VAL sourness from tongue gone, too!
Until recently, I was a devout believer in the notion
that success wouldn’t come unless I was immersed in the
reservoir of hard work.
Put the time in, don’t slack, rewards they come.
The result, a salad of injuries, back, a hip, broken teeth,
temporary blindness.
This has been highlighted over the past year as I’ve thrown an
already genetically weak body, a slim, small and somewhat
ridiculous figure, into combat sports and by surfing only a spot
famous for its collisions and hierarchal breakdown.
Driven by ego, position, identity and competition, of the
metrics available to the WHOOP user, sleep, strain, recovery, I used only
the first two (read “Surf journalist discovers
“antipatico” towards fellow surfers key to improved
performance!” here).
But what if I leant over to the recovery side of the ledger and
trained and surfed only when the meter read green? Might the
replenishment of the well mean less pinched nerves, tweaked knees
etc?
Recovery, of course, as pertaining to WHOOP “reflects how
well prepared your body is to take on Strain, and is a measure of
your body’s return to baseline after a stressor. The size of these
stressors, illness, exercise, psychological stress or sleep
deprivation, determines how much your body needs to recover. When
your Recovery is high, your body is primed to take on strain. When
your Recovery is low, you may be at greater risk for injury, or
overtraining (during intense workouts).”
Four metrics make up your recovery, heart rate variability,
resting heart rate, respiratory rate and hours of
sleep.
Your score is either green, 67% or above, “body primed to adapt
to a larger training load,” yellow, 34% – 66%, “body able to
adapt to high training load but might be compromised based on the
lower end of the spectrum” or red, 33% and below, real easy to blow
out.
I adapted around each colour.
The results were three-fold.
Upon waking if WHOOP was below
thirty-three, it gave me permission to give in to the urgent
softness of my bed, a throwaway text message to my biz partner
indicating I’d be unable to work for the day. Result, an avoidance
of injury due to safety of bed.
Second, it freed me from the idealogical prison of hard work and
put me in a guilt-free and dreamy languor. Less stress.
If green or yellow, which came relatively seldom, I’d surf
longer and with more intent, the breaks in getting in the water
removing the VAL sourness from my tongue and the growl of violence
from my gut. and found a notable improvement in performance.
This is the third benefit of swinging to the rhythm of
WHOOP.
Buy your WHOOP here, fifteen percent discount if you use the code
BEACHGRIT at checkout.
