Rest Protocol to Beat Your Best: how elite performers match work with time off and breaks.

You can be incredibly driven and still be held back by the one thing you keep postponing: recovery. After DMing 50 founders, business owners, and leaders to ask what limits their performance, I got a surprisingly consistent answer: rest, recovery, and sleep. Not strategy. Not hustle. The basics we all “know,” but rarely protect on the calendar. Drawing from the book *Peak Performance* by Steve Magnus, I share the work-rest rhythm that shows up again and again in research and elite training. ...

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  Hello and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Shurina, I'm your host, I'm your high-performance executive master, health, stress management, sleep recovery and self-actualization coach, your partner in change and personal evolution, and just someone who is really passionate and obsessed with human potential and doing our best every day. And most importantly, helping each other to strive for, to reach for that best, uplifting each other. And guys, today we are talking about a very important topic, especially for a high performer. We're talking about

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  the other side of performance, which doesn't actually come that easy to high performers at all, who are hardworking individuals who wanna do more and almost occupy every minute of their day, wanting to sleep less, to deliver more, engage with life more, and just do, do, do, go, go, go. And we're talking about rest today, rest, the other side of performance that very often is holding back very capable individuals from truly reaching their best, breaking their own records. For the past couple of weeks, I did an interesting experiment,

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  guys. So I asked 50 founders, business owners, leaders on LinkedIn through DMing them, bugging, interrupting their day. I asked them this question, what I feel is limiting your performance, your potential, your productivity? And what was surprising to me as how almost every single one gave me the same answer. And what's been even more surprising, it's like, you know that, and most of you don't do that. Why is that so? But then I'm also gonna share with you my personal lesson. And I'm like, yeah, that's about it. But what did they say to

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  me? They say, rest, recovery, sleep. They didn't say, you know, strategy, more skill, or not doing more, rest. But again, the craziest part is, we know this, and we're still having a very hard time doing it, actually doing it regularly. Even, well, maybe especially elite athletes. I just finished reading this book, Peak Performance, let me find the full name. So Peak Performance, Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout and Thrive with the New Science of Success, written by Steve Magnus, who used to be an elite runner and now one of

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  the elite high-performance coaches. And he wrote this beautiful book, the, most of the book is about rest, recovery, not about tactics to do more or to do better. And the reason is, most high performers, especially athletes who he works with a lot and writes about a lot, we just have hard times resting. And we need data and proof and some kind of permission sleep to believe that more work isn't always the answer. Sometimes, it's the very thing

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  standing between you, them, me, and our best. Which brings me to a story which Steve also shared in his book on high performance, the story of Roger Bannister. On May 6, 1954, he broke the four-minute mile record, world record, a barrier that some scientists at that time even considered to be physically impossible for a human being to break. Because nobody could do it for like years, I don't know, maybe decades or centuries. And this

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  record, it didn't come easily to Roger Bannister. He almost gave up, actually. And before his next attempt, maybe it would be his last attempt, he did something that looked reckless and almost like crazy to the rest of the world. Instead of training harder, he flew to Switzerland for two weeks and did no running, just did some hiking with his buddies. He came home about three days before his record-breaking attempt was scheduled. And he also did not

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  train hard. He barely did any running for those three days. And then he broke the record. Yes, of course, years of training that he did allowed him to get there, but he couldn't do it. He couldn't run his best until he took that break. Recovery is probably one of the hottest topics in elite performance right now, because research and data shows these days that you optimize recovery, and then you unlock the next performance edge.

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  Also, in cognitive domains, scientists and inventors, they knew this for quite a while as well. The breakthrough almost never arrives while you're working hard. It arrives in what is called incubation phase, or after that phase. Work hard, disengage, let your mind go quiet, and the breakthrough idea finds you. That's how it usually happens for the best of us and the rest of us. We have decades of evidence by now, guys. It works for the smartest, most driven people alive and dead, and for the rest of us. I can tell you it

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  works for me. 800 blogs in a row since I committed to writing daily on May 1, 2024. 1,686 podcast episodes since 2017. Hundreds of bespoke workshops for clients across the world. You know, people will tell me, okay, we need this, I'm gonna come up with this in a day or less. 18 years of coaching and a built-out methodology drawn from hundreds of books, articles, certifications, client conversations, a feat most coaches never

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  arrive to in their lifetime. None of that, guys, and more would have been possible without rest built into my work routine. And I still have some work to do on that, as I realized yesterday when I woke up feeling flat. And I'm like, oh, I did not take a break for like two weeks straight, right? Your brain, my brain, our brains run on cycles, the same way an elite sprinter's body does. You sprint, you rest, you sprint, you rest. The harder you sprint, the more you rest. You get the most out of yourself, out of it, when the

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  rest matches the intensity of your work. And back to the book, Steve Magnus, a high-performance coach and elite runner, whose book on performance I just finished, Peak Performance, Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout and Thrive with the New Science of Success. He laid out the very good structure that he's been proven by experience, by research, for maximizing output, whether that's cognitive or physical work or both. To think about performance, guys, whether that's physical or cognitive performance, you have the same nervous system

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  governing it all. Whether you are working hard mentally, or physically, or both, you have one nervous system, one brain, one central and peripheral nervous system that is in charge of that all. Maybe your muscles can do more, but if your brain, your nervous system do not allow that, and actually, the hottest fatigue or burnout to overcome is all in your nervous system, in your brain, in the rest of your central and peripheral nervous system. It's not anywhere physically, right? And very often, again, it's like with

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  recovering after injury, very often what you really need to build up or build out after, again, their burnout or injury, is the proper functioning of your nervous system, which is a little bit harder to trace, but we have in research, in experience, in our data to say like, hey, these practices, which Steve Magnus describes in his book, Peak Performance, and which I'm about to share with you, some of those practices, these practices work, and if you do them, you're gonna get really amazing results. So what are those practices? For cognitive, mental, physical work? Because again, all of it depends

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  on one nervous system that you have for everything. It is recommended from the best practices in our understanding how our brain nervous system work. Work in fifty to nine minute blocks. That's when it comes to cognitive performance, right? If you need to focus on something, writing a report, creating content, figuring out solution to a problem, analyze some data, fifty to ninety minutes, even less if the work is more intense, it requires you to analyze a lot, a lot of data. Or maybe you're just not used to focused work, right? It also takes time to build up this muscle.

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  Fifty to ninety minutes tops, never more than two hours for sure, because your brain releases certain chemicals and it works in such a way, it works in cycles, just like your sleep goes in ninety minute cycles. Or so your brain during the day does the same thing. It needs this periods of work and rest, work and rest. And the more intense the work is, the more intense the rest has to be. So fifty to ninety minutes, less if you're not used to focused work, less if it's something super intense, less if you've been already going quite hard at it, maybe at the end of the day, etc. Right, so fifty to nine minutes, two hours top. And then take breaks, five minutes minimum.

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  The harder the task, the longer the break. During breaks, you gotta do something that does not engage your brain in the same way, does not require focus, does not require effort. Walk, sit outside, nature helps a lot to restore that cognitive and physical capacity. Be social, put on music, take a shower, do the dishes, ditch your phone, which is very important. Sleep, seven to nine hours, that's when your brain learns, connects the dots, comes up with solutions and ideas that you didn't know about before. Training hard physically as well, go for ten hours or sometimes even more.

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  Athletes across the board, when they are instructed and are able to sleep more, outperform themselves on a regular basis. So sleep is really a superpower. Do not sleep less if you wanna perform better, sleep more. Hit a wall mid afternoon sometime, maybe you've been working really hard in the morning and you're like exhausted by eleven or twelve, take a nap. NASA research shows that that nap, twenty minute nap, what is recommended for performance later in the day, twenty minute nap restores your capacity to perform a lot better than any coffee could dream of.

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  And plus, it doesn't interrupt with your sleep cycle, which you need to rest even better for then to come back to the next day and do better or your best. Naps are better taken before four P M., so it doesn't interrupt your main sleep cycle. It's a nap, it's great for your performance. And take one full day off a week. Unplug mentally, physically, do not try to do more schedule, more figure things out, do all the errands, you know, like unplug, take time to just unplug mentally and physically and do something that actually restores you. More stress, more rest.

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  That's what you wanna understand about high performance. More stress, more rest. The harder your sprint, the harder your stop has to be. And I recently was reminded of that when, like, yesterday was Wednesday and I woke up and I felt so flat, like, I don't wanna do anything, I don't wanna work, there is no creativity, I just wanna sit and stare into nothingness for a while or take nap, take walks, I just don't wanna push. And I remember promising myself at some point, because I noticed those cycles that sometimes I forget to take my day off for a week or even a couple of weeks. And I would come to the space on one day, I'm like, I don't wanna engage with life,

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  like, I would lose all of it, no inspiration, no motivation, no spark, I just almost wanted to quit. And I learned that this is the sign, not to quit, but to rest. And I promised myself that when I feel this, unless I absolutely have to show up, I'll clear my schedule and I'll take that day off. And I was lucky, yesterday was a day when I actually did not have to show up for many things, nothing except things that I put on my schedule myself, no commitments to other people, etc. And I thought to myself, oh, that is so lucky. It is Wednesday, it is not Saturday or Sunday, so it's not like a planned weekend, but I can actually take a day off.

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  And I was really lucky because the next day, which is today, I needed to deliver a talk to women in tech community in Cape Town. And I thought to myself, that is so lucky that it is Wednesday the day before and I can really take some time off and it is not Thursday when I had to show up. Because peak performance is like breaking your own personal record. You cannot force it. You can only do your best by scheduling those recovery periods. That's why elite athletes actually know and plan it out along with their intensive seasons,

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  when they need to train hard, when they need to then compete. They schedule this buffer rest zone before and after. So they, like Roger Barnister, can beat their previous records. And a lot of founders and leaders and business owners that I started telling you about in, at the beginning of our podcast, don't do good enough job and they know it to deliver better and to grow from season to season versus burning out themselves more and more

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  and more, to the point where they have to take a lot of time off and they feel very often they don't wanna, they wanna quit and they don't wanna continue. And again, that is the sign of to not quit and that it's, you know, maybe the time to do something else or retire. No, it shows you that you need to take a break and you need to take time off and you need to schedule rest, just like elite athletes do before and after intense seasons in order to do your best and grow stronger and smarter and better from season to season.

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  I remember also reading the book Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martel, who also coaches a lot of high performing entrepreneurs on their systems for execution. And I remember reading his book where he also talks about that, how all entrepreneurs committed to doing their very best when you know intense season is coming or you have those periods in your year, maybe before the end of the year or, you know, there are certain quarters and times when you need to deliver a lot, communicate a lot with your clients, travel, speak, etc. Then Martel was saying that before that, he looks, at the beginning of each year, he

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  looks at his calendar and he knows those busy seasons. And so before that and after that, he schedules a lot, a lot of time off. But especially after that, because he says, well, right before, I don't always, I can't always unplug, so maybe like especially the week before, but right after and a little bit in advance, he schedules a lot of time off. And that makes sense again, because we have one nervous system, it doesn't matter whether you perform physically or mentally, rest is a non-negotiable, especially again, if you wanna grow from season to season, if you wanna deliver your best.

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  Back a little bit to my story, so Wednesday, I felt flat, I'm like, okay, I'm clearing my schedule, even though it's not Saturday or Sunday and I did not officially schedule that time off. But before that, two weeks, I did not have any days off, which I still, again, learning to do to make peace with this idea that I'm not a machine and there are rules of high performance that actually work across the board quite well for humans and have been proven by people, researchers and performers, smarter and wiser and better than myself. So anyhow, so I took day off, I took a couple of naps, I did walking, I met with a new

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  friend of mine, met up and I went to bed at like seven P M. And in the morning today, Thursday, I woke up like I'm ready to go, woo-hoo, ready to perform at that talk that is scheduled later today. So that was my lucky moment. I'm like, I was so lucky to wake up a day before that. It's like, maybe my body knew, who knows? But I needed that rest. And it is my invitation to you guys to make peace, just like those fifty entrepreneurs who know that the rest, recovery, sleep is something they need to work on.

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  So take, take a note and really listen to this podcast episode for the actual protocol of how you deliver your best work mentally, cognitively, physically. Take a few things, put them on your schedule, because if you don't, you're just gonna keep doing the same pattern with insufficient or non-optimized or not optimal rest and recovery. And you'll be getting into those burnout modes or just feeling flat in the most inconvenient moments where you, when you actually need to be your best, right?

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  You are this biophysio of an electrical machine that has, you have your rules of functioning, just like every single one of those elite performers also do. So more stress, more rest, that's what you wanna take away from this podcast. Take at least one day off. When is it scheduled, guys? And what else? A day off is more sleep, no work, no learning, no commitments, nothing you need to work hard on and feels like push.

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  You know, when I took that day off, I came back and my brain is like this bottle of champagne that is shaking and bubbling with those ideas, ready to burst. And that's when you know you really had good recovery, rest period. So what's your personal best or next level goal for your mental cognitive entrepreneur performance? What is it right now? And does your rest strategy match the size of your goal, the performance you need to deliver? Look at your calendar right now. When are your intense periods?

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  And do you have sufficient rest scheduled before and after? Just like Roger Barnister, more often than not, your world breaking result or at least personal best breaking result, I think that's the best each of us can hope for, your best is unlocked more often than not by sufficient rest, right? So when is it? When is your day off scheduled? When is your rest that allows your top performance scheduled? And that's what I want to leave you for today.

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  If you want the full protocol, it's also on my blog, which is linked in the show notes. So check it out if you are a reader or just wanna skim through it. If you have any questions, reach out to Angela, to myself on Instagram, Angela Brain Body Coach, Angela Brain Body Coach, all one world. And till next time, chill the F up and keep growing into your very best.