Singapore’s CEO hell camps teach value of teamwork and resilience
TECH execs in Singapore have convinced themselves that staggering around in sweltering heat with a 60 kg sandbag will help build their leadership skills. If that fails, solving puzzles in ice-cold pools or diving underwater to tie knots might get the synapses firing.
Friends recommended this experience to me – not for its health benefits but for the mental discipline. Anything to get a competitive advantage, right? To satisfy a bout of curiosity, if nothing else, I attend a half-day version to check out what this eccentric and growing offshoot was all about.
On a Saturday morning, I show up at the rooftop of a quiet warehouse near Singapore’s red light district. The boot camp’s starting location was revealed only the night before, as if it were a clandestine operation.
As rooftops go, it is surprisingly swanky. There is a huge pool and a nearby tennis court. I greet my fellow campers as we get fitted with weighted backpacks and are told to carry plenty of water. If at any point we wanted to give up, we had to run back to the starting point and ring a brass bell (yes, emulating how US Navy Seals quit their training). It was a dramatic intro.
Then it starts: flutter kicks, weighted squats, push-ups and planks. Gasping for breath and regretting my late flight hours earlier, I silently scream. This is the warm-up?
After 15 minutes or so, we are still going. But my breathing calms as I focus on another task at hand: committing a puzzle to memory. It is a bunch of numbers arranged in a three-by-three grid, and we are supposed to reproduce it exactly to “graduate” at the end of the camp.
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We make our way out of the warehouse for what turned out not to be a walk in the park. We take turns (in shifts of four) carrying a heavy sandbag across roads, slopes and rock. My arms and legs are burning. After about an hour, the sun feels like it is gnawing at my skin. But the pain is briefly muted as we cheer each other on and help distribute the suffering, sharing tips on the best newfound ways to carry a load.
Back at base camp, we throw ourselves into the shallow end of the pool, glad for respite from the overbearing heat. Puzzle check: I am having trouble recalling the last row of digits but everyone else seems fine. We are pairing up to tie knots and push weights around the pool, and at the end we are “rewarded” with an ice-cold plunge. I completely forget about the puzzle.
I try my best to sit in the icy water for about three minutes, then towel off and bundle up. I am cold, tingly and euphoric. Best of all, my fellow campers – already friends though we have just met – offer me hot water and support. We try to reassemble the puzzle to the best of our ability. (It is supposed to simulate how startup founders have to focus on the most important task even when there are many things going on.)
My mini physical and mental boost is common, says Steffan Fung, the founder of this programme. As a former commando in Singapore’s special forces, he is a strong advocate for building mental resilience through physical training, especially when people are pushed to their limits.
He is targeting the right crowd: Many tech types have long wanted to make their personal operating machines more efficient just as they strive to make their computers faster and better. Jack Dorsey, the serial entrepreneur who founded Twitter, is celebrated in Silicon Valley for pursuing an extraordinary physical regime extending well beyond a few exercises. He has said he starts the day with an infrared sauna and an ice bath, walks 5 miles (8 km) to work, eats only one meal a day and practises fasting.
In Singapore, Grab chief operating officer Alex Hungate is a cycling enthusiast who hops on his bike every morning to ride to work. Lien Choong Luen, Gojek’s Singapore head, pushes his body to the limits with a dizzying variety of extreme sports: ultramarathons across the Gobi Desert and the Amazon jungle, skiing to the North Pole and ice climbing near the northern reaches of the Atlantic Ocean.
More and more tech types here are sporting Whoop wristbands, Oura rings and On running shoes as they try to embody the old Victorian adage of mens sana in corpore sano (a fit mind in a fit body).
The exercise might not have turned me into a founder-in-waiting just yet, but I enjoyed discovering my own limits and the little bit of grit, camaraderie and confidence that I was able to take away.
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