Why working out during the workday is the ultimate power move

Working out in the middle of the workday makes perfect sense…in theory. In reality, a certain type of person has a distinct advantage in pulling it off routinely.

“I’m the boss," says Jessica Vibberts, founder and chief executive of Full Potential Ventures, a consulting firm for nonprofits.

Ms. Vibberts, 45, often works early in the morning and late at night but breaks around midday for a barre class, Pilates or high-intensity interval training. She says pausing work to exercise makes her a better leader by keeping her mind fresh. Her clothes are another story after a sweaty session, but she works remotely, having moved from San Francisco to Portugal a couple of years ago. Not that she worried about showing up to meetings in yoga pants before.

As a nonprofit executive before starting her own business in 2017, she used to make time for muscle toning by inviting colleagues to chat in her office while holding air squats or planks. “That’s part of the privilege of having some authority," she says.

Committing to workouts during the workday may be less about willpower than, well, power. You need not be the CEO (though that helps), but it generally takes some seniority to block your calendar for fitness during business hours or take meetings while exercising at the same time. Being very good at your job helps, too.

The demands of certain roles make exercise breaks impractical, of course. Please save the push-ups for the end of your shifts, air-traffic controllers. (And if you work in any capacity for Southwest Airlines, the flying public would like you to concentrate exclusively on your job for now.)

Stepping away can even be difficult for people with hybrid arrangements and malleable schedules that should lend themselves to workout sessions in the 9-to-5 window. More employers are installing productivity software on work laptops to monitor every keystroke and take screenshots every few minutes, so it might not be possible to slip into a midday spin class undetected.

A brief burn might be achievable, and a few sit-ups here or kettlebell swings there are certainly better than nothing. But the masters of full-blown workday workouts are those with enough clout to be temporarily unreachable by colleagues and not get in trouble.

“It gives me a level of comfort to know that I can be a little bit late or I can push a meeting, and no one’s going to be able to say much," says Jim Webb, CEO of the Goodman Corp., a professional-services firm in Houston.

Mr. Webb, 36, takes a jiu jitsu class at noon a couple of times a week. Including the drive and a post-grappling shower, he’s out of pocket for about an hour and a half on those occasions.

Who’s available to spar with him in the middle of the day? Often, he says, it’s other executives or police officers for whom physical fitness is part of the job.

He adds that he promotes a flexible work culture in his business of about two dozen employees and wouldn’t object to others taking time out to work out. Still, he feels less self-conscious about his midday regimen as the person in charge.

Daniel Carey, a top lobbyist at the American Optometric Association, says his seniority and experience help him temporarily disconnect in the middle of the workday and not worry that he’ll miss something. He works remotely from a 5-acre Kentucky property that is a fitness buff’s dream, with space for him to run with a weighted backpack, flip tractor tires, climb ropes and hoist barbells in a two-car garage that doubles as a home gym.

You can call or email while he’s pumping iron, but he won’t answer.

“I’m not checking my phone," he says. “I’ve got my music and for 30 or 45 minutes, I’m locked off."

Call Thomas Van Kempen III, on the other hand, and the chief revenue officer at software startup CloudShape will pick up at any time. Just don’t be surprised to hear him breathing hard through bench presses or lat pulls during the conversation.

“People know if they call between 11 and 2, there’s a good chance that they’ll catch me in the middle of a set," says Mr. Van Kempen, a 36-year-old former Marine who works out of his garage-office-gym in Atlanta.

Sometimes the only way to have a word with a busy, fitness-conscious executive is to join the workout. Two or three times a week, employees of data-science startup Ascend jog around San Francisco with CEO Sean Knapp in a ritual that the boss calls a “run-on-one" meeting. He says the company’s chief business officer is his most consistent partner and about a half dozen others join him sporadically.

Mr. Knapp, 42, says he’s content to run at anyone’s pace, but bear in mind that he competed in track and cross-country at Stanford, once placing seventh at the conference championship in the 3,000-meter steeplechase.

Keeping up with him is hard enough. Then try saving enough breath to hold a conversation.

“That’s the challenge," he says. “That takes some practice."