Balancing the Grind with Oliver Wood, Gut Health & Wellness Expert

Oliver Wood is a gut health and wellness expert, and the CEO of Body Reset where he oversees a team of coaches, advisors and professionals.

To kick things off, could you tell us a little about your career background and current role?

I’ve been in the fitness industry as a working professional for just under a decade now. I moved from a business degree at uni to become a personal trainer at our city’s biggest gyms where I spent 6 years building my in-person business to one of the most sought out PTs in the area.

As my education and understanding of health grew deeper I became more aware of how small the exercise piece was – you can’t out-train a bad diet become very real. Although I was optimising every aspect of movement for my clients, this was not addressing the root cause of the stress and inflammation holding my clients back.

This is where I decided to go online. At this point, I’d been working with some of the top experts all around the world to really understand nutrition, recovery and performance at a deeper level, so this transition was very logical for me.

I found I could build a library of all my top learnings and teaching that I wanted my clients to be aware of before stepping foot in a gym. This became such a core “skill set” of my top clients’ lasting results that this became a bigger and bigger part of the overall service.

As we continued to grow, I was able to bring in clinical nutritionists, mindset coaches and more to really build the knowledge base of health and wellness to create the world-class integration we have today.

My role as CEO of Body Reset is now overseeing a team of 16 coaches, advisors and professionals across NZ, Australia and around the world to continue to provide this service at the highest level to career-driven professionals and business owners that I have been serving since day 1.

What does a day in your life look like for you? Can you take us through a recent workday?

My work day goes through seasons where work or exercise takes the top priority and therefore the first spot in the day, but this is my current routine:

Wake up, hydrate, get to work – I spend 30 mins uninterrupted on the deep thinking work I need to get done for the day before the day’s requests hit me.

I then go for a walk with my partner and dog for 20-30 mins before breakfast.

After breakfast I dive into my full coach team meeting to kick off the day.

After this is a 2hr work block for deep work, podcasts or filming.

Then I have lunch, usually followed by a couple of clients or team 1:1s.

I then get out for a bike ride, run or weight training session for 45 mins.

This all takes me through to 3pm where I’ll have 2-3hrs of team or clients calls.

Finish the day out with emails, admin and setting up the next day before dinner around 7.

Very intentional wind-down and hard stop to work usually around 7-7.30pm.

What does work-life balance mean to you and how do you work to achieve that goal?

What this balance looks like will be very different for the individual. I don’t think anyone has achieved high levels of success with a complete balance all of the time. Yet the ability to perform long-term requires you to know the balance of effort and recovery.

The best athletes are the ones that recover the best. The ones that pass SAS selection are the ones that recover the best, in the business world it’s no different yet many of us (me included) need to nudge in our day to regroup, recover and come back stronger.

How I personally achieve this is by first blocking out movement, lunch and JOY into my week so it places the same importance as a work meeting or client call.

In the past 12 months, have you started or stopped any routines or habits to change your life?

I have kept many of my routines for nearly 4-5 years now and they’ve served me well from a business level. However, the one routine that has helped a LOT is a 2hr time block every day of SPACE simply to think, write, and create. It doesn’t get done every day but it does help immensely 3-4 days a week.

Do you have any favourite books, podcasts or newsletters that you’d like to recommend?

Will Smith’s book is my most recent favourite. I really enjoyed this.

The obstacle is the way by Ryan Holiday was great too.

Podcast-wise, I’d highly recommend Huberman Lab for all things health science.

If you could read an interview about work-life balance by anyone, who would that be?

Dan Martell – this level of output and energy is solid. He’s built some great companies with some great success over the years and finds a way to just keep building it every year. He doesn’t just do this through pushing hard but intelligently delegating and setting up systems to improve his flow.

Do you have any last thoughts on work, life or balance that you’d like to share with our readers?

Freedom within discipline is a term I use a lot in our community.

We all want to be spontaneous and free. Yet when we provide no structure we generally waste more time, feel more fatigued and find it very hard to quieten the mind.

By finding the key 1-3 non-negotiables in your day to frontload your energy and joy. You not only get more done, but you feel good doing it.

At the end of the day, it’s not about what you achieve, but what you make of yourself in achieving it. This is simply done through a collection of skill sets and habits built.

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