How do you make a team better? It's an intriguing question that comes up a lot, especially in business and sports.
Recently, Team Novo Nordisk— the first pro cycling team of its kind, made up entirely of athletes with diabetes — took an unusual approach to up its game. General manager Vassili Davidenko sent his riders to California to take part in what normally would have been just another offseason training camp, where they typically get their new bikes and gear and pedal a bunch of miles while getting to know one another in a casual, laid-back atmosphere. But to their surprise, they were awoken on day one at 4 a.m. to take part in a series of rigorous team-building exercises with retired Navy SEALs and Special Ops personnel.
William Hart, cofounder of Acumen Performance Group, which teamed up with Novo Nordisk for the camp, greeted the stunned cyclists bright and early: "You guys are all professional cyclists and have a lot of coaches and trainers that make you some of the best in the world at cycling — us former retired Navy SEALs, we're the best in the world at getting through things that suck."
Over the next 36 hours, the cyclists would be pushed to their absolute physical and psychological limits in exercises designed to be taxing but empowering. This week, Business Insider caught up with Davidenko to learn more about his unique team, what the riders were put through — and how they fared — and how this hardcore camp fits into the big goal to ultimately get the team into the world's largest annual sporting event, the Tour de France.
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Team Novo Nordisk is the first all-diabetes pro cycling team. "Our goal is to race the Tour de France by 2021, a year that marks the 100th anniversary of the discovery of insulin," a spokeswoman told Business Insider.
Its mission is front and center on its website:
"Team Novo Nordisk is a global all-diabetes sports team of cyclists, triathletes and runners, spearheaded by the world's first all-diabetes professional cycling team. Our mission is to inspire, educate and empower people affected by diabetes."
Denmark-based "Novo Nordisk is a global health care company with 90 years of innovation and leadership in diabetes care. The company also has leading positions within hemophilia care, growth-hormone therapy, and hormone therapy."
Other cycling teams hold camps with a military theme, too, but as Davidenko tells Business Insider, this camp was "completely different."
"Other camps introduce the riders to military guys, and they play with guns," Davidenko says. "Some play football and ride go-karts, and it's great to get together like that. But our camp was completely different. It was about getting our guys closer to one another, bringing them to their limits, taking them out of their comfort zone, and then keeping them there, making sure they work as a team, with no one left behind."
Juri Chabursky, CEO of Acumen Performance Group, says, "All the training APG delivers embodies a blend of elite military, business, athletic, and performance psychology best practices. Our programs are delivered in an immersive experiential manner, focused on adult learning principles, to ensure rapid retention and immediate utilization of the skills learned."
"Based on Team Novo Nordisk's needs, their 36 hours of training was oriented more from the U.S. Navy SEAL backgrounds of APG's founding partners. This particular client was looking to develop mental toughness in a manner consistent with the endurance-based multi-environment nature of their sport. This gave APG the ability to apply a huge range of our Navy SEAL and Special Operations instructional and operational experience to the program.
"The team improved their mental toughness, teamwork, leadership, communication, stress management, contingency planning, and their accountability to 'Team-Teammates-Self.'"
The camp was about training the brain — not just the body.
"We came up with the idea to do the Navy SEAL-style camp because we wanted the riders to work together more effectively as a team. We wanted to show them that when they work well together as a team, they can be better," Team Novo Nordisk CEO and cofounder Phil Southerland said. "We believe that what was holding them back was truly mental, so we wanted to break them down and build them back up as one solid unit."
See the rest of the story at Business Insider