you reasonably wake up earlier? Not talking 4 a.m. here. If not, you'll have to decide what's most important now.
Similarly, if you want to put in the time to be an amazing golfer, you probably won't be able to simulatneously put in the time to be an amazing tennis player and work an 80 hour week. You just gotta make choices.
If anything, I would come up with a game plan where you can just maintain during this period. What do you need to eat and how much to exercise to just stay at your current weight. What you don't want to happen is getting stressed with recruiting/B-school and then find yourself 15 lbs heavier. Honestly, if you recruit to a PE firm that you wanted or school that you wanted and you gained 5 lbs, that's probably a win. Just something to think about.
Very helpful perspecrive, thank you for sharing.
would also suggest you do research on workouts that are conducive to your goals and high-yield in less than 20/30 minutes. consider isolating one or 2 muscle groups at gym in the morning, or a quick mile and pushups/russian twists/squats. dial in your diet by spending more on healthier food/snacks
Great response. I used to golf a ton and was an amateur power lifter. Began working, and well golf has gone out the window and I purely lift/run as much as I can. I’m still alright out on the course, but I’d much rather have my physical health (as much as one can).
Another thing to note, every group has different WLB. I’m at a group where 60-70 is the normal. I can get into the gym 4-5x a week and use it as a way to unplug and have time to myself, which def helps with mental clarity.
What time do you usually go to the gym on busy days?
Knew people who go to the gym during lunch and eat at their desk after, not for me since lunchtime was a fun time to decompress.
Most people would go to the in-office gym at 6 when seniors were leaving and it was quieter. You don’t need a ton of time in the gym to maintain as an analyst, maybe 20-30 min a day of weightlifting will be enough to not have your gains wither away.
There’s a reason why so many senior bankers are out of shape though! Eventually the hours will catch up
if you werent disciplined enough to get jacked in college, you wont have the discipline to do it in IB. but if you were religious about lifting in collge, youll fit it in easily
There are a lot of good threads on this, but my personal advice that I think is underrated is become a weekend warrior.
The “wake up earlier” grinders are almost always shit employees. They think they are productive, but in IB working out during the week and waking up earlier almost always means getting less sleep which makes you less sharp and have severe brain farts and clumsy errors. It also likely defeats the purpose of working out honestly because sleep is way higher on the hierarchy of needs.
Instead, lift Friday evening, Saturday am and Sunday am. If you get some time off during the week, go for a jog or do pushups. It really isn’t that hard.
It honestly bothers me how people frame working out in IB because the guy above hit the nail on the head—life is about trade offs. Working out during the week is not a must have for the majority of people. Also, being blunt, if you get 3 heavy lifts on a weekend and 1 cardio during the week you can accomplish about any fitness goal. You don’t really need to be working out much more than 3-4 times a week.
Source: worked in a sweatshop, benched double my weight and squatted 450. Later trained for a marathon while working similar hours in PE. Basically never worked out Monday-Thursday. Still to this day, I struggle to workout during the week due to the stress and action in my role. However, that Friday at 6pm lift is so so sweet.
Oh also, live close to a gym/ have one in your building ideally. It’s all about efficiency and making it where when you get a 45 minute break you can squeeze a little something in during the week.
Pushups, pull-ups, and running are severely underrated and can all be done with little equipment.
Not op but this is super helpful. Just curious - what split did you run or what did your Fri-Sun workouts look like?
450 squat and did cardio? I call cap (jokes aside amazing achievement)
You are actually right—different times for those goals.
I had an era where I tried to lift as much as possible and got a little chunky, then an era where I tried to run distance. The extra weight makes it near impossible to run far at a reasonable pace especially while not being like a fitness influencer.
It was really cool hitting fitness goals for the reason alone that it gave me inner peace to stop ego exercising. Hitting my PRs really was a come to Jesus moment of like “holy crap this is seriously a huge huge waste of time”
I still keep a little ego at the gym, but it’s more for like reasonable standards of my mind of like reping 225 on bench, running a sub 5:30 mile, doing 25 pull-ups. All these though I don’t really consider dangerous or time consuming and as mentioned I can skip a week or two and still have these in my back pocket. It’s hard to overstate the separation that occurs in your late 20s and early 30s for those who are active and those who aren’t. You can get away with it in your early 20s, but by 30 it really starts to show who has some sort of routine and who doesn’t. Those that do look basically unchanged and those that don’t look significantly older.
In office gym is ideal because it's doable to sneak in a 45 min workout during downtime/waiting for comments late at night
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