Lift & Lead – A Group of Active Professionals Challenge Themselves at Work and in Life

Lift & Lead is a group of 40-something women whose aim is to support each other in well-being and in life. The group members have in common an active lifestyle that consists of demanding expert work, entrepreneurship, family life, and the many roles of being a woman. They are united by a desire to improve, feel well, and live a balanced life that fits one’s individual needs. Among all this, exercise is not an afterthought, but a key part of life – a resource that helps them cope and improve. In their daily life, the women aim to maintain a balance between doing and resting – to ensure good energy and well-being in the long run.

We here at Firstbeat activated the Firstbeat Life service for these ladies for 6 months. The goal was to allow them to monitor their recovery and the effect of different workouts and other stress factors – to ensure that the overall load is in balance with recovery. In addition to personal coaching discussions, the idea was to share experiences as a group. In January, we all had a Teams call together, where the following themes and challenges were raised: how to keep things running smoothly in the daily hustle, how to make sure I don’t overdo it in my workouts, and how to know when to ease up if the load is getting too heavy.

Physical fitness a strength – overall load a concern

Lift & Lead Team. Upper row: Suvi Widgren, Kerttu Pylvänäinen, Anu Manner, Hanne-Mari Miskala, Henna Kautto. Bottom row: Maru Hautala, Saija Sunnari. Picture: Joonas Härmä.

In our group call, we also discussed learnings from the 1st round of measurements, conducted over the Christmas week. Firstbeat’s Fitness Level test showed that all women were physically in good or excellent condition (measured as VO2max). The measured days included plenty of physical activity from the viewpoint of positive health effects – the average physical activity score was 70/100, even if the initial measurements were made over the holidays, when normal exercise routines were on a break. Follow-up measurements have shown that exercise has an important role in these ladies’ lives – the physical activity score has been close to 100/100 on most days (reachable with about 60 mins of aerobic exercise).

The biggest challenge for these busy entrepreneurs is sleep. The measurements have shown either delayed recovery during early sleep or fragmented recovery throughout the sleep period. On the positive side, the group’s average sleep score (a moderate 62/100) is better than the average in the Firstbeat database, but there have also been quite a few stressful days, after which sleep recovery has been poor. We’ve discussed this and it has been good to see that the group has taken the matter to heart. The initial sleep results prompted the women to pay more attention to their evening routines and other habits, and many have been able to improve their sleep result. Life is typically somewhat cyclical – we cannot expect perfect recovery or sleep all the time – but sufficient, restorative sleep is a key starting point and something to aim for if you want to maintain good performance and well-being.

In our personal discussions, we have taken a deeper dive into daily rhythms and timetables, including the timing of exercise. The biggest insight (and challenge) has been that when the schedule is full and the overall load increases, for any reason, the best course of action might well be to ease off on the hard exercise, instead of push through with the original training plan. Easy exercise is an important part of the overall plan, and when the overall load is heavy, it’s often a much better option than high-intensity exercise.

Heavy overall load – time to step on the brakes

Below, an example of the effect of excessive overall load. In this measurement, recovery during sleep was poor and the change to her previous measurement, conducted about a month earlier, was significant. In the background were work-related deadlines and challenges, a lot of new things to learn, and family-related concerns – and when this was followed by a hard CrossFit session in the evening, the body stayed wired, with heart rate and stress levels very elevated during sleep. This repeated also during the following night and acted as a valuable wakeup call – it was time to step on the brakes and find a way to ease the overall load.

Fig 1. Several separate stress factors in life, on top of the normal demands, followed by a hard evening workout, caused the body to stay wired during sleep (indicated by the red stress bars) and recovery was poor.

Different days cause different physiological responses

The other example illustrates the effect of 2 different days and exercise sessions on this woman’s recovery during the same week. This simply acts a reminder that we can accept challenging and even overloading days as part of life occasionally, as long as we also remember to slow down and take it easy. Life is not meant to be ”all green”, but to stay well in the long run, it also shouldn’t be “all red”.

Fig. 2a. Busy day, driving in bad conditions, hard exercise, followed by a crime drama on TV. The body ”stayed on” during sleep and recovery was fragmented. Firstbeat stress and recovery balance score was 31/100 and sleep score was 51/100.

Fig. 2b. Easy exercise before noon and a relaxing day-off showed that the body’s capacity to recover is good! Firstbeat’s stress and recovery balance score was 91/100 and sleep score was 69/100.

Important insights to daily life

Lift & Lead Team. Picture: Joonas Härmä

It has been good to see how committed to minding their own well-being, performance and recovery these women are, but with a healthy dose of humor, without excessive perfectionism. They understand that during the busiest years in life (with jobs, responsibilities, kids, hobbies…), the pace is at times a bit furious, but also that recovery is necessary – and that sometimes you need to slow down for a while to allow recovery to happen. Data can continue to provide valuable insights about how to tune up your daily activities and rhythms to be as sustainable as possible, as long as it’s done together with honest self-reflection and learning to listen to your mind and your body. To summarize, below a few comments directly from the Lift & Lead ladies:

”Data confirmed to me that I’m moving in the right direction – and that my body has coped with a rather demanding period in life really well.” -Maru-

”Even my not-so-good results have allowed me to find some positives that I can lean on going forward, helping me see that I’m doing a lot of things right.” -Henna-

”Even if my work rhythm is very irregular and schedules vary a lot from day to day, it was good to see that I get high-quality recovery during sleep.” -Saija-

”Little by little, I’ve learned to say no to things that cause me a lot of mental stress.” -Suvi-