I coach CEOs and NFL officials and what sets them apart is their obsession with improvement

• Duane Carlisle trains CEOs and NFL officials. He is a former coach for the San Francisco 49ers.
• He said high-achieving individuals focus on improvement and are obsessed with data.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Duane Carlisle, a performance coach based in San Jose, California, who trains some of the most powerful people in sports and business — from NFL officials to CEOs. He's the former head strength-and-conditioning coach for the San Francisco 49ers. His clients, many of whom require him to sign nondisclosure agreements, include leaders such as Sasan Goodarzi, the CEO of Intuit. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I work with CEOs, high-profile executives, and NFL officials as a high-performance coach. These people have to be sharp at all times, and being physically fit contributes to that — making them alert, focused, and resilient.

My goal is to get them to achieve what they didn't think was physically possible.

I have about seven clients at the moment, and I go to each of their home gyms about three times a week to coach them. In fact, I've designed many of my clients' home gyms for them.

When we're working out, they turn their phones off or leave them in another room. Our training time is 100% their time and they're completely focused on their physical goals.

For them, it's all about exceeding the status quo. In helping them do that physically, I've learned a few things about how they operate.

The first thing is that these people are incredibly driven; they're high achievers. I liken them to professional athletes. Training them isn't any different, and a big part of that is efficiency.

They want to make every second count; time is paramount. So, my training sessions maximize effort. We're never waiting or resting. If one muscle group is recovering, another is getting warmed up or pushed to maximum effort. Not a minute is wasted. Their time is extremely valuable, so they make sure to be efficient with it.

If you want to train like a CEO or like someone from the NFL, set a target you want to achieve and create a balanced workout plan that maximizes your time.

Second, these CEOs and executives are obsessed with improvement. At the end of the day, that's what they want. And to do that, they have to stretch themselves. It's no different from business, where we're constantly assessing, reassessing, reevaluating, and adapting so we hit the target.

I've learned a lot from my clients over my decades of coaching. One of my former clients, Eric Yuan, the CEO of Zoom, told me back in 2017 that success is all about making people happy. He told me to that you'll succeed if you focus on helping your customers achieve what they want. Sasan Goodarzi, the CEO of Intuit, has given me similar insight — put the needs of my customers, or clients, first.

It's an incredible gift getting to learn from some of the brightest minds in business.

Lastly, high-performing individuals focus on metrics and data. Numbers are important. Like business metrics, they follow trends in their personal records, body composition, fat loss, and strength gains. They track everything. It's super important to them.

When we're not training together, they're supplementing their program with workouts I design for them. Nearly all my clients train six days a week.

They're also always committed to doing things to the best of their ability. They walk in and say, "Coach, what do you got for me?" They ask, "Am I doing this right? Is my form good?" It's about being the best possible.