Do you recover as hard as you train? (5 of 5)
Written by Stuart Haden on December 22, 2015
If you over exert yourself physically then the next day your aching body will let you know just how far you pushed yourself. However, if you find flow and the state of optimal performance the prompts to recover are never that obvious.
In sport high performance athletes know full well that you must recover just as hard as you trained in the first instance. I’ll happily tell people I am on rest day because I ran 10 miles yesterday. The same is true in life and work, but when was the last time you said to your boss – I am going to take it easy yesterday because yesterdays presentation and meeting really took it out of me.
The problem is if we don’t take time to recover (particularly at work) then we quickly return to the struggle phase. Depleted we are less likely to find our release and subsequent flow. In fact when we are powered down in this fashion we will soon avoid flow all together as our energy resources will be too low to maintain levels of optimal performance. So if you are reading this and thinking you do not need to recover at work. Then the framework leads me to ask, are you finding flow in the first place? To boost your recovery check out this short video….