What the NFL in London reveals about the performance cost of executive travel
Across this year’s NFL London series, the Indianapolis Colts, Washington Commanders, Philadelphia Eagles, Jacksonville Jaguars, and Houston Texans all faced the same basic problem. How do you move an elite performer across the Atlantic and still expect them to operate at their best?
The interesting part is that they didn’t all answer it in the same way. Eagles coach Nick Sirianni deliberately kept his team in Philadelphia until late in the week, having considered “jet lag included” in the decision. Texans coach DeMeco Ryans wanted his players in “as normal a routine as possible” before travelling.
By contrast, Jacksonville – facing consecutive games in London – had the opportunity to establish a rhythm here. Quarterback Trevor Lawrence, now unusually experienced in international NFL travel, put it simply: “obviously, the travel can be a challenge.”
“What strikes me is how seriously elite sport treats geography as a performance variable.”
Through Harbor Helm, we work with leaders and high-level professionals whose lives involve exactly this kind of repeated disruption: overnight flights, changing time zones, early meetings, late dinners, high-stakes decisions, and very little space between arrival and expectation.
The diary updates instantly. The body, more often than not, can’t do the same.
Modern diaries outpace human biology
Jet lag is generally used as shorthand for tiredness after a flight. Physiologically, there’s more going on than that.
Crossing multiple time zones creates a mismatch between the external clock and the body’s internal circadian timing. Sleep and wakefulness shift; so can alertness, appetite, mood, and cognitive performance. A review by Jeremy Weingarten and Nancy Collop into air travel, sleep deprivation, and jet lag linked air-travel-related sleep disruption with:
- Reduced vigilance
- Changes in mood
- Daytime sleepiness and fatigue
- Weaker memory processing
- Altered executive function
For a senior business leader, those effects show up in the things leadership actually requires: reading a room accurately, regulating a reaction, retaining a key detail, making a judgement, handling conflict, or noticing that a decision should, perhaps, wait.
“Something I think senior leaders can underestimate is how easy it is to confuse being present with being ready.”
You can land, shower, change clothes, and walk into a boardroom looking entirely composed. Adrenaline can carry you a long way. However, under the surface, your circadian system may still be several hours behind. And that has real outcomes.
High performance conceals the cost
Something else we see is that executives are typically very good at “powering through.”
In fact, the logistical infrastructure around executive travel can actually make that easier: things like drivers, lounges, assistants, and carefully scheduled itineraries all help. Somebody else handling the friction. They make the experience itself smoother while the physiological disruption remains.
That, in turn, can create an odd situation where the trip appears to be working perfectly – because every meeting happens on time. Meanwhile, sleep has shortened, concentration requires more effort, patience is thinner, and recovery is being perpetually deferred.
Sleep disruption also affects emotional functioning. A major 2024 meta-analysis led by Cara Palmer found that sleep loss reduced positive affect, increased anxiety symptoms, and altered responses to emotional stimuli – all particularly relevant when your work involves difficult conversations, scrutiny, or sustained responsibility.
“The cost isn’t always a dramatic collapse in performance. Sometimes, you need to give more of yourself just to produce the same result.”
Treat geography as part of the performance plan
The lesson offered by the NFL is not that there is one perfect way to travel when you’re accustomed to performing under pressure. Quite the opposite.
Philadelphia, Jacksonville, and Houston all approached London 2026 differently, because their context and surrounding circumstances were all slightly different. Philadelphia minimised time in London; Jacksonville stayed to establish a rhythm across consecutive games; while Houston prioritised maintaining its usual routine for as long as possible.
“For elite athletes, performance planning starts by recognising the variable and responding intentionally. Executive teams can do the same.”
That might mean:
- Protecting the timing of a negotiation
- Building recovery into arrival days
- Being mindful about sleep and light exposure
- Resisting the instinct to fill and optimise every hour
Across scientific literature, evidence around jet-lag interventions is mixed, which is another reason why individual planning means more than any list of “hacks”.
The same principle applies to the support structures around an internationally mobile leader. If geography keeps changing, the infrastructure protecting health and performance must flex with it. Harbor Helm provides private, multidisciplinary, clinically led support for senior individuals whose lives don’t fit neatly around fixed locations or conventional schedules. Care moves with the realities of the person’s life, rather than requiring the person to reorganise their wellbeing around the diary.
In modern leadership, crossing time zones is easy. Giving the body and mind enough time to arrive? That’s the part we tend to forget.
