Live Your Life Like A Sprinter

To live like a sprinter is to break life down into a series of manageable intervals consistent with our own physiological needs and with the periodic rhythms of nature.

This insight first crystallized for Jim when he was working with world-class tennis players. As a performance psychologist, his goal was to understand the factors that set apart the greatest competitors in the world from the rest of the pack.

Jim spent hundreds of hours watching top players and studying tapes of their matches. To his growing frustration, he could detect almost no significant differences in their competitive habits during points. It was only when he began to notice what they did between points that he suddenly saw a difference.

While most of them were not aware of it, the best players had each built almost exactly the same set of routines between points. These included the way they walked back to the baseline after a point; how they held their heads and shoulders; where they focused their eyes; the pattern of their breathing; and even the way they talked to themselves.

It dawned on Jim that these players were instinctively using the time between points to maximize their recovery.

Many lower-ranked competitors, he began to see, had no recovery routines at all.

When he hooked up the top players to EKG telemetry, which allowed him to monitor their heart rates, he made another startling discovery. In the sixteen to twenty seconds between points in a match, the heart rates of top competitors dropped as much as twenty beats per minute. By building highly efficient and focused recovery routines, these players had found a way to derive extraordinary energy renewal in a very short period of time.

Because lesser competitors had no comparable routines between points, their heart rates often remained at high levels throughout their matches regardless of their level of fitness.

The best competitors were using rituals to recover more efficiently and to better prepare for each upcoming point.

The performance consequences of instituting precise betweenpoint rituals were dramatic.

Imagine two players of relatively equal talent and fitness in the third hour of a match. One has been regularly recovering between points, while the other has not. Clearly, the second player will be far more physically fatigued. In turn, fatigue has a cascade effect.

A tired player is more susceptible to negative emotions such as anger and frustration, which will likely push his heart rate still higher, and likely lead to muscular tension. Physical fatigue also makes it far more difficult to concentrate.

The same phenomenon applies even for those of us who work in sedentary jobs. Imagine that you have been sitting for long and continuous hours at your desk, operating under very high pressure. Fatigue is a likely consequence, and so is susceptibility to negative emotions and to distraction, all of which ultimately undermine performance.

In tennis, Jim’s research proved this in measurable ways. The more linear or unvarying players’ heart rates became, the worse they tended to play and the more likely it was that they lost their matches. Too much energy expenditure without sufficient recovery caused their heart rates to become chronically elevated. Their performance was equally compromised when their heart rates remained chronically low — typically a sign that they were not committed enough or had given up the fight.

Even in a sport such as golf, which requires very little expenditure of physical energy, rituals that balance energy expenditure with recovery are critical. Jack Nicklaus was remarkable for his skill and consistency, but also for his remarkable ability to analyze the elements that contributed to his success:

I was blessed with the ability to focus intensely on whatever I’m doing through most distraction and usually to the exclusion of whatever else might otherwise preoccupy me. Nevertheless, I can’t concentrate on nothing but golf shots for the time it takes to play 18 holes. Even if I could, I suspect the drain of mental energy would make me pretty fuzzyheaded long before the last putt went down. In consequence, I’ve developed a regimen that allows me to move from peaks of concentration into valleys of relaxation and back again as necessary.

My focus begins to sharpen as I walk onto the tee, then steadily intensifies as I complete the process of analysis and evaluation that produces a clear-cut strategy for every shot I play. It then peaks as I set up to the ball and execute the swing when, ideally, my mind picture of what I’m trying to do is both totally exclusionary and totally positive. Unless the tee shot finds serious trouble, when I might immediately start processing possible recoveries, I descend into a valley as I leave the tee, either through casual conversation with a fellow competitor or by letting my mind dwell on whatever happens into it. I try to adhere to this pattern whether I’m playing my best or worst, but obviously have to work harder at it when things aren’t going well.

Balancing stress and recovery is valuable in any performance venue. In 1998, for example, the United States Army undertook a study to assess productivity during warfare. The measure was how many shells a gunnery crew could land on a target during a three-day period. One crew was told to shoot as many shells as it could manage over the entire three days. The second crew was told to take intermittent naps. For the first day, the nonstop shooters landed more shells on the target than their colleagues. By the second day, the accuracy of the nonstop shooters progressively waned and the intermittent nappers gained the lead for good.

Periods of recovery are likewise intrinsic to creativity and to intimate connection. Sounds become music in the spaces between notes, just as words are created by the spaces between letters. It is in the spaces between work that love, friendship, depth and dimension are nurtured.

Without time for recovery, our lives become a blur of doing unbalanced by much opportunity for being.

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