ON THE fitness front, Lance Gokongwei considers himself very lucky during the lockdown.
“You know, I’m really fortunate. I’m one of the people with a complete home gym,” said the president and CEO of JG Summit to SPIN Life. (Spin.ph is part of Summit Media, which is under the Gokongwei group of companies.) “I have a treadmill, a rowing machine, weights, and the like.”
“Not that it’s reflected in my body at all,” he added jokingly.
Still, Gokongwei proudly admits, “I’m in pretty good shape.”
While he does like to “imbibe and enjoy food,” as he calls it, he found that the lockdown gave him the time and the motivation to get in a little more exercise.
“Because of COVID-19, I went from two times a week exercise — Saturday and Sunday for an hour and a half to two hours — I started working out four times a week,” he explained.
No longer just a weekend warrior, he’s added Tuesdays and Thursdays to his weekly workout schedule.
Like many of us, Gokongwei has had to transition to working from home. With no more need to fight through traffic to get to work, he now has the time to slot in a 7 a.m. workout in his schedule. (Having a complete set of equipment in the next room definitely helps, too.)
To keep him company during his workout, Gokongwei turned to podcasts. With each sweat session taking at least an hour and a half, that’s plenty of time to burn through longform audio.
“I never [listened to podcasts] before, but I guess when I was exercising by myself at the start of COVID-19, and there was no instructor and the like, I started with the traditional NBA stuff like The Ringer or Bill Simmons or The Athletic,” he said.
When that well dried up, he moved on to other audio shows, including one from author Malcolm Gladwell as well as some true crime pods.
Now, however, his podcast time has been reduced; a trainer-slash-therapist comes in three times a week to aid him in his workouts. He rarely works out solo anymore. Once a week, he would also go out walking with his wife after dinner.
More workout time is just one of the many changes the chief executive has experienced during the pandemic — not all of them about his wide-ranging businesses.
“I’ve never spent as much time with my kids as I have in the last eight or nine months: Really getting to know them, them getting to know me. We’re exchanging stories. That’s been a strong positive,” he said.
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