Reclaiming the Recovery Phase
When Recovery Feels Like Too Much Effort
There was a time when I thought recovery was too much effort. I didn’t have the energy to do the good work required to recover. It felt counterproductive: you work hard, you’re tired, you’re stressed, and now you have to do something more to feel better?
So instead, I’d turn the TV on and scroll endlessly. I told myself that numbing my brain and distracting my thoughts was all I could manage, that it somehow counted as rest. But it didn’t. My sleep got worse. My head pounded. My eyes burned. My patience disappeared. I spent hours staring at a screen and wondered why I felt more wired than before.
Why Screens Sabotage Recovery
When you’re under chronic stress, your nervous system needs calm input to shift out of “fight or flight.” But endless scrolling floods your brain with novelty and blue light. Both of which keep your stress hormones elevated. Dopamine spikes. Attention fragments. Your body never receives the message that it’s safe to rest. What feels like unwinding is actually overstimulation in disguise.
The Loop Most of Us Live In
I pushed through the fatigue and told myself I’d start a healthier routine when things slowed down. They never did. I just burned out. I’d wake up wired, crash mid-afternoon, then lie in bed staring at my phone, then the ceiling, while my brain replayed emails and unfinished tasks. That’s full-blown dysregulation.
Most of us live in that loop. We think recovery can be delayed, ignored, or outsourced to a device. It can’t. The real problem is that we never exit the stress phase until we consciously choose to. We train ourselves to push, to carry more, to adapt. But adaptation only happens in recovery. Growth begins only when the body gets the signal that the threat is over.
The Body’s Hidden Signal: “You’re Safe Again.”
When was the last time you gave your nervous system that signal? Not scrolling on your phone. Not zoning out in front of a screen. Real recovery. The kind that tells your body: you’re safe again.
The gym has this figured out. Every athlete knows rest days are where the gains happen. But in daily life, we glorify exhaustion as proof of commitment. We reward burnout, not balance.
Rhythm Over Relentlessness
Your nervous system works like any other system in nature. It needs rhythm. Pressure and release. Tension and relaxation. Without that rhythm, you’re not resilient. You’re just running on fumes.
Recovery isn’t the opposite of effort; it’s part of it. And it’s not passive. It’s training. When you slow your breath and take a few minutes to regulate. You’re not being soft, you’re recalibrating the system that lets you perform, focus, and show up for the people who matter.
Reclaim the Phase
It’s time to reclaim that phase. To treat recovery as an act of strength, not surrender. Because the men who know how to recover are the ones who last.
Watch the Full Breakdown
If you want to see how breathwork fits into this, I break it down in my latest video– how to retrain your nervous system to handle stress the right way, and what real recovery looks like.