Rest for Performance And Mental Health
Rest is one of the more interesting areas in sports psychology. There is actually very little agreement on what exactly we mean by ‘rest’ (a true working definition). And although there is growing scientific evidence that rest, as we define it, is a key ingredient for performance consistency, there’s still considerable debate about just how much and when.
There are a couple of essential points to clarify at the beginning of an article that focuses on the concept of rest. First, we have to acknowledge that rest is not the same as sleep. For it to count as rest, you need to be awake; otherwise, it’s a different thing! If you’re resting and fall asleep, you switch from one type of process to another.
Another crucial aspect for us to acknowledge is that rest is not always easy for many high-performing individuals. If you logically think about this, it makes complete sense.
Rest Is Hard For Many Elite Performers 😬
Individuals who excel in their particular sport or performance area often do so because (in part) they tend to be uncomfortable with stillness and downtime. They fill their waking hours with all sorts of things that can make them far better at their particular sport than the other 99% who partake in it.
I stopped counting the number of individuals I’ve assisted since I began working as a sports psychologist in 2005, but it must now run into the thousands. It is common for many of our sport psychology clients to struggle with finding a level of calmness and rest, due to the high ratio of “doing” and “improving” time.
If you’re reading this and you’re like that, then rest assured, you are in the majority. As is the case with many mental training techniques, we aim to harness the beneficial aspects of natural occurrences while minimising any negative aspects. This is an excellent example of trying to do that. Of course, we want our clients to be “busy little bees” when it comes to preparation, but what if this goes too far?
Burnout Central – That’s what
Like an electric car, humans are designed to go, rest, go, rest and not go, go, go and go some more.
The research suggests that the younger you are, the more likely you are to be able to get away with this to some degree, but it is far more important to schedule a certain amount of rest.
For those who are extremely time-poor, resting is a simultaneous activity to some form of active recovery. I don’t mind the idea of my client watching a Netflix show whilst at the same time doing some very gentle stretching exercises. Especially if this means that they do both rather than one, or even worse, neither 😬.
If you need a helping hand with this, then step one is to complete one of our four MTQs here, which will assess the impact of the amount of rest you have or lack on both mental toughness and mental health.
A Better Definition of Rest
That brings us to the question of what exactly we mean by rest. If I were on a committee tasked with developing a universal working definition, I would opt for something like this.
Rest is the human state in which the individual is awake but not attempting to achieve anything.
This is a fundamental idea because if we focus too much on the concept of stillness, we would miss out on the possibility that, for example, a leisurely walk is often very restful for many individuals. However, as a qualified psychologist, it needs to be relaxing if it has no purpose, no objective, and no goal; therefore, it can simply be a period of respite between two quite contrasting sessions geared towards productivity.
It is tempting to list a whole range of activities that my clients have often suggested when I insisted that they include some form of rest in their weekly schedule. The issue with this and why I’m going to resist the temptation to list anything here: what one person finds genuinely restful, another person finds anything but.
Start with some Really Simple Mindfulness
For those who are genuinely uncomfortable with scheduling a certain amount of rest into their week, a reasonable place to start is by following a mindfulness audio guide. There are hundreds available online, but I’ve included below one that I created in 2023, which is free and does a pretty good job. It’s 11 minutes, and you can download your own copy, so you are not dependent on being connected to the Internet to listen to it over and over again 😇.
How Much Rest and When
To conclude, it is only fair for me to offer some insights into the amount of rest that is likely needed and how often it should occur. I liken this question to one about how much sleep is the right amount. Although I’m always tempted to answer this question with “as much as possible”, the fact is that we now know that for virtually every human, less than seven hours per night and more than nine hours per night is problematic.
Here are my tips on Rest as a Key Ingredient to Optimal Performance.
- Try to have one, ideally two resting blocks per day.
- Schedule these in, like other activities, otherwise they can vanish in the fervour of your productivity.
- Be mindful of individual differences. Some people will find socialising restful, others may need to be alone.
- As you approach a competition, the amount of rest (in terms of duration and frequency) you need increases.
- Finally, if in doubt, too much rest is probably a better planning error than too little.
