Issue 8 October 1, 2008
Exertion & Recovery
Manage your cycle of exertion and recovery. Doing so is essential for high performance and balanced living.
When training as an athlete, you build muscle and strength by exhausting your capacity. The same is true with corporate athletes and elite performers. What do you do after an extreme physical workout? You recover! And if you don’t, your chances of injury increase. The same principle applies to professional workouts.
Sustained high performance requires more than intelligence. It also requires physical and emotional endurance and strength. To get body, emotions and mind all working together for elite performance, high performers need to do what athletes have done for years. They need to make considerable effort and then recover appropriately.
The balance between exertion and recovery is a dynamic one. Muscle (physical and corporate) is built by exhausting capacity through heavy exertion and then resting/recovering long enough for muscles to repair. Without this recovery period, injury, in the form of painful imbalance, illness or spotty performance, can occur.
High performers need to make adjustments when they’re out of balance. They need to create habits that support ongoing balance. This requires discipline. By taking charge of their life in this way, elite performers can keep a sustainable pace.
Jonas learned about the need to manage the cycle of exertion and recovery the hard way. In his late 20’s he was the CEO of a high-tech start-up company that failed after 3 years of excruciating effort. He had pushed himself all the way to the ragged edge too many times, without sufficient recovery. After the collapse of his company, he dropped into an agitated depression that left him irritable, unable to sleep and impossible to live with.
When his girlfriend moved out, he began to actively look at the many painful losses that were piling up around him. His health was far from OK. All of his relationships had incurred some damage and he had lost his love of simply being alive.
After many weeks of honest self-reflection and a series of provocative conversations with friends and health care professionals, he started to recover. He remembered how much he loved rock climbing, snow boarding and the excitement of waking up ready to attack a new day.
His sleep and health finally stabilized. He could think and feel clearly again. Jonas then made a promise to himself. He would never again let himself get so far out of balance that he would compromise his life force. His personal litmus test for this was his ability to love and appreciate life. The application was simple: if he couldn’t feel his love for life each day, he needed to make an adjustment.
With this standard in place, he started his next business venture. He pushed himself hard, as usual, but was disciplined about pulling back and recovering, when he felt “compromised”.
Jonas was surprised at one of the side effects of his new practice; better decision-making. Brief recovery periods gave him the time and perspective he needed to make business decisions that were both more strategic and wiser.
There are multiple benefits to dynamic balance, both in the workplace and at home. Find out for yourself. Start by pulling back and recovering after a period of extreme or extended effort. You’ll not only prevent unnecessary injury, but will also discover your own unexpected benefits.
Action Steps
1. Notice the level of effort you applied at work over the last week. Was it mild? Light? Steady? Significant? At the ragged edge? If it was significant or at the ragged edge, did you recover adequately?
2. Think of a time when you worked VERY hard at work, at home, or doing physical exercise and you didn’t recover adequately. What were the short and long term consequences?
3. Monitor your level of exertion and recovery each day in the upcoming week. Notice the way adequate recovery helps support your overall life energy. Notice how insufficient recovery depletes your overall life energy.
4. Ask yourself: “What kind of adjustments can I make that will create balance and also support high performance?”
5. Check out Effectiveness and Balance training for the tools to help the people in your organization become more powerful and productive.
