Professional athletes and personal trainers are well-acquainted with the fact that for best physical performance, muscles need down time in between workouts —recovery time, in order to repair themselves. Depending on the type and intensity of the workout, recovery time may be only 24 hours or two or more days—up to a week. Rest days are essential, non-negotiable, if performance is to stay at a high level or improve. Insisting on pushing through, continuing to work out without recovery time, will result in diminishing returns and eventual damage to the body.
Recovery time is based on the principle that the body cannot sustain being indefinitely “on.” Being “on” needs to alternate with being “off,” otherwise health is undermined by the relentless experience of the “on” stress response. An example of that is the heart muscle, which cannot only be contracting in order to pump blood throughout the body; it also needs to relax. Our heartbeat exemplifies that beautifully. Systole (contraction) is followed by diastole (relaxing); otherwise we end up with arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat) and medical conditions of a range of severity, including the stopping of the beating of the heart altogether.
Similarly, if we are to remain resilient, able to endure and persevere through adversity and bounce back, we need time to rest. We need to push, and we need to rest. As the author of the book of Ecclesiastes wrote, there’s a time for everything. There should be a time for driving hard and a time for relaxing. Relaxing does not mean waffling. It means making time to have certain “repairs” done to our person, and to “refuel.” Recovery time makes it possible to refill our tank, so to speak, so that we have fuel to run on, to keep going if we are to be able to stay in the race.
That is why working long hours on a regular basis, such as due to ongoing, chronic mandatory overtime, can be so damaging. To stay healthy and to function optimally, our bodies, including our brains, need times of rest and recovery time—down time.
