Rest and Recover

There are the weekdays and the weekEND. The end of the week. The break from the regular weekdays. There are religions that believe in taking a Sabbath day to rest. Many cultures in Europe employ the practice of taking a “siesta,” a midday nap. Work, then relax. Work, then rest. Work, then recover. There is a need for downtime and downtime should be scheduled. Through substantial rest, needed recovery, and scheduled downtime, you will find yourself superseding all previous expectations for what you thought you could achieve.

Humans need to sleep. This is mandatory rest. It has to happen and it has to happen every day. This required practice is not the same thing as setting aside time to relax, recover, and decompress. There is a reason high-stress, high-workload jobs have high amounts of turnover. The people working these jobs get burnt out, they lose joy, and they get tired of being worked constantly. They do not have enough time for themselves to reset, recover, and reload. Without balance and the ability to rest and recover, we will fall apart. We do not have infinite stamina to constantly be pushed to the maximum effort.

In the world of running and working out, if you rapidly increase the number of miles you run or rapidly increase the weight you do in a lift, you are more likely to be injured. You must gradually increase the output you produce while also maintaining strict attention to the rest and recovery you are giving your body. If your calves are sore after a run, make sure to stretch and do mobility work. If your chest is sore after a day of lifting, lift a different body part the next day. This is the recovery practice that will prepare you for your next run and your next lift. Neglect the rest and recovery and injuries may set you back.

The sporting world is easy to showcase the visible benefits of rest and the obvious pitfalls of neglecting rest. People become stronger and more capable when they rest and break down without it. Mentally, rest is just as important. It may not be as visible as the physical domain but our brains need time to recover. We need hours, days, and periods of time where we are not high-strung with the stress of the assignment at hand. We need to go for walks, play with our pets, sit on our porch with our significant others, and do anything we can to remove our minds from an active, charged state.

We need to plug our brains into a charger—the charger of recovery. We need to rest and recover if we want to achieve what we want to achieve. Otherwise, we are acting like a match lit on both ends. One day we will burn out.