Decades of experience across martial arts, cycling expertise, executive coaching, and corporate human resources converge in the work of David Lipscomb, founder of CIS Training Systems. A former HR Vice President, Lipscomb developed an intimate understanding of people and performance, which is embedded within the way his company functions.
CIS Training Systems emerged as a bridge between high-performance sport and organizational leadership, using cycling as a universal metaphor for how individuals show up under pressure. The company implements a holistic philosophy of human development that applies equally on the bike and in the boardroom.
According to Lipscomb, cycling works as a leadership lens because it is immediately understood. In his view, improvement is measurable, effort is visible, and stress has nowhere to hide. As he explains, "Leaders have to learn to endure. That comes with cycling as well. The first element of cycling is understanding how you endure from an energy standpoint, because that's where everything comes from. Leaders are doing the same thing. They're sprinting day after day, week after week, hour after hour."
Lipscomb believes that emotional strain from work carries directly into physical elements, revealing how stress manifests in real time. From his perspective, the same endurance and self-awareness required to perform on the bike define effective leadership inside organizations. That connection led to the launch of The System 6x6 Method in November 2025.
The framework, Lipscomb emphasizes, formalizes what CIS has already proven through years of coaching athletes and executives. The 6x6 structure represents 36 intersections between leadership and cycling realities, where performance challenges mirror leadership realities. "Struggling on a climb reflects difficulty enduring tough stakeholder conversations. Poor recovery parallels burnout and emotional overload," he explains. Through this clarity, Lipscomb believes that leaders gain resilience by seeing themselves honestly, supported by real coaching conversations and advanced AI analytics that guide when to push, when to recover, and what to focus on next.
Instead of solely engaging rational cognition, the 6x6 Method targets the emotional and physiological systems that dominate under stress. "Leadership models attach to the part of the brain that understands frameworks, but the limbic system controls behavior and emotion," he says. "When there's a bad meeting, your emotion shows up. Your nervous system tells you exactly where you are."
Taking this into account, Lipscomb developed the 6x6 Method, which is rooted in three core questions. "We question how you, as a leader, show up, what your organizational energy systems demand, and how you cut through the internal noise to do the right thing for customers and teams," he adds, emphasizing how these questions eschew any complex frameworks and instead seek to make a difference by strengthening the foundational structures.
Cadence, too, constitutes another one of the pillars of his model. "You have to be consistent with leading yourself before you lead other people," Lipscomb explains. "Rather than telling people what to do, we advise leaders to model it every day." He believes that meetings and conflict expose cadence as clearly as hill climbs, offering unparalleled feedback.
The timing of the 6×6 Method reflects a broader shift. In Lipscomb's view, technology and AI now dominate training environments, offering data and automation at scale. Yet he perceives this as incomplete without a human connection. "AI is powerful," he says. "But it doesn't see the human behind the numbers."
Positioned as an antidote to digital learning, CIS Training Systems and the 6×6 Method offer a performance system grounded in lived experience. That philosophy is further captured in Lipscomb's two books,The System 6×6 Framework: The Ultimate Guide to Performance, Resilience, and Cycling Mastery and The System 6×6 for Leaders, distilling a lifetime of insight into a clear pathway for sustainable improvement.
The origins of CIS Training systems can be traced back to the 1990s, when an economic downturn had left Lipscomb recalibrating his view of consulting work, forcing him to reflect. In that moment, he saw that performance sport offered something that he sought across organizations: immediate accountability. "I knew there had to be something that held people to themselves so they could be the best they could be," he explains. "Cycling became the vehicle for change. It shows people who they are, whether they're new to the bike or former athletes trying to find themselves again." Within that vehicle, Lipscomb also found the impetus for the creation of CIS Training Systems.
Today, the company and its proprietary 6x6 Method exist to help people perform cohesively rather than practice fragmented roles by connecting data, mindsets, and environments. Keeping emotional intelligence and real-world performance at the forefront of its processes, CIS Training Systems strives to curate a system that equips leaders into meeting leadership pressures head-on and turn it into clarity. As Lipscomb states, "Everybody wants to get better at what they do. The moment you stop hiding from what performance shows you, real leadership actually begins."
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