FITTEST MAN UNDER 50: MARK FLEISCHMAN
DERMATOLOGY & SKIN CANCER CENTER
To all those who sweated, grunted, groaned or moaned their way to better final health scores in the Fittest Execs and Fittest Companies Challenge, Mark Fleischman has your number: It’s 150. As in his final score in the 2011–12 Challenge. That made him the only one of 211 competitors to walk away with a perfect reading.
“I think it’s very humbling, really,” he said of the top score. “It’s a goal that you really strive for, but never expect to be able to attain.” As he noted, many factors make it difficult to achieve a perfect score, reinforcing a key lesson imparted by the Challenge: Health scores are snapshots in time, not etched stone. A bad score can be a temporary blip; a great one can be just as transient. “You can not bank fitness,” he says. “You can’t make a deposit; it disappears immediately if you don’t keep maintaining it.”
A near-religious commitment to stretching and keen attention to his intake helped him reach that perfect score, which he called a product of simply setting goals. “I challenge everybody who would read this to set themselves a goal, whether it be a 5-K race, a triathlon they’ve always wanted to do, maybe a bike race—something that motivates them to get up early in the morning when it’s cold and dark and windy and maybe not the ideal training time or condition.”
A goal, he says, gives you something concrete, something that makes you put your own performance on the line and drives the kinds of results you’re looking for.
“If you’ve gone out and told all of your friends and co-workers, ‘Hey, I’m committed, and I’m going to do this in six or 10 weeks’—that’s what really motivates you to get up and do this,” he said.
FITTEST MAN OVER 50: MIKE GREEN
A.B. MAY, team 1
The fitness bug bit Mike Green when he was still in junior high school. The symptoms never went away. He wrestled in school, was a physical education major in college and even today, 30 years later, he works out five days a week—no exceptions, no excuses.
Because of that, he was in pretty good shape when the 2011–12 Fittest Execs and Fittest Companies Challenge launched in August. Even so, it was a bit of a surprise when Green learned that his six-point improvement during the Challenge, to a final score of 148, had earned him the title of Fittest Man Over 50.
“I absolutely did not expect it,” says Green, the operations manager for A.B. May Co. “I was really thrilled with my pre-competition total, so that’s what got me going: I thought, ‘Hey, this is actually attainable—I really need to go for this.’ ”
To get there, he focused on his cholesterol levels, which offered the greatest potential for improvements. “You can do it with just a few changes in diet, which weren’t drastic, and it works,” he says. “The main thing on diet is, stay away from frozen foods—frozen pizzas and stuff like that.” And, virtually without exception, his lunch consists of a salad, every day.
Such focus is easier to maintain, he said, if people can incorporate their fitness regimen into their workdays. “I work out over the lunch hour; some people don’t have that luxury,” he noted. “They have kids, careers, all these different reasons that get people off routine. I’ve gone through it with the kids, the changes in career and moving. But whatever there was, I knew that that hour had to be part of my routine.”
It is hard, Green acknowleged, “But the bottom line is, it’s got to be done.”
FITTEST WOMAN UNDER 50: KIRSTIN SALZMAN
HUSCH BLACKWELL, team 1
She leads the securities practice group for one of the biggest law firms in the region, she has two preteen daughters, and has a considerable history of civic contributions. So just how does Kirstin Salzman carve out the kind of time needed to say in peak fitness?
“I just made a flat-out commitment to working out five days a week. No excuses,” says Salzman. “I get my workout in before I start the craziness of the day. So I’m up at 5:15 and getting it done, and I found some great classes that I really love to do.”
And that’s what made her the Fittest Woman Under 50 in the Fittest Execs and Fittest Companies Challenge. “Every morning, I made that commitment, no matter what. If I slept in one day, I made it up on weekends.” But even the most committed exercise buff who has been through the Fittest Execs drill will tell you that there’s more to claiming a “Fittest” title than showing up for the workout. Your intake is just as critical to your success as your output on a treadmill: “I tried not eat as many burgers and fries, and tried to focus on salads,” says Salzman.
That all added up to a winning score of 148, three points ahead of her nearest competitor, and just two points shy of perfect.
A repeat contestant, from 2010, Salzman leveraged her firm’s corporate commitment with some personal motivation to drive her results.
“What got me is, our family has a history of high cholesterol, and while my scores were in the normal range, they were near the high end,” she said “At 42, if I didn’t want to deal with the same kinds of issues of my parents and grandparents, I needed to start changing that now.”
FITTEST WOMAN OVER 50: JOYCE GOLDSTEIN, DERMATOLOGY & SKIN CANCER CENTER;
KAREN LAJAUNIE, BLUE CROSS BLUE SHIELD, team 4
RHONDA JOHNSON, D.H. PACE, team 1
In a successful workplace wellness program, there’s more to executive leadership than knowing your CEO is in the trenches with you at workout time. Leadership manifests itself in other ways. One example: At Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City, where they talk health and wellness for a living, the administration has provided staffers with an easily accessible workout facility that rivals the physical assets of most any athletic club.
Karen LaJaunie can tell you about the difference that makes. “Blue KC offers on-site fitness classes, which provided me the opportunity to work out during my lunch hour or after work” during the 2011–12 Challenge, she said. “Without that benefit, I would have a very difficult time fitting in an exercise regime.”
But with it, she was able to turn in a final health score of 144—just a handful of points short of perfection. That was good enough to earn her a piece of the title Fittest Woman Over 50 in this year’s Challenge, honors shared with Joyce Goldstein of the Dermatology & Skin Cancer Center and Rhonda Johnson of D.H. Pace Co.
Like Goldstein, LaJaunie was a repeat competitor in the Challenge, which helped give her a springboard to success. After wrapping up the 2010–11 event, she said, “I still had room for improvement. I worked throughout 2011 to improve a couple of specific areas and I wanted to see the progress I made in a year.”
That meant a laser focus on body fat and BMI levels, continuing work on strength training, and incorporating a step class and a yoga class once a week. Mix in an adherence to healthier eating habits, she said, and she was on her way to the top.
Johnson, the human resources manager for D.H. Pace, saw an opportunity to address the costs of employer-paid health insurance, and the company fielded two teams. She was already working out five to six times a week when competition for the Challenge began in August, but it gave her an opportunity to leverage that success, inspiring her to cut down on sugar-laden foods.
Goldstein, a veteran of all three Challenges to date, moved into the Over 50 category this year, and earned her third straight title in the competition. In the inaugural challenge two years ago, she tied for first in Most Improved Woman Under 50. Last year, she took the title of Fittest Woman Under 50.
“Unless one is an Olympic athlete,” she says, “one can always improve his or her level of fitness.” A fringe benefit of competing in the Challenge, Goldstein noted, was the psychological part—a kind of peace of mind that comes with knowing you’ve positioned yourself for a good life after your career.
“I feel like I’m making an investment in my future, not just to increase longevity, but to improve my quality of life in my golden years,” she says. “I want to stay active until the end.”