Last week I shared 5 lessons I have learnt from my 10 years working on professional sport.
Having worked 30 seasons in various professional team sports, with world record holders, Olympic athletes and many corporate organisations, schools and active adolescent athletes there are plenty of lessons I have picked up that I think can apply to High Performers as well.
This episode is part 2 and I’ll be sharing the next 5 lessons from elite athlete performance I think we can all benefit from following.
In this episode I share:
- The importance of strategic use of supplements
- The way I recommend you approach using supplements
- How I see supplement strategies used in high performance roles
- Supplements I use with high performers in sport and business
- The important things to know about fish oil supplements
- What third party batch tested supplements are and why you should use them
- How elite athletes understand the benefits of engaging a team of experts
- Why elite athletes use a personal dietitian as well as their team dietitian
- Why you should embrace a diverse range of recovery methods
- The difference between macro and micro recovery
- Examples of micro forms of recovery
- The ways elite athletes build their mental strength
- Why you should always be searching for a competitive advantage
Key Quotes
“Utilising supplements strategically for a number of different reasons is advantageous.”
“If you’re really wanting to seek expert guidance you really want to have your own individual expert in that area.”
“You really need to consider who you are gaining your advice from.”
Episode Resources
Jessica Spendlove Website – www.jessicaspendlove.com
Jessica Spendlove Keynotes – JessicaspendloveKeynotes – Jessica Spendlove
The High-Performance Profile Quiz https://jessicaspendlove.com/quiz/
Jess Spendlove Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jess_spendlove_dietitian/?hl=en
Jess Spendlove LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-spendlove-64173bb8/
About Your Host
Jessica Spendlove | Wellbeing Speaker & High Performance Strategist
Jess Spendlove is an international wellbeing and high performance speaker, coach, and advisor. With over 15 years of experience across corporate leadership, elite sport and the military she is known for helping ambitious leaders and teams optimise energy, build resilience, and sustain peak performance.
As one of Australia’s leading performance dietitians and a trusted voice in executive wellbeing, Jess delivers science-backed strategies that empower individuals, teams and organisations to thrive under pressure and achieve long-term success.
Episode Transcript
The following transcript has been automatically generated and not checked for accuracy
Jess (00:01.438)
Welcome back to another episode of Stay At The Top. This week we are continuing the conversation around the 10 lessons that leaders and high performing individuals can learn and leverage from the lessons of professional sport and professional athletes. So this is the second part to our conversation where we will continue to look at.
how we can leverage strategies, tips, tactics, and practices that elite athletes use to get the most out of their bodies and their brains repeatedly week on and week out, month on and month out, and season on to extend their career. I’ve seen behind the scenes on multiple sports teams, and I can tell you that there are so many practices that high-performing leaders and individuals and motivated humans who just want to live
a high performance life can take and utilize to sustain their own performance. Now, before we get into today’s episode, I believe it’s really important that every single person has individualized and personalized tactics and practices, which is why I’ve created the High Performance Profile Quiz. This quiz will identify your current habits and routines.
Jess (01:25.06)
human or a ticking time bomb and most importantly it will give you the right next step you need to take based on where you are starting from.
Jess (01:45.859)
I’m looking forward to continuing today’s conversation.
Jess (01:53.175)
Team, I’m looking forward to continuing last week’s conversation that we started to have about the lessons that leaders and high-performing individuals can learn and leverage from how elite athletes conduct themselves.
Jess (02:13.51)
After spending a decade in professional sport, I really started to see the same needle moving activities that can be transferred from the professional sports world into the arena of business and high performance living. There are a number of proactive strategies that can be taken and directly implemented, or we could learn the lessons and transfer that into the business world. Now, if you haven’t listened to last week’s episode, I would encourage you to
back and start there as this is part two of this conversation.
To kick off today, the first lesson that I believe high-performing leaders and high-performing humans can learn and leverage from elite athletes is the strategic use of supplements. Now, supplements are very much the cherry on the top, meaning it’s once we have the right foundations in place, the big rocks, the real needle movers, that we can start to refine and optimize with the use of supplements.
a one size fits all and it’s also not just the more the better, we really do want to be strategic and intentional. There’s a few reasons for that. One, we want to be making sure that where we’re investing our money that we’re getting return on investment from. And one big problem or big issue I see is people spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars on supplements that they have no idea if they even work, they’ve got great
Jess (03:49.04)
behaviors which have not been optimized. Big rocks are looking at how we eat, what our nutrition is on the daily, how we sleep, how we move our body, and how we’re recovering. But once we’ve got that down pat, utilizing supplements strategically for a number of different outcomes is advantageous. Now, with professional athletes, some of the areas that we would look to use supplements is around, yes, performance.
a performance response, so whether that is getting more out of a field session or more out of a strength session. It’s also utilizing supplements from a recovery perspective and maximizing that adaptation. Some of the other areas are immunity, so either looking to implement immune supplements in periods of high risk to prevent illness or at the very first sign of illness,
to reduce the severity and the duration of that illness.
Utilizing supplements in periods of high stress and cycling them is a really excellent strategic use of supplements to help navigate a really difficult period. Now a high stress period might be times of increased travel, which definitely extrapolates out to corporates and busy humans. It might be time points in the year where the general population tend to get sick.
Jess (05:24.644)
young family and their children are going to daycare where a lot of illness starts. So this is where it’s not just a one size fits all, it is really looking at each individual but there are definitely a number of scenarios that we can strategically use supplements that can elicit and optimise performance. Now where I see this really being leveraged in the corporate world or the business world or just in high performance living is taking this same approach.
do we want, whether we’re talking physical or cognitive, and what can we put into place. Now, some supplements that I use very regularly with high performers in sport and business, a creatine, and I use this not just from a physical standpoint, but from a cognitive standpoint as well. Fish oil, a high quality fish oil supplement. Again, this is about optimizing omega-3.
This is about optimizing our Omega 3 intake and also looking at
the EPA as well as the DHA. Now these are two types of omega-3 fatty acids. And when we supplement with a high quality fish oil, we’re looking at the different doses depending on what the usage is. Now EPA is more from an inflammatory standpoint and a cardiovascular standpoint, and DHA is more from that cognitive standpoint. So depending on what we’re looking to utilize them for, we can look at the different types of omega-3 fatty acids
recommendation based on that. Typically with all of my high performing clients I’m aiming for around 2,000 milligrams of each per day. Now not all fish oil supplements are created equally and this is where the quality and also this is where the quality really matters. So for all of the supplements I use and recommend with all of my clients I am always looking for third-party batch
Jess (07:29.12)
sport or the has to testing on it. Now
A high performing business leader might go, well, why do I need third party batch tested supplements? Elite athletes need them because that guarantees that there are no cross contamination, there are no illegal ingredients. But what that also means is that product has been subjected to rigorous testing and it has passed that. Now, I believe we need to know what we’re putting in our bodies and we wanna be putting the best quality food and the best quality supplements. So that is why no matter
I’m working with an elite athlete who definitely needs third-party batch tested supplements or a high performing business leader or a high performer who just wants to be utilizing the best quality supplements that is why we want to do that. Now two brands that I regularly use and recommend are Pillar Performance and also Momentous. Both of them test all or the majority of their products. So if anyone is interested in more information please shoot me like a
Instagram, I’m always happy to have a little bit of a conversation or send you the links. I also have some special codes which allow you to purchase supplements at a reduced rate. So I’m not going to share that on here but if you’re happy to DM me I’m really happy to continue that conversation there. So point one for today, I believe high performers in every arena can strategically use
The second point I want to talk about here which.
Jess (09:05.91)
The second point I want to make here today is that elite athletes understand the benefit of engaging a team of experts. Now, if I use team sport athletes as an example, most teams have a sports dietician. That is the role that I played for a decade with seven different professional sporting teams. But one thing I’m starting to notice is that there are certain elite athletes who are really
and seek out their own experts. So this is done, I can confirm in a dietetic space, I’ve been working with a number of AFL players who have their own team dietitian, but they are wanting something really curated and personalized and tailored to them. And also the reality is like a team sport dietitian, I’ll use AFL as the example because that’s what I’m talking about here, they are looking after 45 athletes
even if they’re full time, they are spreading themselves very thin. So what I’m starting to see are these athletes who really want to leave no stone unturned and really seek out their own expert. This has been commonly done in America for quite a while. And while yes, I know that athletes in America are on very different pay scales to those in Australia, elite athletes in Australia are still generally earning, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars.
where I really see the crossover with athletes and then business leaders. I see a lot of business leaders investing in life coaching, executive coaching, and there may be an element of like health in there, there may be an element of nutrition, but the reality is if you’re seeing a generalist with not much expertise in this area, really just giving you guidance from their own personal experience, how curated is that?
they are not an expert in that specific space. So if you’re really wanting to seek expert guidance, you do really wanna have your own individual expert in that area. Now, another similar area I’m seeing a lot of this happening in the sports world is with mental skills or performance psychology. Now, again, if I transfer this into the corporate or the business or just corporate or business world, or people wanting to live a high performance lifestyle,
Jess (11:35.56)
Again, I think it’s worth considering, is this expertise something that you would benefit from? And are you actually working with an expert in that area, or is that guidance being absorbed in more generalist coaching, and therefore are you really getting that expertise that you deserve? I think it’s a really important question to think and reflect on. And it’s the same as going to a GP. We can’t expect a GP.
to be able to… Now another example of this is someone who may have a heart condition. Now if you have a heart condition and you’re requiring surgery you need to go and see a cardiothoracic surgeon. You want to work with a cardiologist, someone who has specialized in that space. Maybe to start that journey you start with a GP, someone who is a bit more generalist, who can do
Jess (12:35.68)
on if you’re someone requiring heart surgery I’m sure you don’t want to turn up for your operation and find that a GP is operating on you Absolutely not you want an expert you want a cardiothoracic surgeon now Yes, that might be a little bit more of an extreme example than just optimizing your mental resilience or your mental your mental skills or your performance nutrition But it is an excellent example which can translate
with a generalist and getting generalist recommendations or are you seeking out an expert in that space that can really level up how you’re utilizing and performing that. I think it’s a really important question you need to reflect on and it’s definitely something that elite athletes are doing and it’s really something that I would, it’s really something that high-performing individuals in the business arena or those just looking to lead, those looking
lifestyles should really consider doing as well. The third point I want to talk about here today is embracing diverse recovery methods. Now this is something elite athletes do really well. Initially,
Jess (13:55.51)
This is about looking at both macro recovery and micro recovery. And it’s also about looking at their weeks, their months and their seasons, and how they can morph and utilize these different forms of recovery to maximize their physical performance. I really see this as an opportunity for business leaders and high performing individuals to really learn to leverage. Now, what I’m seeing is a lot of people
in things like ice baths and saunas, which I think is fantastic, but these would be considered micro forms of recovery. Our biggest and most influential form of recovery is our sleep, and that is what is considered macro recovery. So the very first place I would encourage you to start is your sleep. What are you doing in this space? Are you optimizing the quantity? Are you optimizing the quality?
are you consistently going to bed around the same time? We know that consistency with sleep is one of the best indicators and drivers of good quality sleep. If we can go to sleep within 30 to 60 minutes maximum of the same time, and this is irrespective of weekday and weekends, and wake at that same time, that is very supportive of starting to optimize our sleep. The next phase of that is looking at sleep
architecture and looking at those different sleep stages. Now, as I’ve mentioned previously, that isn’t data that we are able to just know, it does require capturing that. And one of the most accessible ways of doing that is with an aura ring. So what that will do is that will give you a breakdown of how long you have spent in each sleep stage. It will look at your light sleep, your deep sleep, and your REM sleep, and how long you’ve been awake for
well. Now there are some guardrails around amounts of time that we want to spend in each of those stages which is around 50% in our light sleep.
Jess (16:07.634)
and around 20 to 25% in our REM and our deep sleep. Now, our deep sleep, we wanna have at least one and a half hours per evening and our REM sleep ideally two hours per evening. Now, again, this is not information that we just know, but when we start to have access to data to capture that, we can then start to optimize that. What that doesn’t include is becoming obsessed with it, but it really is having another tool that we can utilize,
start to look at because sleep is a non-negotiable behaviour. We have to do it every single day. So how can we start to leverage it within the context of our lives? What can we take control of? What can we improve? And what is out of our control?
Now sleep aside, macroform of recovery. So we want to start there, but then what microforms of recovery can we have in our days and our weeks that can also help to optimize how we feel? Now, some of the microforms of recovery that elite athletes will use each day or each week will look like ice baths, will look like saunas, it might be float tanks, they might utilize something called Normatec boots,
they might look at they also might utilize flow tanks they
They also might utilize float tanks, meditation, and breath work. Now, again, I’m not saying every single elite athlete is using every single one of those strategies, but I know a lot of the leading athletes over time embed all of those recovery practices into their days and weeks. So summer daily, summer weekly, and then summer daily.
Jess (17:58.802)
and summer weekly and they morph those over the weeks and cycles of the year. So what they use in pre-season may be a little bit different to in-season and may be different again to off-season. So again in part one where we started to talk about periodization, I really see this as a massive opportunity for high-performing leaders and just high-performing individuals to start to utilize some of these practices. But again I really just want to drive the point home that if you’re not up to
your sleep, which is the most important macro form of recovery, then we’re really not…
then if we do start to use these microforms of recovery, they’re really not having the potential that they can. So with all of those items there that I’ve listed off, I think a really good reflection piece is, what do I have in my day and in my weeks that is starting to support my recovery, my physical and my cognitive recovery?
Jess (19:03.778)
Yeah.
Jess (19:15.57)
Now, the fourth point I want to touch on here today is about building mental strength. So much of what an elite athlete does comes down to their physical ability, their body, how they recover, their injuries. But what I have seen teams and athletes investing in over the years is also how can they cultivate and optimize their mental strength? How can they get through when things go wrong? Whether that’s injury,
illness, the team they’re on is underperforming, what tools in their toolkit do they have that can breed and cultivate mental resilience? Now some of the points here are a nice continuation on from point three and that might be forms of meditation, forms of breath work, being
Jess (20:15.344)
Some of these are done internally with experts that come into the team and some of these athletes are seeking people out externally. Breath work is definitely a space I am seeing a lot of athletes invest in for a number of reasons. One for the physiological and performance benefits that can come from it, but also as a practice, a way to be mentally present and a way to reflect on their performance.
as well. I believe the transference of this again is so it…
Again, I believe there’s a lot of what I’ve touched on here that can be transferred into for business leaders and high performing individuals. And once we do start to cultivate and build mental resilience and strength, it does really help to navigate leadership challenges effectively. Different dynamics within the team, that ability to take responsibility rather than pass blame when things are not maybe working out. That ability to communicate and have different forms of
points and connection pieces with various members within the team. I really do see this as a massive opportunity for business leaders and high-performing individuals to start to take expert advice and take…
start to take expert advice and be able to cultivate mental resilience. And that really leads us into 0.5, which is about searching for competitive advantage. So an elite athlete, a thing that differentiates them is making them the best at their craft and that ability to repeat that intensity. You can have some of the best athletes in the world, but if they’re inconsistent or they don’t perform when it matters most,
Jess (22:11.456)
that can start to jeopardize their career. Now, similarly, in the corporate space, actually, no, I don’t wanna say that.
Jess (22:23.714)
continuing on with the athlete bit there.
So one thing that I’ve seen work really well is when athletes who might be inconsistent with how they’re performing or an inability to show up is to start to seek out those experts that I’ve mentioned previously. Seek out that expert guidance. Work with the best in the field that they can trust, that they can build rapport with, that they believe they are achieving competitive advantage. Now I am about to start working with an AFL player.
who has sought me out for that exact reason. He wants to leave no stone unturned in his professional career. In his words, he’s closer to the end of his career than the start, but each year he likes to take on a new challenge or invest in a space that he believes is making him better than the year before. So last year or the last few years, he’s been investing in breath work, looking at different techniques, looking at techniques that are gonna optimize
his performance, his cognitive, his sleep, and now he’s looking for the next thing, which is his performance nutrition. It’s making sure that he’s optimizing every aspect of his training, his pre-season, so he can carry that through in-season. It’s also looking at ways to manipulate his intake so he’s achieving the body composition that he needs in pre-season, and then sustaining that in-season when loads drop.
are wanting to work with best in field to achieve that competitive advantage. And I really believe this should be key for any high performing business leader or anyone seeking out a high performance life. Again, this is quite, you know, while this point is quite similar to the one I was driving home before about engaging a team of experts, I really think you need to consider who you are.
Jess (24:26.06)
gaining your advice from and there are people out there who are trying to pitch And there are generalists out there that are trying to cover all bases To be honest probably working out of scope in some ways when whilst that might work for
some people, if you really do want to seek that competitive advantage, if you really truly want to leverage the power that can come from working with an expert or best in field, that is the thing that is really going to drive competitive advantage.
So I guess with having said all of that, mm.
Jess (25:46.982)
Now, I just want to go over those five points so you’re able to reflect on what might be an opportunity for yourself to take some of these lessons that I’ve learned from 10 years in professional sport and see what might be an opportunity for yourself to learn and leverage these and embed them into your life to support your high performance living. So the first point for today was around strategically using supplements. I will caveat that by saying that we
We only want to start to do that when we have the big rocks in place, when we’ve nailed our performance nutrition, no matter if we’re looking to use that for physical or cognitive performance. Are we engaging a team of experts to help us really dial in and optimize or are we using generalists who are trying to sit across too many spaces who are really not an expert in what we’re trying to achieve?
recovery methods? Are we starting with our macro recovery which is our biggest form of recovery which is our sleep and once we’ve done that are we looking at micro forms of recovery that we can use within our days or within our weeks? Are we building mental strength and mental resilience to help us navigate the tough times, the tough teams and the tough conversations? And lucky last is are we
advantage? Are we looking to work with best in field? Are we working with the cardiothoracic surgeon or the cardiologist for our heart problem or are we working with the GP? Now that example I used was specific to someone with a cardiac problem but it can be extrapolated out to anyone wanting to optimize an area of their life and making sure that they are truly working with a specialist in that space.
Jess (27:50.738)
As always, I would love you to reflect on today’s episode. I’d love you to take one or two things away. I particularly love to hear what has resonated with you and what you’re working on. I get quite a few messages on LinkedIn and also a few on Instagram. So if you wanna share them with me, please reach out. Otherwise, that brings us to the end of this week’s episode.
Jess (28:21.29)
Otherwise, that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. If in 2024, you’re looking to work smarter and not harder and truly leverage the power of non-negotiable behaviors like sleep.
non-negotiable behaviors like nutrition, sleep, and other high performing behaviors embedded into your life, then I would love to chat about your goals. I’d love to hear what your current struggles are and see if we’re a good fit to work together. If that sounds like you, check out the show notes. There’ll be some links that you can click through to get more information. Otherwise, team, we’re nearly at the end of 2023. I will be back. I am dropping an episode each week
so you won’t miss out on anything and on that note I will see you all again next week.