Hey all, I’m an incoming freshman attending a target school this fall. I love lifting, and fitness is my passion, but I hear about the crazy hours in banking. How feasible is it to actually be fit in finance? Ideally I’d want to go at least 3 times a week for about an hour and a half each session. Is this possible? Thanks
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feasible but will be harder than usual. you'll still be able to have a good physique with persistence (i.e working out at 7-9 pm when you are sleep deprived) but nowhere near the peak physique you'll have in uni.. savour those days
100% possible if you make it a priority. I was the exact same way in college, and knowing what I was getting into with the IB hours post-grad, I made it a personal goal to try to keep up my physical fitness as much as possible on the job.
I'm at an EB and my office is known to work fairly hard, but I was still able to make it to the gym probably 4-5x a week on average throughout my analyst years. There will definitely be pockets of time here and there where you'll be too busy on a live deal and can't step away from the computer or you're just way too sleep-deprived to work out, but in general even during busier weeks, you can usually squeeze in a few sessions in the mornings or on the weekends if you really want to.
I want to note that I could do this because fitness was one of my top priorities outside of work. So there were definitely some instances where I skipped on going out with friends and staying out late because I hadn't been able to hit the gym all week and really wanted to get a session in the next morning before work or something like that. I will usually go in the morning since hours are unpredictable and you never know if you'll get out before the gym closes on any given weekday. If you build a routine and stick to it, you can definitely maintain your fitness even in banking.
Is it important to be yoked for networking and interviews?
No lol but probably doesn't hurt. Bankers are humans at the end of the day who will likely judge (even subconsciously) on appearance.
Depends on the timeline of the deal and the people you're working with. If you have people that respect you and your time, they'll have nothing against you stepping out for a gym session, especially if you're a good performer/get along with the people.
Hm, people in IB always tell me that they don't need muscles when they can just flex their massive bank account.
Priorities as IB analyst:
If you need 7-8 hours of sleep to function, then on most weekdays you will only get to choose 1 of 2-5.
However, unless you're getting trashed both nights every weekend, you should be able to make it to the gym both Sat/Sun at a bare minimum and be in decent shape. But without eating super clean all the time, it's tough to maintain the college physique especially if you were used to getting intense lifts 5x a week.
A 1.5 hour session might be tough. You can almost always find 45 minutes to an hour to slip away during banking though, especially if you’re in a group with a decent culture.
100% agree with this comment. Getting in a 45 min workout 3-5x a week? Very doable. Getting in an hour and a half, that's a lot more challenging.
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