Pro sport now understands that performance is round-the-clock. What if the rest of us took the same approach?
Most of us put our health and fitness in a box. It's how our calendars work. We might go for a run at lunch, do a gym session before work, take a class at the weekend and, when it's done, it's done. Ticked off. Job done. On to whatever's next on the list. But what about the other 23 hours of the day?
This is where elite sport has undergone a subtle but significant shift over the last two decades. For years, professional sport focused primarily on what happened during training and competition. But as margins became smaller and smaller, teams started looking elsewhere for gains.
Today, most professional teams employ an array of specialists focused on every facet of an athlete's life – sleep, nutrition, recovery, travel, hydration and more. Circadian research is now adding another layer to this approach, by demonstrating how health and performance are influenced not just by what we do, but when we do it. Recovery has become a science in its own right. It’s why, in many ways, we’re now in the era of the 24-hour athlete.
Why this matters to us
For most of us, this approach sounds exhausting and unnecessary. We’re not professionals, and we don't have recovery coaches, chefs and sports scientists looking after us. We have jobs, families, commutes and unpredictable schedules. A completely fair response, which is precisely why the idea is so useful.
Most of us are highly intentional about the hours when we're active. We schedule meetings, workouts, appointments and commitments. Yet we often leave the foundations of performance to chance. Sleep happens when it happens, meals fit around the day, recovery is squeezed in if possible. Athletes increasingly work the other way around.
Sleep is perhaps the clearest example. You can complete the perfect training session, but if you consistently sleep poorly, you'll struggle to realise its full benefits. Recovery, cognitive performance, mood, immune function and adaptation to exercise are all influenced by the quality of your sleep.
And recovery doesn't just happen at night. Hydration, nutrition and periods of intentional rest all influence energy levels, concentration and physical performance for all of us, not just athletes.
The mindset shift
The trick is recognising that however busy we are, the performance window available to us is much wider than we think it is.
We may not be professional athletes and we certainly don't need to live like monks. But there is real value in shifting to a more holistic, round-the-clock approach to our health.
That might mean paying more attention to what happens after training rather than viewing the workout as the end in itself. It could mean prioritising recovery through hydration, adequate protein intake and intentional rest. It might mean protecting your sleep with the same commitment you give to exercise.
Perhaps the biggest lesson we can take from elite sport is that performance isn't the product of isolated moments of effort, it’s down to small, repeatable daily habits which accumulate over the long-term. This is a 24 hour approach that we can all benefit from.
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