What can you learn from elite athletes about the stress of aging? Jeff Bercovici

The most common mistake athletes make is they go too hard on their easy days and too easy on their hard days. Basically, you know, it goes back to that, that management of fatigue, that you get very different benefits out of intense training than you do out of high volume training. What you want to do is you don't want your high volume training to interfere with your intense training because you know what people will do is they'll say, you know, I know it's an easy day today, but I feel like I got something in the tank. I'm going to go a little bit harder, a little bit faster than I was planning. And then the next day you carry over some of that fatigue. And instead of being able to get to, you know, 95% of your peak, you only get to 80% of your peak and you don't get those really rich benefits that come from small volume, high intensity training.

Hi, my name is Stuart Alsop and this is my podcast Crazy Wisdom where I interview creative people about how they work with stress. What I'm looking for here is the answer to the question, what is the connection between stress and creativity? What role does stress play in the creative process? How do creative people work with stress and how do they manage it on their day to day lives? What I mean by creativity isn't exactly art, although that does include that. What I'm looking for is anybody who is in the active process of creation every day, whether that's starting a company, whether it's creating a great piece of artwork, or whether it's just having a conversation, creating a conversation with another person. I do look for influential pieces of creative work and today I interviewed Jeff Bercovisi. He is the SF Bureau Chief for Inc. And the author of Play the New Science of Elite Performance At Any Age. Jeff has some really interesting things to say about how athletes are older and older and reaching their peaks at later times in their careers. There's a lot of science that goes on behind this. And he digs deeply in his book about the science behind why elite athletes are extending their careers longer and longer. One of the most interesting things that he shares though, is that a lot of it doesn't have to do with fancy equipment, actually has to do with very simple things that they do in their everyday lives. Eating well, getting enough rest. And that's really the most important thing that I found from interviewing him was that basically rest is a huge important process for these elite athletes. Knowing when to take a rest and resting completely in that period of rest, not in this kind of middle ground of like, oh, I'm working out and then I'm resting and stuff. It's pure rest. I think there's a lot of valuable wisdom in here and I hope you can listen to the whole thing. If you like what I'm offering here, please go ahead and subscribe on itunes. Give us a review if you like it. I hope you have a great day.