Leadership Is Your Sport. How Are You Training for It?

Tom Frearson
5 days ago
6 min read

Why the best leaders prepare like athletes — and why most don't.

The Athlete and the Leader

I've spent over twenty years coaching people physically.

Complete beginners who couldn't run a mile. Endurance athletes training for Ironman. Great Britain age-group competitors racing internationally. Royal Marines recruits preparing for one of the most demanding military selection processes in the world.

Every single one of them understood the same thing: performance doesn't happen by accident.

It's built through preparation. Training. Recovery. Nutrition. Sleep. Mental conditioning. Structured cycles of load and rest. Deliberate, consistent work over weeks, months, and years.

An elite athlete doesn't just show up on race day and hope for the best. They arrive having done everything in their power to be ready — physically, mentally, and emotionally.

And yet most leaders do exactly that. They show up and hope for the best.

No structure. No preparation. No attention to the fundamentals that determine whether they can think clearly, communicate well, regulate emotion, and make sound decisions under pressure.

They wouldn't dream of asking an athlete to perform that way.

But they ask it of themselves every single day.

Training in Cycles

In endurance sport, we train in cycles. Periodisation. Structured phases of building, loading, recovering, and peaking — often mapped across a four-year Olympic cycle.

Every session has a purpose. Every week builds on the last. Recovery is programmed, not optional. And the goal is always the same: arrive at the point of performance in the best possible condition to deliver.

Most leaders don't think in cycles at all.

They think day to day. Reactive. Responding to whatever lands in front of them. No structure around energy. No planned recovery. No deliberate investment in the habits that support sustained performance.

And then they wonder why they feel depleted, reactive, short-tempered, or unable to think clearly when the pressure increases.

The parallel is obvious once you see it.

Leadership is a performance discipline. And performance disciplines require preparation.

The Role of the Coach

One thing I've learned from twenty years of coaching athletes is that the coach often spends more time telling people to rest than to train.

Motivated, serious athletes don't lack drive. They lack objectivity.

They want to do more. Train harder. Push further. And left to their own judgement, they'll often overtrain, under-recover, and eventually burn out or break down — not because they're weak, but because they're too close to it to see clearly.

That's where a coach comes in. Not to motivate — but to provide perspective. To tell someone when to step back. When to recover. When the best thing they can do for their performance is nothing.

The same applies to leadership.

Leaders who operate without external perspective, without someone objective enough to challenge their patterns, hold a mirror up, and tell them when to slow down, tend to follow the same trajectory as the overtrained athlete.

They keep pushing until something gives.

That's where leadership coaching comes in. Not as a luxury. Not as a sign of weakness. As a performance tool — the same way an elite athlete uses a coach to stay sharp, balanced, and effective over the long term.

Self-leadership is the foundation of every coaching programme we run at Be Fearsome — from one-to-one executive coaching to team development and the C8 Leadership System.

Leaders Eat Last — But Not at Their Own Expense

Simon Sinek's book Leaders Eat Last draws on a tradition from the US Marines: the most senior person eats last. Everyone else is looked after first.

It's a powerful philosophy. It builds trust. It demonstrates service. It shows the team that leadership is about responsibility, not privilege.

I believe in this deeply. Service-led leadership is central to everything we do at Be Fearsome.

But there's a caveat that doesn't get talked about enough.

If the leader who eats last hasn't slept, hasn't recovered, hasn't managed their stress, hasn't fuelled properly, and hasn't looked after their own physical and mental state — they're not serving anyone well.

They're just empty.

You can't pour from an empty cup. And you can't lead effectively when your own capacity is compromised.

The Oxygen Mask Principle for Leaders

This is what I call the oxygen mask principle for leaders.

On an aircraft, the safety briefing is clear: put your own oxygen mask on first before helping others.

Not because you matter more. But because if you lose consciousness trying to help everyone else first, you become part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

Leadership works the same way.

Self-leadership is not selfish. It's foundational.

I worked with a coach once who talked about the concept of proper selfish leadership. At first, the language felt uncomfortable. Selfish and leadership don't sit well together.

But the point was simple and important: making sure you can show up as your best, looking after yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally, isn't selfish at all. It's the most responsible thing a leader can do.

A lot of people think prioritising their own energy, recovery, and wellbeing is indulgent. That real leaders sacrifice everything for the team. That putting yourself first, even briefly, is a sign of weakness.

It's the opposite.

The leader who sleeps well, moves daily, manages stress, eats properly, reflects regularly, and protects their energy isn't being indulgent. They're making sure they can actually do the job.

They're making sure that when the team needs them — when the pressure comes, when the decision matters, when someone needs support — they have the capacity to show up and deliver.

Whether you're leading at home, in the workplace, in your friendships, or in your own life, the principle holds.

You cannot consistently give what you don't have.

What Athletes Do That Leaders Can Learn From

When I work with athletes, regardless of level, certain things are non-negotiable:

Sleep is protected. Not as a luxury — as a performance tool. Cognitive function, emotional regulation, decision-making, reaction time — all of it degrades with poor sleep. Leaders face the same demands but rarely treat sleep with the same seriousness.

Nutrition is deliberate. Athletes fuel for performance. They understand that what they eat directly affects how they think, recover, and sustain energy. Most leaders eat reactively — skipping meals, grabbing whatever is convenient, running on caffeine — and then wonder why their concentration drops by mid-afternoon.

Movement is daily. Not optional. Not "if I have time." The body and the brain are connected. Physical movement improves mood, reduces stress, sharpens thinking, and builds resilience. Leaders who don't move regularly are leaving performance on the table.

Recovery is planned. Athletes don't train hard every single day. They build in recovery because they understand that adaptation happens during rest, not during load. Leaders who operate at full intensity without recovery don't get stronger. They break down — physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Mental preparation is practised. Visualisation. Breathing. Journaling. Reflection. Athletes train the mind as deliberately as the body. Leaders who don't invest in their mental preparation are relying on willpower alone — and willpower is a depleting resource.

Leadership Is a Daily Practice

The difference between an athlete and most leaders isn't talent or discipline.

It's structure.

Athletes have coaches, programmes, and accountability. They train deliberately. They measure progress. They treat their body and mind as tools that require maintenance.

Most leaders have none of that.

They rely on experience, instinct, and endurance — and over time, that erodes. Not dramatically. Quietly. Gradually. Until the moment they need to perform and realise they don't have the capacity.

Self-leadership is the foundation of everything else. It's not a nice-to-have. It's not wellness for the sake of it. It's the baseline that determines whether you can lead others effectively, consistently, and sustainably.

If leadership is your sport — and it is — then the question is simple:

How are you training for it?

The Starting Point

You don't need to overhaul everything overnight.

Start with one thing.

Protect your sleep for a week. Move every day, even for fifteen minutes. Drink enough water. Write three lines in a journal before bed. Take five minutes of deliberate breathing before your first meeting.

Small, consistent actions compound. That's how athletes build performance. That's how leaders build capacity.

Leadership is not just what you do when the pressure arrives.

It's everything you did before that moment to make sure you were ready.