Building Reserves, or Using Them?

Recovering is an essential component of life

When training for a sport, you spend a lot of time building your capabilities – speed, endurance, skill. During a competition, you tap into your reserves to reach your peak performance.

Life isn’t much different. You train to build your knowledge and skills, tapping into your reserves to achieve a goal. And if you overextend yourself, the results are similar.

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Training is a process of breaking down and building up

Training stresses an athlete’s body such that the body grows in response to the stress; it becomes accustomed to the need – stronger. With successive sessions, the athlete continues to build according to the training effort – strength, endurance, speed, or flexibility.

The growth doesn’t come so much from the training, but from the body’s reaction to the training afterward – the recovery.

Competition changes things

The stress of competition is often more than the body is prepared for – instead of going to the edge and backing off, the athlete may push beyond – breaking things further and using reserve energy. The athlete must rest and recover even more afterwards.

As part of a regular program, and with appropriate recovery, the competition cycle enhances an athlete’s performance. Without rest, the athlete slides downhill.

Failing to recover

When the athlete fails to spend enough time to recover, performance suffers. The easy results of the early season give way to nagging injuries. The athlete dips too far and too often into the well.

Without rest, the athlete is no longer building, but wearing away. And given the drive to finish a season strong, to peak for season ending championships, an athlete struggles through this sort of event.

Life is like that

This isn’t of interest because you’re all athletes, but because it applies to the rest of life too.

You’re either building up or using up.

And if you don’t take enough time to recover from those events in your life where you’ve use up your stored reserves, the same slump will hit – first in the form of decreased performance, and then in poor health.

Don’t let it happen to you!

The Holidays are a good example of when this happens. During this hectic time you don’t need an excuse to overextend – there are already too many extra tasks and obligations competing for your attention. It’s easy to fall into the trap of burning through reserves in order to deal with life and enjoy all the events.

You need to take the time to recover, especially from situations where you use up your reserves. If you don’t, poor performance and health issues are sure to follow.

Don’t let that happen to you;-)