[00:00] What if I told you that Lionel Messi’s secret to greatness isn’t his skill. It’s not his work ethic, but it’s actually a meticulously planned day that includes everything from power naps to precise meal plans. Welcome to another episode of success for the athletic minded man. Real talk on harnessing your athletic drive for clarity, consistency, and focus in business and life.

[00:26] This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr. and today I’m bringing you a solo episode. We’re talking about. The high performance life that you know is possible for you and what that unlocks in terms of your potential. Not just in business, not just in your career, but in every area of your life. Like you’ve had high performance days.

[00:46] You’ve had those days where you get a lot done, you close deals, you crush projects. You’re super productive. You feel like you move the needle in your life. That’s what we’re trying to replicate here. How do we replicate that at a higher level? Level, you know, what’s required, right? What is required for you is a high performance plan, a high performance routine, if you want to unlock that potential, listen, I’m going to reference some athletes in this episode.

[01:14] Some world class athletes. I just mentioned one Lionel Messi, whether you’re Lionel Messi or you’re you or me performances, performance, whether it’s soccer, golf, wrestling, sales, leadership, team meetings, your productivity. Getting stuff done, your habits, your routine will dictate your performance, period, full stop.

[01:38] You know, Lionel Messi, I talk about his skill and his work ethic, not being the secrets to his success. Like, those are only possible because of his routines. It starts with the habits, it starts with the routines. Yeah. I mean, you ever wonder how the Michael Phelps is of the world? I guess there’s only one of him, right?

[01:57] The Michael Phelps is in Taylor, Brian James. You ever wonder how those guys like, how do they push their bodies to the limit and squeeze out every ounce of potential and possibility while you struggle to get to the gym once a week or lose that 10 pounds or, you know, stay focused long enough to get that big project completed.

[02:15] They have systems in place. They have routines in place. And if you stick around the end of this episode, I’m going to give you a very clear, actionable plan, something you can do to actually map out the specific routine that you need for your life. Complete with everything customized for you. Exactly what your life is like, what your work is, the, the, what your schedule is, what your family life is like, what your health and routine habits are, like whatever you need, I’m going to give you a way to have that.

[02:49] Crystal clear mapped out for you. And the other thing I’m going to give you is four samples of what the high performance day for you could look like. Let me give you four examples, but I’m also going to show you how to create it. And it is going to take you about 30 seconds. To do this. All right. The four I’m going to give you, the four examples I’m going to give you in the action plan are number one for the morning person, number two for the not morning person, number three for the entrepreneur and number four for the executive, right?

[03:16] So I’m going to give you those pre baked high performance routines for you. Then I’m going to show you how in 30 seconds or less you can create your own. So let’s zoom out just a second here. I’ve been studying this stuff for a long time. You know, I’ve read the books, done countless interviews, approaching 500 interviews, which is mind blowing here on my podcast.

[03:39] You know, my experience as an all American wrestler, I have friends, I’m friends with several sports psychologists. It’s Tom Perrin being one of them. He’s my business partner and Tom, Dr. Perrin is, he’s worked with Gino Ariema, who’s, if you don’t know that name, he’s on kind of the Mount Rushmore of coaches.

[03:56] He’s won 11 national championships, which I believe is the same number as John Wooden, but 11 national championships with UConn women’s basketball. He’s worked with five time NCAA and five time MLS championship coach. In soccer, Bruce Arena, he’s worked at the women’s world cup team when they won the women’s national team, won the world cup on and on.

[04:16] I could keep going, you know, Detroit Bistons, NHL head coaches on and on. I can tell you, I get to live and breathe with these kinds of people. And I’ve gotten to do it for years. I’ve gotten to train at the Olympic training center. I’m friends with Olympians. I’m friends with Olympic gold medalists. Like I’ve got to live and breathe this stuff for so many years.

[04:33] I was an NCAA division one head coach. So I’ve gotten to, to ingest this stuff and breathe this stuff and live this stuff. And then I also did my research to put this episode together. So what I’m going to give you right now are six different categories, six things that you have to think about when putting together your own high performance.

[04:52] Peak performance routine that you’ll need in order to structure your day like an elite athlete and to perform at your best. Number one, first and foremost, we have to zoom out and have a vision for our lives. We have to have clear goals. If you don’t have that, you have to stop right here and go over to jimharshawjr.com/RYP stands for reveal your path. That’s the name of my coaching program. I give you in five episodes. For free. I lay the entire program out for you. All right. Episode 439. That’s part one of five. And every other episode for the next five eps. Next 10 episodes, every other episode. So it’s five episodes, 439, 441, 443, 445, 447.

[05:38] Okay, so those are the five episodes. That you’re going to need to listen to. I would highly recommend you listen to those. You don’t actually have to stop this episode, but you do have to get very clear on what the vision is for your life. Because if you, if you don’t have that, right, you’re just putting together a routine for what you don’t really know, right?

[05:58] Is athletes, the, you know, LeBron James and Michael Phelps and Lionel Messi’s of the world. I mean, it’s very clear what they, their, their, what their vision is, right? It’s very clear what success is in sports. We have that in the real world. We don’t, it can look like a hundred different things, right? We’ve got to get very clear on what that looks like.

[06:16] And I’ll be honest, it’s hard to do by yourself. You do so much better with, with somebody outside of your own head. That’s why we do what we do, which is, which is. Personal performance coaching, executive life coaching for motivated professionals, motivated men, uh, who want to get clear on what the next version of their life looks like.

[06:35] Get clear on that vision, set clear goals. So that’s number one. I told you there were six. Okay. Number one, get clear on your vision and your goals for your life. Quick interruption. If you like what you’re hearing here and you want to learn how you can implement this into your life, just go to jimharshawjr.com/apply to see how you can get a free one on one coaching session with me, that’s jimharshawjr.com/apply. Now back to the show. Number two. All right. We’re going to get started to get granular here. Your morning routine. Has to be a very clear morning routine. Not everybody’s a morning person.

[07:11] I get that. I know that. Listen, I wasn’t a morning person. As a matter of fact, I had a DNA test done way back in like one of the first 100 episodes where this company. You know, gave it to me for free because I had them on the podcast to reveal my results, but they sent me the DNA tests. I sent them back to my DNA.

[07:30] I think it was a cheek swab and sent it back and they revealed to me, listen, I don’t know how legit this stuff is, but, um, But what they revealed was that I’m not a morning person and they nailed it. Actually, they nailed quite a bit of things, uh, and I’m not a morning person and I shouldn’t be working out in the morning.

[07:47] Ideally. It’s more like a seven, eight o’clock kind of workout as opposed to like a 5am workout, but I do five, 530am workouts most days. But these guys, These world class performers, as you re, you know, research their routines. And I, like I said, I did a ton of research before this episode, specifically on Michael Phelps, Lionel Messi and LeBron James and their morning routines, their daily routines.

[08:12] But listen, you could have copied and pasted any of those for any of the world class athletes you’ve heard on my, my podcast or any that you, you see on TV. Early morning routines. There’s an importance of waking up at a consistent time doing honestly, most of the time, it’s something physical starting out with, with hydration and then moving into something physical.

[08:33] Oftentimes it’s mental preparation that’ll happen in the morning, but there’s usually some kind of physical component. All right. It’s, it’s a quiet time when you can get stuff done for me. When I was competing, when I was wrestling, I would do morning workouts. I would wake up, I would drink water. I would have a quick snack, usually just a granola bar or something like that.

[08:54] And then I would do workouts, usually either by myself. These are additional workouts above and beyond the scheduled practices, but I would do. Some kind of workout either on the mats with a friend, but oftentimes it was in the gym, in the weight room, or one of my coaches would put me through a ridiculous workout.

[09:09] It was painful. I’m going to relive it here for just a quick second, but me and my buddy Alex would go in at about 6am And it was a brutal workout. We would go into the basketball arena and we would sprint around the, the concourse of the basketball arena. So we would do two sprints around there and then we’d take a 45 pound plate.

[09:28] And he would put us through this, this plate routine. It was just this kind of thing about like a, like a kettlebell circuit. And it was grinding. It was just so grueling. It was like a grind. And then we do the sprints again, and then back to the weights and then sprints and weights and sprints and weights until you just grind us down to, uh, to a pulp.

[09:44] It was awesome though. It was, it was part of my morning routine and something we did and made us mentally tougher, made me mentally tougher and Alex as well. And this is a critical part of your day. What is your. Morning routine. What does it look like? Okay. Is it planned? Is it structured? Do you have it dialed in?

[10:01] Do you want to perform like a world class athlete? Do you want to perform at your best, right? Whether it’s in sports, whether it’s in business or any other area of your life, you have to have a specific plan lined up. Okay. And that morning routine starts the night before, by the way, right? If your morning routine is going to be working out or hydration, get that stuff ready the night before.

[10:23] All right, so that’s number two. I told you there are six things. Number one is first you have to get clear on that vision and the goals for your life. Number two is that very clear morning routine. Number three is blocking your day, right? When you look at Michael Phelps, Lionel Messi, LeBron James, they have very clear training blocks, very clear work blocks.

[10:45] It’s not haphazard. It’s very scheduled. Michael Phelps, for example, he would split his training into two sessions. He would spend five to six hours in the pool every day. And by the way, he swam about 13 kilometers a day, six or seven days a week, which is absurd. This was his routine, right? He had his day.

[11:05] Planned. There were blocks. It wasn’t just kind of, I’ll get to this when I get to this or I’ll get to that when I get to that. Very clear, very structured. And it’s the same with all these guys. There’s a very clear plan, a very clear structure in all of their days, and it should be the same way with you.

[11:20] When are you most focused? When are you best in meetings? Um, for me, I’m most focused in the morning. So I try to protect those and I’m best in meetings. After my day gets going, my brain is engaged. I’ve had some conversations and then later in the day, I’m just much more primed to have quality coaching sessions and meetings, and so I, I plan my day accordingly when I was in college.

[11:44] It has that built in, you go to college, you go to class and then you have practice and somebody else is blocking your day for you, essentially, and me as an entrepreneur, I do this now and I’m getting better at this. I’m reading books on it. I’m learning more about it and I’m structuring my day. I’m honing in more and more constantly iterating my day to make sure I have the right blocks in the right places.

[12:06] What does that look like for you? I’ve done that work for me. What does that look like? That’s number three, training and work blocks, like very specific blocked time for certain things that you’ll do. Tasks that you do that take a certain amount of energy, a certain type of energy. And if you have to switch from that to a totally different one, it just takes more bandwidth to do that.

[12:28] So batch your tasks and focus on when you’re best in certain, um, certain times of day. All right. Number four is around, you know, nutrition and hydration. Nutrition. Is this new to you? No, of course not. But you have to dial in your nutrition. You have to dial in your hydration. Like if you’re running out of steam at certain times of day, why is that happening?

[12:49] Are you more focused after you eat certain meals? Well then, why not replicate that? You’re not going to be Michael Phelps. Michael Phelps, he ate 8 to 10, 000 calories a day. 8 to 10, 000 calories a day. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know if I’d be walking very much after eating 8 to 10, 000 calories a day.

[13:07] You have to figure out what that looks like for you, right? The right mix of protein, carbohydrates, healthy fats. What times of day are you eating? For me, I eat very light in the morning. Sometimes a lot of times I’ll do intermittent fasting and moving away from that. Again, constantly iterating my routines, moving away from intermittent fasting and more towards just a very light, high protein breakfast after a workout.

[13:33] It’s hard boiled egg, glass of chocolate milk to recover. And then I go about my day. What does that look like for you? What are the optimum meal times for you? Do you think LeBron James wakes up and eats Doritos and gummy worms? Of course not. Like we, I mean, we know this. Why do you put this stuff in your body?

[13:51] We get to choose what we put on our body. I mean, LeBron, he prioritizes, as I’ve read was a healthy diet, obviously a lot of protein in the morning, egg whites, fruit in the morning, high protein foods in the morning, gluten free pancakes, like what are you putting into your body? You know, I just finished lunch myself now.

[14:13] And I had a salad. I make it very easy for myself to stay in that routine, to eat healthy food. So I can come back, record a podcast episode for you and feel good, feel light, feel high energy. When I was in college, I remember training in college. It was my third year, second or third, I think it was my third year in college.

[14:32] And I was in the weight room and I looked over at my strength coach, Derek. I’m like, Derek, I’m about to pass out. And I sat down and got really lightheaded and I was just spent. And this was right around the time when I had really started dialing up my training to even higher and higher levels. And I was pushing myself harder.

[14:52] I was doing more of these morning workouts and he started asking me about my diet and. My diet was terrible. I told him what I would eat. It was like no hardly any fruits and vegetables. And he’s like, Jim, no wonder like your diet is a mess. And so from then on, I started eating salads, started prioritizing fruits.

[15:10] I hated eating salads. I eat salads every day now. I hated eating salads, but like, You got to do the hard thing. You got to, if you don’t want to do it, but it’s going to get you to where you want to go. Like it’s a choice. You get to choose. You get to choose. And, and for me, I made that choice. I changed my diet and it changed everything within a few days.

[15:28] I felt so much better, but this, this sort of. Crash and burn moment that had been building for months. I could feel it coming for months and slowly just wearing my body down with extra workouts, you know, extra lifting, extra conditioning, regular workouts with the team and obviously school on top of that and I crashed and burned and he helped me, you know, this is an example of having somebody outside of you who can help you.

[15:53] And this is what my strength coach did. And I’m ever, ever grateful for that. So what does that look like for you? Right? If you really want to learn some specifics on dialing in your routines, your nutrition, your hydration, go back and listen to episode 450 with Anthony Balduzzi. Dr. Balduzzi was fantastic.

[16:11] He actually came into my inner circle. With my clients, with the Pathfinders, we call them who were in the Reveal Your Path coaching program. And he did a private session for us and it was absolutely phenomenal. The, the information that he gave us was just so cool. So amazing. We actually broke it down into a course inside of our online community.

[16:29] We have a community on the school platform. And it’s, we broke that down into a class, but you can actually get access to the podcast episode, which doesn’t go quite as in depth and Not as personalized, but really, really phenomenal, phenomenal episode. There’s so much good stuff in there. Episode 450 about how you can dial in your diet, your nutrition and your hydration.

[16:49] Okay. So I told you there are six things that was number four. So number one was having a vision in your goals. Uh, number two, your morning routine. Number three, training and work blocks. Number four, nutrition and hydration. And number five is recovery and rest. This was fascinating to learn about the recovery and rest that these guys work on.

[17:10] It’s very clear that this is part of their routines. And I don’t know about you. Is it, is it part of your routine? Right. As I read this and think about this, I could do more of this. I try to get good sleep and I usually get over seven hours of sleep, but, but not always. I don’t have a good consistent mindfulness practice, but I know that would be helpful for me.

[17:31] So Michael Phelps was doing ice baths before ice baths were cool, right? I mean, everybody’s on, if you got an ice bath and you have Instagram, you’re posting your ice bath on Instagram. Apparently everybody does that now. And you know, Michael Phelps was doing this before they were cool. Obviously stretching.

[17:46] I did a lot of massages and focused on getting adequate sleep. I mean, LeBron James, cryotherapy, a lot of stretching, a lot of massage, very focused on sleep, uh, messy and LeBron both had it have in their morning or their, their daily routines, naps, taking naps. I mean, this is what they need. This is what their body needs.

[18:04] And you might be thinking to yourself, yeah, but they were physically training. They were physical athletes doing physical things. I’m in an office all day. I’m sitting at a desk. It doesn’t matter. You still have to focus on your recovery as well. Right. We get ground down by the mental stress that we have.

[18:24] Sometimes I look down at my, I’ve got a Garmin watch and sometimes it’ll tell me that I’m stressed. I’m like, I’m just sitting here. It tells me to slow down and breathe and relax. Like you relax. I got work to do, you know, but it’s like, we’ve got to do this too. We’ve got work to do. If we want to be our best.

[18:39] We have to slow down, make sure we’re getting enough sleep. Do your recovery mindfulness practices. One of my mindfulness practices that I do do every day is, is I write in a journal, very simple routine that I do in the morning, gratitude, as well as sort of how I’m going to win the day today, as well as some affirmation.

[18:59] So I’m doing a mindfulness practice in that sense, and it is a critical, critical, crucial step for me. If I want to be the best version of myself. Um, when I was in college, you know, my sleep habits were different than most people. My sleep habits were going to bed earlier because I was waking up earlier.

[19:16] Nowadays for my sleep and my nighttime routine actually gets kind of ridiculous some nights. So I wear an eye mask every night just to make sure it’s plenty dark. And then I started using nasal strips. These things are like amazing. I’ve broken my nose from wrestling. So my, I don’t breathe quite as well out of my nose as I normally should, but these nasal strips help.

[19:36] Oh, they’re amazing. And that helps me breathe out of my nose as opposed to my mouth. If you read up on mouth breathing versus nasal breathing, it is absolutely incredible. How much more oxygen you get into your, into your body by breathing through your nose, which is kind of counterintuitive. You think it’s like a longer, Journey for air to go through your nose and through your mouth, but it works.

[19:55] Breathing through your nose is actually much more efficient and more effective for multiple reasons. I also have used mouth tape. I don’t use it every night, but I use mouth tape. You might’ve seen these ads or kind of a social media craze a year or two ago. They sell mouth tape. I just use like a surgical tape and I’ll tape my mouth shut.

[20:12] If I want to make sure I’m breathing through my nose and not my mouth. The other thing, the last thing is earplugs. So it’s ridiculous when I go all in, it’s not, it’s maybe one night a week that I do all, all of these actually probably less than that, but I’m always wearing the eye mask, almost always doing the nasal strips, sometimes doing the earplugs or the mouth tape, but sometimes I go all in, I’m like, I’m like.

[20:31] Covering my eyes, ears are plugged, nose is open from the nasal strips and my mouth is taped shut. So I like, like, I can’t hear anything. I can’t see anything. It is just, I’m locked in and ready for sleep. I’m in full sleep mode and it works. It works. It helps me get better sleep. So you should consider what is going to work for you as well.

[20:52] Recovery is such a critical piece. Recovery and rest for you to show up at your sales presentation, be patient for your kids, get your workout done, get the benefits from your workout. All of this stuff is so important for you for performance. All right. That’s number five. I’m going to give you the last one here, number six, and then I’m going to give you a actionable, practical tactic that you can use, it’ll take you 30 seconds or less.

[21:18] To create your own daily high performance routine. Okay. Number six is this mindset and motivation, mindset and motivation work. Like, are you doing this work? Vince Pesente, who I’m, I’ve already completed the interview. We’re going to publish the podcast episode soon. An Olympian in speed skiing. Wait until you hear this interview.

[21:44] This was a mind blowing interview and I can’t wait to publish this thing. But he has a mindset routine. He actually reveals his whole mindset routine, how he went from recreational skier to. One of the best in the world and as an Olympian four years later in speed skiing, not speed skating, speed skiing, fascinating interview, but he does mindset work.

[22:07] He did mindset work and he still does it. Ruben Gonzalez, who I’ve had on the podcast multiple times, he’s become a good friend. He talks about mindset work. He actually does mindset work. As a matter of fact, his mindset coach who he’s working with now referred him to me. Now he and I are actually doing some work together as well on my mindset.

[22:23] Like I’m still working on this stuff. Michael Chandler. If you know his name, he’s been on the podcast multiple times. He was scheduled to fight Conor McGregor and McGregor backed out, got injured. Just recently here, but Michael Chandler has done the work. He does the work, does the mindset work. That’s a commonality between all these high performers.

[22:44] Dr. Nate Zinser, again, who I’ve had on the podcast. He was the performance coach, director of performance at West Point for 30 years, 30 some years. He’s worked with world class athletes. He worked with. Eli Manning, when he won the Super Bowl MVP, both times. LeBron, you’ve seen LeBron James meditating during timeouts.

[23:03] This is mindset work. He’s grounding himself. Could you find yourself meditating in between meetings? Michael Phelps would visualize and he had a mindset coach. Actually, Bob Bowman, his coach, was a really good mindset coach and had him doing visualization. Like, are you doing this? I do. I do visualization.

[23:20] It’s so critical. It’s so critical. I, when I was competing in college, I had a mindset audio that my chiropractor actually created for me. And now I have new ones. Now I have new mindset audios as well. So this is absolutely critical. So I’m going to run through these again, real quick, all six. Then I’m going to give you some practical.

[23:37] Tactical things here. Number one, you gotta have a vision and clear goals. Number two, you gotta have a dialed in morning routine. Number three, training and work blocks, blocks of time when you’re doing focus work, focusing on certain tasks. Number four, nutrition and hydration. Number five, recovery and rest.

[23:55] Number six, mindset and motivation. Now I’m going to wrap up with this. Does any of this surprise you? Right? Would you think, boy, I really thought that Michael Phelps would not have a good morning routine. I really thought he would eat a lot of junk food. Maybe he actually had to pack the calories in for a guy like him.

[24:10] But you hear about these hundred mile races and they got to just get calories in any way they can. But. He had a specific eating routine. Like what is your eating routine? Does that support your vision and your goals? When my research, what if I came across your morning routine, your daily routine? What if I found it on a blog post somewhere or an interview with you, where you talked about your routines for your day?

[24:31] Would it be dialed in? Would the results that you want to get match your routines? I’m going to ask you again, do the results that you want to get match the routines and habits and structure of your day? If not, you’ve got work to do. I’m going to give you four samples, four sample routines in the action plan.

[24:52] So grab that. Here’s your 30 second or less way to go about getting your own daily routine dialed in. I have trained. My AI, if you’ve heard me talking about this in recent episodes, if you go to jimharshawjr.com/action, put in your email, I’m going to send you a link. It’s going to give you access to coach Jim AI.

[25:10] It’ll give you a link, click on that link. It’ll take you to a page. You’ll be able to find the AI it’s trained in my program. It’s trained by philosophies and it is trained in everything that I just talked to you about here today. You’re going to go in there. And you’re going to tell it about yourself, how old you are, the job that you do, your typical daily schedule, your family, your health desires, your business desires and outcomes that you’re looking for.

[25:35] What are the goals you have for your life and the personal goals, professional goals? What’s the vision that you have for your life? Tell them what is going on in your life right now. What are the challenges and struggles you have and say, create my high performance routine and it will do that for you.

[25:53] All right. I can’t do your pushups for you, but I tell you what coach Jim AI can get pretty darn close to doing it for you. All right. I’m going to create that more than that routine for you. The, I shouldn’t say I, I is not me. That’s actually, this is a robot. This is fake. It’s not a human behind there. All right.

[26:10] By the way, you know, disclaimer. Consult with your doctor first before you do anything that my AI recommends, but it is going to give you some great output there. So I recommend checking that out. Take action on this. Don’t just let this go in one ear out the other. Take action. Good luck.

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