Tips For Staying Fit As An Athlete On Wall Street

To start, I wrote this post in response to @notahipster ’s post 2014 Summer Analyst Athletes and how people suggest staying in shape for your senior college athletic season. I have some experience in this category as I am a Division 1 track runner who had a SA position last summer. This post is geared more towards people who have to be in decent condition come the fall semester but in reality pretty much everyone can take a some piece of advice from this post. Some of it may not work for everyone but this stuff helped me stay in relatively good shape before going into my senior season. Enjoy the read and comment with any other advice for staying fit that people might have for the incoming summer analysts.

Pre-internship preparations

First off, set your expectations pretty low for how many real quality workouts you will have time to get in during the internship. This will help when you are half way through the summer and realize that you have even less time than you thought you would. Even if you do have a fair amount of free time, you are going to want to enjoy at least some of what NYC has to offer.

Second, try to go in as fit as possible and then hope to maintain or even progress from there. As long as you do not go crazy and live an extremely horrible lifestyle, you can maintain a good level of fitness without a huge amount of effort or time.

Before you leave school, sit down and have a conversation with your head coach, positions coach, strength coach, or all of the above. Don't tell them you are going to come back in terrible shape because you are going to be working the whole time (they don’t want to hear that.) Instead just let them know you will have a really tight schedule and that you are looking for suggestions on workouts you could do that are time efficient. As long as your coach isn't a Fascist he/she will probably help you out because an out of shape athlete is useless to them and a waste of a scholarship.

Summer is here

During the internship there are a couple of guidelines that you can follow to help yourself keep your six-pack:

1.) Eat healthy!

I'm not just talking about the Captain Obvious advice of avoiding anything fried or fast foods that are made of “food-like substances.” Quoting Kate Moss may be a mistake but she was pretty accurate when she said "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels." Paying attention to not only what you are eating but also your portion sizes is also pretty important. More likely than not you are going to be working out less than what you are used to as well as living a more sedentary lifestyle (gotta love a desk job) so you don't need to take in as many calories. Adjust your caloric intake accordingly as some people need more than others even if they both sit at a desk 80-100 hours a week.

Ever hear that breakfast is the most important meal of the day? They weren’t kidding. Start the day off with a solid breakfast that contains a good amount of protein (eggs, fat-free Greek yogurt, whatever) to help you feel fuller and then go from there. Keeping a few snacks at your desk may seem tempting but don't do it unless you can resist the urge to bring in Poptarts and sugary granola bars (my office got hooked on beef jerky.)
One final note on this, drink lots of water. It gives you a good excuse to get up and walk around to the kitchen and it is kinda healthy for you.

2.) Don’t act like Charlie Sheen every weekend

You may be tempted to get blitzed every weekend with your new friends but you may want to think twice. I'm not saying you can't drink and have a good time during your SA stint, I had a great time going out last summer but I made sure to be aware of what the consequences were. Remember you aren't just a regular Joe Blow who doesn't have to worry about the climax of your athletic career. Being hung-over every Sunday when you are trying to get in a solid workout can really suck. This also goes for non-athletes too. If you know you have a lot of things to accomplish the following day, don’t torture yourself by taking three too many shots just to show off how much you can drink.

So, enjoy yourself when you are out with friends/coworkers but ask yourself if you really need to get hammered in order to have a good time every single Saturday.

3.) No time to go to the gym? Bring the gym to you

If you are really crunched for time during the week and you can't spare some time to hit the nearest gym, improvise at home. Get yourself a yoga mat and a pull-up bar you can hang on a door frame at your apartment. All in this should run you $30 or less and it will be one of the best investments you will make this summer. Make up a routine that takes 10-30 minutes mixing up different exercises in several sets. I usually make a set consist of an upper body exercise, an ab/core strength exercise, and some type of plyometric/major stretch. An example set could look like:

Push-ups for 30 seconds, V-ups - 30 seconds, body weight squats - 30 seconds, next set…

You can make up whatever you like or do some type of at home workout that your coach gave you. The point is that if you can at least get a decent regiment like this going during the week and then hit the gym on the weekends you shouldn’t be too out of shape come the first day of fall practice. Working out in the mornings proved beneficial to me because it helped get me jumpstarted for the day ahead. When you are coming home late at night the last thing you want to worry about is exercising right before you try to fall asleep.

4.) Make friends with the fit senior bankers

Lots of offices have them; Wall Street is full of ex-collegiate athletes and weekend warriors. During my SA stint I was lucking enough to have a Managing Director that was really into staying fit and working out every morning. After a few weeks into the internship he asked if I wanted to join him for a run in central park before work which turned into several more morning runs. Being a track runner this suited me just fine. I was able to get in some easy mileage while also building a great relationship with an MD. Keep in mind this wasn’t out of the blue. We talked all the time about being a D1 athlete and other sports stuff. I know this was something that doesn’t occur a lot but it is always worth a try to look around and find a senior banker like that. Even if you find a senior level person of this sort but they never invite you to a workout, you still have someone that is more likely to go to bat for you later on because they have something in common with you.

As a disclaimer, this is by no means a comprehensive post that guarantees that you will be fit if you follow everything written. Of course the more real workouts you can get in the better off you will be at the end of the summer. However, I do know from experience that keeping all of this in mind helped me get through my SA internship without gaining any weight or losing anything off of my mile time. So good luck to all you incoming summer analysts, both athletes and non-athletes alike, and try not to gain any banker fat during your 10-week journey.