More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
March 27 - April 4, 2021
Both runner and consultant shined extremely bright, only to see their performance plateau, their health suffer, and their satisfaction wane.
We, the authors of this book, are the runner (Steve) and the consultant (Brad).
Is healthy, sustainable peak performance possible? If so, how? What’s the secret? What, if any, are the principles underlying great performance? How can people like us—which is to say, just about anyone—adopt them?
Genetics play an unfortunately undeniable role
The key to strengthening your biceps—and, as we’ll learn, any muscle, be it physical, cognitive, or emotional—is balancing the right amount of stress with the right amount of rest. Stress + rest = growth.
periods of physical and psychological restoration.
continual ebb and flow between stress and rest.
“The leaps and bounds I’ve made over the last several years have come from outside the training environment and how I choose to recover,”
it’s all the things she does when she isn’t training that allows her to do what she does when she is.
the best summer athletes in the world and the best winter athletes in the world appeared to be training quite similarly.
The best athletes in the world weren’t adhering to a “no pain, no gain” model, nor were they doing fitness-magazine popularized high-intensity interval training (HIIT) or random “workouts of the day.”
they were systematically alternating between bouts of very intense work and periods of easy training and recovery, even if that meant walking up hills.
the brightest minds spend their time either pursuing an activity with ferocious intensity, or engaging in complete restoration and recovery.
it also fosters breakthrough ideas and discoveries
1.Immersion: total engagement in their work with deep, unremitting focus
2.Incubation: a period of rest and recovery when they are not at all thinking about their work
3.Insight: the occurrence of “aha” or “eureka” moments—the emergence of new ideas and growth in their thinking
The manner in which great intellectual and creative performers continually grow their minds mirrors the manner in which great physical performers continually grow their bodies.
•Determine when your work regularly starts to suffer. When you find that point, insert a recovery break just prior to it.
the radish-eaters had depleted their mental muscle by resisting the cookies, whereas the cookie-eaters had a full tank of psychological gas and thus exerted far more effort in trying to solve the problem.
Participants who were forced to flex their mental muscle—be it to resist temptation, solve a hard puzzle, or make tough decisions—performed worse on a subsequent task that also required mental energy
we have a single reservoir of brainpower for all acts of cognition and self-control, even those that are unrelated.
they subsequently struggle on a wide range of unrelated tasks,
Even physical challenges (e.g., performing a wall sit) can be impaired by exerting your mental muscle beforehand.
the physical performance of people who are mentally fatigued suffers.
those who were forced to resist the tempting food were more likely to give their phone number to, and even accept a coffee date
You may want to think twice before encouraging your significant other to go on a diet.
fMRI
the brain of a tired person acts in a peculiar way.
Other experiments show that after someone is forced to exert self-control, activity in the prefrontal cortex diminishes altogether.
The good news is that just like the body, by stressing and allowing the mind to recover it also becomes stronger.
the more we resist temptation, think deeply, or focus intensely, the better we become at doing so.
by successfully completing smaller productive changes we can build the strength to complete larger ones in the future.
we cannot continuously use our mind (at least not effectively) without at some point experiencing fatigue.
All of this takes us back to where we started: stress + rest = growth.
fatigue on one task spills over into the next, even if the two are completely unrelated.
•Only take on a few challenges at once. Otherwise you’ll literally run out of energy.
•Tweak your environment to support your goals.
Waitzkin
The Art of Learning, it’s how he cultivated that
There was more than one occasion that I got up from the board four or five hours into a hugely tense chess game, walked outside the playing hall and sprinted fifty yards or up six flights of stairs. Then I’d walk back, wash my face, and be completely renewed. To this day, virtually every element of my physical training also revolves around one form or another of stress and recovery . . . If you are interested in really improving as a performer, I would suggest incorporating the rhythm of stress and recovery into all aspects of your life.
He unknowingly stumbled upon a concept that would become one of the foremost concerns in modern society: stress.
an innate stress response that we now know is shared by just about every living organism.
humans and rats alike seemed to adapt to each unique stressor, building up increased resistance.
They learned that stress isn’t just harmful; it can also serve as a stimulus for growth and adaptation.
the body marshals an army of biochemical building blocks and directs them to the area under stress, making the body stronger and more resilient.
once we cease lifting weights, the body transitions into something called an anabolic state, in which the muscle is built up so it can withstand more stress in the future.
If the amount of stress is too large or lasts too long, however, the body fails to adapt.
Today, many refer to the exhaustion stage as being under “chronic stress.”
The body rebels and enters something called a catabolic process, or a state of persistent breakdown.
