Mike Andes (landscapebusinesscourse.com) uses his personal trail-running/hiking experience to draw an extended analogy: lactic-acid buildup in steep climbs mirrors emotional/relational/physical strain in business. He argues for a HIIT-like approach to work—periods of very intense, focused effort followed by deliberate breaks—to maximize progress while avoiding burnout. Practical advice includes choosing an intensity cadence that fits your life, scheduling recovery (family, spiritual time, rest), and returning to high-intensity phases to continue growth.
Chapters
Hey, everyone, Mike Andes here, landscapebusinesscourse.com I'm on a hike here today. It's a Saturday. I wanted to talk to you about something that I was thinking about as I was running up. And this hike I do, I've been doing, I think, for the last five weekends, every single week, trying to beat my time coming up. But I was thinking about the correlation between business and even running a trail like this, and how when you're running up a trail like this, the biggest thing is just the buildup of lactic acid in your legs, primarily your calves, because it's a pretty steep incline when I come up. And I think in business it's the same way. And that is as you're pushing yourself, you're really trying to go up the steep mountain of building a business, which is no easy task. There's the biggest thing you challenge a lot of times you face is the buildup of lactic acid. And you know, mentally, you know you're ready to go. You can keep pushing through, you can keep grinding, keep hustling. And when I come running up this mountain, it's not necessarily that I'm out of breath or that like I'm. My heart's pounding. It is a buildup of lactic acid. And I think in our business, sometimes we have the motivation, we have the desire to build a big business, we have the wherewithal that is, and we're motivated, we're ready to go, we want to get to the top of the mountain, we want to build a great business. But a lot of times in pushing ourselves, we develop lactic acid buildup, whether it be in our relationships, whether it be physically, we don't sleep enough, we don't have the support from our team, we don't lead well. And all that lactic acid buildup can be very detrimental to the body physically and it can prevent. It can actually cause a lot of damage if you don't allow that lactic acid to be released, I. E. Stop running up the hill and take a break, walk a little bit. It's really what is behind high intensity interval training, or hiit, which is a type of exercise where you basically go really, really hard and then you take a break. You go really, really hard, then you take a break. And usually it's like 30 second intervals or one minute intervals of really intense exercise followed by short periods of break. And I feel like that's. In my opinion, one of the best ways to run a business is high intensity. Go all in, work hard, but then make sure. You have those periods of time where you do take a break and you do allow for that lactic acid buildup to be released. And I feel like it's almost detrimental to try to do something in between. For example, the most caloric burning exercise is when you do high intensity interval training instead of just doing the same exercise at a low intensity for a long period of time. Check out this view. You see that? It's awesome.
But you can do low intensity interval training, you know, just for example, jogging or doing elliptical for hours and hours, but not get the same impact or the same efficacy as doing in shorter periods of time. But high intensity. And I think when we look at business, a lot of times we lead. What leads to burnout is one of two things, in my opinion. One, we go for long periods of time with low intensity and we don't actually see a whole lot of results. We don't actually get up the mountain very much because we're on, you know, a treadmill with hardly any incline. We don't actually get very far or we're going up a steep incline, steep mountain. We're getting lactic acid buildup in our personal, in our health, in our spiritual lives. And we never allow it to be released. And so I think there's a medium in between, and that's high intensity interval training. When it comes to business, that is okay, if I'm going to work Monday through Friday, I might work 12, 14 hours a week, 1214 hours a day. But I'm going to make sure that Saturday I get outside, I take a drive, I take a run, I make sure I have spiritual time, make sure I have prayer, make sure I have family time. Whatever it is that's going to allow you to release the lactic acid buildup, allow you to release some of that pressure that gets build up throughout the day. But in that buildup and that 80 hours of working, you might 70 hours of work that you might get done in that week, you're getting a lot accomplished. So for some people and this thing, it's about being self aware. For some people, they would much rather work, you know, 16 hours in one day and do that three times a week. They'd rather do that than work five or six hours a day, seven days a week. You've got to figure out what cadence your exercise from a business standpoint, what works for you. I think the thing that I find most ineffective is someone that doesn't go high intensity interval training, I. E. Low intensity. Like they're always just doing the same Thing in their business, there's no challenge, there's no change, there's no progression, there's no steep incline for them to get up to. Because at the start, at the top of steep inclines, pushing yourself in a little bit of lactic acid buildup is views like this. I'm not going to go running along the, you know, a flat plane for long periods of time, for hours and hours and get to the top and see something like this without a little bit of pain, without a little bit of high intensity, without a little lactic acid buildup, without a little bit of imbalance. I'm never gonna get lactic acid buildup running 10 miles on a flat plane. My calves will never burn, my legs will never get weak. I might get out of breath, but I'm not going to get lactic acid buildup. And so when you're building a business, it's many times either a, when, when you plateaued and be like, oh, this is great, I've plateaued, you know, I've got my business, I start getting comfortable. And without that lactic acid buildup, you start stop challenging yourself, your muscles stop growing because you've reached a season of plateau and your business can do the same thing. You stop challenging yourself, you stop pushing yourself, you stop trying to achieve something more. Stop trying to improve the systems in your business, making it more profitable, hiring people that are better than you, improving the processes that you have in your company, making it more efficient. When you stop doing that, the muscles are to actually hypertrophy actually starts to break down because it hasn't had that lactic acid buildup, that lactic acid to push it to become bigger and larger and stronger. So I encourage you today, high intensity interval training works for your physical body. I think when it comes to your business, you've got to be self aware enough to know what level of intensity do I need to maximize the build to maximize the growth of my mental, physical and my business muscles? I think it's important. I think that type of analogy will help you and your business. If you're burning out, take a break. If you're burning out, your muscles are hurting physically. In your personal life, there's things that are hurting and coming under pressure. You might need to take a break for a little bit, but get right back into it, sit, see progress and then start setting boundaries of when you're going to take a break and when you're going to go really after and go after the inclines because the views at the top are worth it. I'm Mike Andes. We'll see you next time.
