Rest is Action
I’ve been discussing ‘post-season’ and its various facets for quite a few weeks now. You may even be sick of hearing me talk about the importance of staying active during your holidays. But, if you fall into that bucket, then this blog is for you.
I’m about to strongly encourage you to take serious time off from structured training. Post-season is truly upon us now, we’re edging closer to the shortest day of the year, and even the most ambitious ones out there will have finished their last race. Post-season gives you space to reflect on the way you approach training and, importantly, why you train.
Today, I will briefly touch on the ever-important subject of integrating movement into your life. Then, we will quickly move on to the pressing issue: rest. I want to outline the physical benefits of rest and, perhaps, more crucially, the mental benefits. Finally, this piece will be wrapped up with real-world advice on appropriately taking time off and ramping back into structured training.
Let’s get the ball rolling:
Life and Training
A Purple Patch classic: The Platform of Health. The concept is slightly different for a pro athlete versus a time-starved amateur, but both approaches offer the perspectives outlined below.
The Platform of Health for a professional athlete:
‘Normal’ life is training and sport.
The main focus is extensive training (including both endurance and strength).
The secondary focus is on nutrition, fueling, and hydration.
And, of course, the final emphasis is on recovery (sleep, rest, massage, and self-care).
Sacrifice in a pro athlete’s life reduces time spent at parties, working, leisure travel, and staying up late.
The Platform of Health for a time-starved amateur:
Integration and balance are both far more critical and challenging in the life of an amateur athlete. Therefore, scheduling must be pragmatic and dynamic.
Planning training must begin with life. The non-negotiables like work, family commitments, and social engagements must come first.
Secondly, we must remember the crucial need for sleep, hobbies, and other activities.
Only THEN do we start to build your training, which, at Purple Patch, includes both endurance and strength regimes.
We then layer on sustainable habits and approaches to fueling, nutrition, and hydration.
And top it all off with the required capacity to recover via smart self-care, sleep, etc.
A platform of health is the recipe for long-term success. So it is no wonder we elevate performance and achieve results by committing to consistency and hard work.
When you are committed to performance, which we define as the pursuit of health, energy, and the ability to be present, and of course, chasing events and races, there is, by definition, an ongoing game of management, balance, and decision-making. This is the difference between being purposeful in life and meandering through it. The effort is undoubtedly worth it, as you show up as the best version of yourself possible, athletically and in life. However, it does take work. First, you must pause, reflect, and plan each week. Then, you must approach that plan dynamically and make decisions focusing on the big picture, the quest for long-term consistency, and avoiding fear-based decisions of short-term impacts.
I rattle on about this simple fact not to intimidate you but to paint a clear picture of what you, and we at Purple Patch, manage.
All this may sound like a massive mental strain, so I consistently urge you to remove complexity in the process.
But I digress. I’ve provided an outline of what builds performance. Now let’s talk about rest.
Rest is Action
So, where does the title of this piece fit in – rest is action. Let’s explore.
You may know that Purple Patch athletes have to endure many of my ‘Dixon-ary’ coaching sayings that have worked their way into the vernacular over too many years. A few of my favorites include:
Strong like bull
Impress me, don’t depress me
Fit ‘n fresh
The vicar is coming, Mrs. Jenkins
Some of these hold critical educational value. Others, let’s face it, are simply Monty-Pythonesque silliness. A serious one of these sayings is displayed in neon lights on a large wall of the Purple Patch center in San Francisco:
It takes courage to recover.
This saying is one of the essential coaching sayings I have. Let’s unpack it.
Successful athletes and performance enthusiasts tend to be intrinsically motivated. Of course, they benefit from support through accountability and encouragement, but what truly drives them is the fire inside.
In tough training sessions, long miles, or breakthrough days, the hard work provides instant gratification. Even validation. It is a massive reward to complete a brutal training camp. It feels good to produce your best running splits. You get energized from accomplishing something you may believe improbable. It is why we often say, “hard work is the easy part.” Of course, it isn’t easy! But, it is the thing that creates an appreciation of progress and leads to confidence building. Unfortunately, recovery doesn’t provide immediate validation in this way. Most folks understand the role of recovery, but few athletes are good at embracing recovery consistently. Most driven athletes don’t like it. And fewer still build confidence from it.
Pulling back from hard work and integrating some easy days is not easy. It is even more challenging when you see or hear about your peers or competitors out there working hard while you, as they say, laze about. This is why it takes courage. It takes big-picture planning, pragmatism, and a commitment to the long-term journey.
It takes courage to recover.
All well and good. But what’s the point of recovery? On an ongoing day to day and week to week basis, recovery boils down to facilitating two primary things:
Recuperation: Restocking mental and physical resources prepares you for the effective but hard work that lies ahead, usually expressed in training sessions.
Adaptation: Recovery is the period in which we experience growth.
Physiological challenges that make you fitter, stronger, and faster.
Structural changes to muscle, brain, and tissue.
This discussion isn’t just about recovery. I want to take it further than that by asserting: rest is a strategy unto itself. So, as we head into the holidays and take a break in your season, it is important to keep this top of mind and embrace your downtime with a bit of courage and joy.
Because truly removing yourself from the game, the journey, the planning, structure, rigor of your pursuit of performance is a highly positive action. Long-term, rest is a proactive action to facilitate high performance in the coming days.
Rest is an investment.
Yes, it isn’t easy.
No, it won’t create validation.
But, I assure you, it is critical.
And, it is critical to remember that taking rest does not mean to deliberately self-sabotage – to embrace unhealthy habits or force-feed yourself candy and pie just because you can.
You are just giving yourself some guilt-free space. It is good for the body, but it is critical for the mind. So, yes, there is an obvious series of benefits physically. But, a largely ignored catalyst is:
The cognitive restoration that occurs with rest
Let’s label it stepping away.
In almost every endeavor in life, effectiveness, engagement, motivation, and enjoyment are seen to increase following a period of stepping away.
Whether leading a business, attempting to solve a complex logistical challenge, creating a piece of art, or training for high athletic performance, a period of space will lead to enhanced productivity.
When we are immersed in the training process, coaches consistently encourage athletes to stay out of the weeds, give themselves time to pause and reflect and make decisions with perspective. As a result, you will experience a supercharged restoration point and have time to reflect when resting with intention and purpose.
This is why the title of the blog says: rest is action. It isn’t passive, lazy, or simply designed to recharge the batteries. I have (hopefully) persuaded you that nutrition is an essential part of your program and that you should integrate strength training into your performance plan. And, in the same vein, I have highlighted the importance of rest and recovery. Recovery is as important as your hard work. Rest is an integral part of your program. Not an afterthought.
Framed in this lens, you are empowered to embrace it and even enjoy rest.
Let’s finish with the how.
Ramping Back to Structure
The holidays are upon us. Many of you will be trying to enjoy rest and downtime while also battling the internal struggle of missed training and feeling like you are going backward.
Here are some helpful tips:
Be deliberate: The primary mission is to turn your back and give yourself space for mental and physical restoration. To do this, you must disengage and actively commit to the time as rest.
Establish an appropriate mindset: We aim to move forward when we train. When we work at a business, we aim to progress—a growth mindset, you might say. But, for this action of rest, the appropriate goal is not to move forward, at least not in the way that you classically think about it. It is a long-term mindset, and your goal should be a suitable ‘treading water.’ A tricky thing to get into the mindset of, but liberating if you are on a family holiday surrounded by a different environment or dealing with cold, dark winter days with rest as the only mission.
Don’t be a sloth: Rest doesn’t equate to being strapped to a hospital bed. You shouldn’t force-feed yourself like a foie gras goose. You can be a normal and healthy human being – stay active, eat well, integrate rest, and even occasionally enjoy a little excess. The key is that you can remain active. You can choose salad and veggies, but you shouldn’t do it because you have to. It isn’t a part of a plan. You don’t have a plan for a period of rest.
Liberate the metrics: Goodness me, if you can do nothing else.
Don’t upload every session. Don’t even record it.
Don’t run or ride to a set zone or prescription.
Don’t do structured intervals.
There is a massive chasm in effort level between doing a 60-minute run with 5 x 2 min strong hill reps and heading out on a social jog in the neighborhood, choosing a new route, occasionally stopping to look at the new extension the Johnsons added or walking back home with Sheila who you bump into on the street. Don’t train. Just move your body.
After a period of recovery, let’s reintegrate. Let’s say you take eight days of rest. Now you must integrate back into training. How? Intervals? A big week? No. The magic word is a ramp.
Give yourself 3-5 days before fully turning back on. Below is a rough timeline:
Day 1: Easy and smooth - Plan the following ten days, plot your essential habits. What lessons bubbled up for you around performance while you stepped away?
Day 2: Endurance focused.
Day 3: Building efforts, a great natural moderator Build intensity. Feel good? Press on a little. Feel flat and tired? Don’t build to as high of an intensity.
Day 4: Rest day or easy training.
Day 5: Back to complete training.
The initial three days are all by feel and all calm.
These are my thoughts on rest. Rest is action. Staple it to your heart and lean in. Your body and mind will thank you.
Cheers and until next time. Rest up.
- Matt