In this episode of Stay at the Top, I challenge that assumption and introduce what I believe is the most underutilised lever in sustainable high performance.
Recovery.
Not reactive rest.
Not collapse after a deadline.
Not a holiday you crawl into exhausted.
Intentional, strategic recovery designed into your days, weeks, quarters and year.
Drawing from over a decade inside elite sport and Special Forces environments, I unpack how recovery is built into performance architecture at the highest levels and why corporate culture often ignores it. I also share my own experience of neglecting recovery while working across multiple professional teams, relying on adrenaline and eventually paying the price.
This episode is both a reframe and a practical guide.
In this episode I share:
- Why recovery is misunderstood and treated like a luxury
- The difference between reactive rest and proactive recovery
- What elite sport and the military get right about performance architecture
- Why sustained corporate output without recovery erodes capacity
- The concept of unmanaged load and how it leads to burnout
- Daily brain breaks and why micro recoveries outperform occasional holidays
- The four levels of recovery: daily, weekly, quarterly and annual
- Why reaching the top requires a different strategy to staying there
Key Quotes
“If you don’t have a recovery plan in action, by default you have a collapse plan.”
“Recovery is not the opposite of performance. Recovery is actually the performance accelerator that you need.”
“Sustainable performance is not built on intensity alone. It is built on rhythm and it is built on pulses.”
Episode Resources
Jessica Spendlove Website – www.jessicaspendlove.com
Jessica Spendlove Keynotes – JessicaspendloveKeynotes – Jessica Spendlove
The High-Performance Profile Quiz https://jessicaspendlove.com/quiz/
Jess Spendlove Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jess_spendlove_dietitian/?hl=en
Jess Spendlove LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-spendlove-64173bb8/
About Your Host
Jessica Spendlove | Wellbeing Speaker & High Performance Strategist
Jess Spendlove is an international wellbeing and high performance speaker, coach, and advisor. With over 15 years of experience across corporate leadership, elite sport and the military she is known for helping ambitious leaders and teams optimise energy, build resilience, and sustain peak performance.
As one of Australia’s leading performance dietitians and a trusted voice in executive wellbeing, Jess delivers science-backed strategies that empower individuals, teams and organisations to thrive under pressure and achieve long-term success.
Episode Transcript
The following transcript has been automatically generated and not checked for accuracy
Jess Spendlove (00:39.342)
I know if you’re listening to this podcast that you’ve got big audacious goals and the desire to want to improve your health and your performance. And often, and so often we can find ourselves thinking that the answer to our solution and what we’re seeking is we need more.
We need more discipline, more focus, more optimization, another tool, another hack, another stack, another system. But what if the answer that you were seeking isn’t about doing more?
And in fact, what you actually need to do is reframe that question. And so you aren’t asking yourself, how do I work harder or squeeze more into my day? What if the question that you should be asking yourself is, what am I doing? Or at least, what am I not being intentional or strategic with? Because in my experience, the biggest opportunity that exists for you to achieve your goals and to live a sustainable
performance life is something that you’re overlooking or it’s something that you’ve got limiting beliefs around. It’s something that you think is a luxury. It’s something that you think that you’re going to fit in when you’ve got time and that thing is recovery and that’s what we’re talking about in today’s episode.
Jess Spendlove (02:12.974)
Today we’re talking about recovery. We’re gonna be covering what it is and why I believe recovery is one of the most underutilized areas when it comes to wellbeing and performance outside of the elite sport and the military environments that I’ve spent most of my career in. Now, I get so excited when I talk about this because this means there is so much return on investment and huge potential that is out there.
The first issue I see in this space is confusion around what recovery actually is. There are common misconceptions that it’s a luxury or it’s something that I’m going to take when there’s time. I also see it getting associated with, recovery is a good night’s sleep, or it’s some time on the couch watching my favourite Netflix or Stan or Binge series. Sound familiar? Now, aspects of, while aspects,
Now don’t get me wrong, some of what I’ve just mentioned are aspects or forms of recovery. But what I’m talking about when I refer to recovery is thinking about what is my recovery rhythm and what are the behaviors and what are the cadences that have to be there intentionally and proactively. What I’m talking about is how is recovery designed into my days, my weeks, my months and my years.
years. And this is about allowing you to adapt to the stress that you face, just going about your day, all of the curveballs, all of the tasks, all of the commitments, all of the competing demands. Because recovery is about helping you build resilience and it’s also about expanding your capacity.
Importantly, recovery really needs to be intentionally and strategically designed into the way you live and work. It needs to be proactive. And all we need to do is look over to what the elite athletes and the military are doing.
Jess Spendlove (04:26.048)
And in both of those elite environments, with elite sport and the military, recovery is built into the performance architecture. What this means is that they know that stress is expected, it is planned for, it is trained, it is designed. The load that the operators and the athletes take is planned. And then to combat that, to adapt,
to thrive, well that is what recovery does. And recovery is proactive, it is intentional, and it is a non-negotiable. In these high performing environments, in elite sport and the military, recovery is not resourced, it is not left to chance, it is scheduled and it is protected. Now when I spent…
10 plus years working inside seven performance nutrition programs across every single elite sporting code there is. AFL, NRL, netball, basketball, rugby union, soccer, AFLW, et cetera. Plus the work I do with the Special Forces Command and the consulting that I do there. A big focus of the performance nutrition programs that I run or that I’m involved in or consult to.
is about leveraging and optimizing recovery. And now this isn’t just a nutrition role, every modality, the strength coaches and the sports scientists and the high performance managers, the biggest focus for them, how do we push our athletes and operators in training to their maximum? But then how do we maximize that recovery? Because recovery is where that adaptation actually happens.
Jess Spendlove (06:17.846)
Now in contrast, if we look at what’s happening on a day-to-day basis in the corporate arena, sustained output is an expectation.
And it is an expectation without an equivalent investment in recovery. Long hours appraised, cognitive load is constant, recovery is reactive. We might be squeezing in lunch at our desk. We might be having a three or four PM coffee, which we know we’re going to regret, but we’re so tired that we reach for it. And we spend our day operating in a brain fog, low focus mode.
where instead if we designed our days with performance pulses and then recovery pulses, we not only get the most out of our output, but we then intentionally recover. Meaning we not only get through more in our day, but the way that we feel and the way that we move is elevated.
Now, before I run any of the workshops and keynotes that I do, especially when they’re on broader topics and they cover an element of recovery, I always survey the audiences I’m speaking to beforehand. And every single time I survey on recovery, I am always surprised at what an opportunity this is, particularly in the corporate arena and also for entrepreneurs and founders and business owners. Regardless of who it is,
75 to 80 % of people think it’s a luxury or they feel guilty prioritizing it. A small few understand that it’s important but they struggle to put that knowledge into execution and less than 10 % actually build it in, protect it and see it as the performance lever that it actually is. But here’s the thing, if you don’t have a recovery plan in action, by default you have a collapse plan.
Jess Spendlove (08:17.648)
in.
And what that collapse plan often looks like is you have a deadline or a big project due and you push and then afterwards you fall off a cliff and you get sick. Or you’ve got that big holiday that you’ve been looking forward to for weeks or months or maybe even years and then all of a sudden in the lead up or one to two days into the holiday, you get run down and sick.
Maybe you play the, maybe you spend your weekends playing catch-ups or lounging on the couch rather than activities with your friends or with loved ones or with your children.
If any of this sounds familiar, this is a sign that you need more proactive recovery scheduled in to your life. This is about being intentional, about being structured and about building it in and designing it into your life. Now, I sit here saying this as a reminder to the current version of myself, but also because this was something that I completely neglected for so long.
I know everything that I’m talking about, not just from a professional lens, but from a personal one. Because this was a mistake I made myself. And the irony on this is not lost. There I was getting paid to consult and…
Jess Spendlove (09:47.092)
There I was getting paid to consult and support and work with hundreds of elite athletes across seven professional sports teams with a big focus on recovery, preaching to them, teaching them, creating systems and structures to help them.
There I was not taking any of my own advice working six or seven days a week 10 12 14 hours at a time Sometimes working with two or three different teams a day Starting in homebush maybe with the Giants and then on a shorter day Driving across to Cronulla and working with the Sharks in the afternoon or back out to Blacktown and the Western Sydney Wanderers Potentially over to Daceyville and the New South Wales Waratah
anyone who knows Sydney knows that none of those suburbs are anywhere near each other. I’m talking about the West, further West, I’m talking about South and I’m talking about East. Not only was what I was taking on impossible,
but I was adding so much stress on myself and I was not building in recovery. And for a period of time I was operating and things were flying because I was relying on adrenaline and cortisol and probably too much caffeine. But after a period of time that all came crashing down. And as I say, when you are operating unsustainably, it’s not a case of if, but a case of when everything is going to come crashing down.
Thank
Jess Spendlove (11:24.982)
And so if you are hearing this and you’re thinking I am working long days, longer than I should, I’m not having recovery, I’m taking the burnout vacation, I’m living very reactively, I’ve got the collapse plan, I don’t have the proactive recovery rhythm or the proactive recovery plan, you are not alone. But you are the only person who can change this. And now I’m not talking about needing to go to a health
retreat every month, the tactics I’m about to take you through are designed to fit your life. Because it is what we do on a daily basis that yields the greatest impact and results. And it’s also the easiest for us to implement. If that’s not a win-win, I don’t know what is.
And so if you’re experiencing repeated sickness, sleeping through your alarm, ignoring the warning signs like feeling flat, feeling exhausted, currently operating at 60%, not remembering the last time you felt energized, not remembering the last time that you took your lunch break away from your desk, if this is speaking to you, this is your sign that we need to put more strategic and intentional recovery
pulses and recovery and build a recovery rhythm into our life.
Jess Spendlove (12:57.986)
And the best thing about all of this is that research on recovery rhythms shows that the most effective way to prevent burnout is not by relying on the occasional long break or holiday. Don’t get me wrong, they’re fun and important, but the most effective way to overcome this is building short, regular moments of recovery into everyday life. These are what I like to call brain breaks. These are intentional, stimulant free activities
that you sprinkle across your day, ideally three times a day. Studies demonstrate that these daily micro recoveries create repeated parasympathetic resets. They allow us to down regulate, they allow us to rest, and that these actually deliver the greatest cumulative gains in energy and performance. And to be honest, they are also the easiest to sustain in high demand roles. And whether you’ve got one
minute, three minutes, ten minutes or 15 minutes, there’s a brain break that can fit your life and your schedule.
Jess Spendlove (14:19.918)
Another really important concept to understand is that when you’re really motivated and when you’re really driven that you can just have your eye on your prize and you’ll do whatever it takes to achieve the goal. Or as I like to say, whatever it takes for you to reach the top. But it’s really important for you to understand that what it takes for you to reach the top is not the same strategy as what it takes to keep you there. And I think what we all need to do is to be honest with ourselves
on how many times have you said I’ll rest when things slow down or recovery is indulgent or the weekends in a few days and I’ll just rest then or I’m feeling sick or I’m run down and I’m gonna take half a day off and then I’ll be all good to tomorrow. To be honest if all of the elite athletes out there were approaching life and approaching training like this they would not survive a week.
What they need to rely on is intentional recovery and a periodized approach. And now when you look at how an elite athlete’s year looks, they have periodization, they have deloaded weeks. Every single week is periodized. They’re not training or competing at a high level every single day. They’ve got pre-seasons and in-seasons and off-seasons, and they’ve got restructured recovery protocols on a daily, weekly,
quarterly and yearly basis.
Jess Spendlove (16:00.27)
And now, look, you might be listening to this thinking, this is great Jess, I’m not an elite athlete. Okay, that’s fair enough. But while these elite athletes need it from a physical and a cognitive approach, my argument would be that you are a corporate athlete. You are operating with your foot on the pedal, likely at 100 % every single day. Is that fair?
When was the last time that you thought, okay, well, I’m gonna deload my day or I’m deload my week or I’ve been working extra hours, I’ve been working till midnight every night and now I’m gonna pull back. Sure, you might be thinking that you shouldn’t be working like that, but when the culture is set or when that is being demanded of you, you just go with it. All of that is stress.
All of that you are absorbing and you are taking on, but you are not allowing yourself intentional moments to recover, to reset, and to recalibrate. So all you’re doing is operating in a state of stress without the recovery. And this is going to take a toll sooner or later.
This is your unmanaged load. And any unmanaged load does not build capacity, does not make you better at your job, it erodes it. And what is eventually gonna happen, if it hasn’t already, is that you’ll become tired, you might become unwell, you might become run down, you might become burnt out. And so,
When we look at this, we need to think, okay, well, what opportunities exist for me to overcome this or to deal with this? And the answer to that question is recovery. Because recovery is not the opposite of performance. Recovery is actually the performance accelerator that you need.
Jess Spendlove (18:09.548)
And now there’s a few questions that I would love for you to start to think on. And I don’t expect you to have the answers to these because I don’t expect you to be thinking like this on a regular basis. And if you are, amazing. But in my experience, I would like…
Less than 1 % of people that I have either coached, spoken to, consulted to, run workshops with are thinking like this. So if you are, you are definitely the minority, not the majority. But obviously you’re listening to this podcast and this is all about the tips, tools and tactics to help give you more energy, recover better, elevate your wellbeing and your performance. And so these questions are going to help you to start thinking about recovery as the performance
accelerator that it is. And so the first question is, what is my daily form of recovery?
Now, what I refer to these as, what I refer to these are brain breaks. So for me, a brain break is anything that is intentional, that is stimulant free, and that is proactive. And now before recording this podcast episode, I just went and took an extended brain break. I sitting in my office, working away on the copy edits of my book, and I lost track of time.
I didn’t have my morning brain break and then I was feeling really fatigued. I had low focus, low energy, I had brain fog. I’m sitting there thinking I’ve got this podcast episode outline that I’ve written. How am I going to show up and record this episode? And so for me, I normally take three brain breaks a day, which is what I’m recommending for each of you. But how I would typically take them is two shorter ones and then an extended one in
Jess Spendlove (20:04.448)
afternoon but I had to bring that extended one forward. So I went for a walk about a 10 or 15 minute walk and then I went and drunk a big bottle of electrolytes. For me I was just feeling really thirsty and I like to think I’m quite dialed into what I need and water for me right now I was just needing something more. So I went and filled up my bottle of water, had some electrolytes
After my walk and the difference in how I felt astronomical. I couldn’t believe it how exhausted tired fatigued I felt to how elevated focused energized and ready to go with this episode So even though I do this work, even though I teach this work Even though I am an expert in this space. I still need to remind myself on this Because yes on my regular days and weeks. Yes, I have my brain breaks
I don’t normally need to schedule them into my diary, but right now I’m working on things that are not my normal. This is the first book I’ve ever written and I’ve got deadlines. It’s a real process. Maybe I need to record an episode on that. It’s been a very interesting process, but there are a lot of people involved in this project and there are a lot of deadlines and things need to keep moving because of publication and there’s so many things that happened before.
Anyway, the long and the short of me calling that out is I’m operating with some different tasks at the moment. And I’ve got a deadline on when I need to return my copy edits. I was stuck in the chapters this morning, going over them, finessing them, making sure I was happy with everything. Totally lost track of time. Normally I work in 90 minute blocks to work with the ultradian rhythms, which if you’ve listened to other episodes you might have heard me talk about. But I normally work 90 minutes on
and then a short brain break. Five, ten, twenty minutes depending on how long I’ve got. I probably worked for two and a half, three hours straight this morning. Sure I got up and I made a tea but that wasn’t enough when I’m sitting here focusing on deep cognitive work and then I’m needing the energy and the focus to show up for the podcast episode this afternoon. And so even me, I need to remind myself and have different strategies, have different options in my toolkit that I can pull out and
Jess Spendlove (22:34.9)
needed. The second question you’re going to ask yourself is where is my weekly decompression? What activity or what strategy am I doing weekly to create this psychological detachment from work that deepens my recovery? Now there’s so many things that you can do here whether it’s a tech-free day or a partially tech-free day or time outside in nature or a hike or at the park with your family. Whether it’s a
down bath or a sauna or a weekly yin yoga class. Whatever that is, what is your weekly activity that is creating more separation and deeper recovery? Now, some of these may actually be daily forms of recovery. So for example, a sauna, for some people, maybe that’s something you go and do once a week. And then maybe if you’ve got access at something you do more regularly. So there’s no hard and fast rules here. You’re able to dial things in and out based
what works for you but it’s a really important thing to go what am I doing on a daily basis? What are my brain breaks? What am I doing on a weekly basis? The other two I like to cover off when I talk about recovery plans are thinking about what is my quarterly reset and the way I like to think about this is that elite athletes typically have a few buys each year and these are sprinkled across preseason and in season and this is either where they have extended time away from training
or they don’t compete in season and they have that opportunity to have deeper recovery. Now, yes, again, this is really important from them physically, but it’s also really important from a cognitive or a mental standpoint. And so my question to you is, do you have a quarterly reset? For most of us, we’ve got long weekends, and so that might present an opportunity, but how are you using them?
Are you able to go away? Are you able to do something out of your ordinary? If you can’t go away, can you be a tourist in your own city? This is really about changing up the pace, changing up what you do, and creating that separation.
Jess Spendlove (24:48.054)
And then the last one, which is definitely not going to be a hard sell, is what is your annual off season? So you can think about this about your holiday or forced leave or time away from work, but what are you doing there? Is it restorative? Is it scheduled? Is there something in the diary that is allowing you to get to that point and feeling, yes, you might feel tired and ready for a holiday or a rest, but you don’t feel like you’re falling off a cliff.
don’t feel exhausted. You’re not taking the burnout vacation.
Jess Spendlove (25:26.924)
And now I realize I’m talking about quite a few different forms of recovery here and I dive deeper into all of this in my upcoming book, which I can’t wait to let you know when the pre-sale link is live. I’m still only talking about the book here on the podcast. I haven’t actually shared it on other forms of social media yet. So it’s, you for me, it’s actually really nice to have a space and a place and people to be sharing it with before I launch it and talk about it on all of the channels.
But I do dive really deep into all of this in the book. So if this is an area that you, if this is an area that sounds like an opportunity for you, know that I cover this off there in a lot more detail.
But I guess as I kind of come to the end of this episode and I’ve touched on quite a few things, know, daily and weekly and quarterly and yearly and this idea of proactive recovery, let’s make things simple. Let’s have a focus point. And my recommendation is always going to be, what do you do on a daily basis? Because this,
is not only the easiest entry point, but it yields the biggest return on investment from a time and an intention and a performance point of view, both now and how that compounds into reducing your risk of burnout and to helping you move through your weeks and your months feeling much better. And so my recommendation here is,
to start thinking and start implementing three brain breaks per day. These brain breaks, the conditions for them, they’re stimulant free time, which means no scrolling, no emails, even no podcasts. Really what you don’t want here is inputs. What you want is silence, restoration, being intentional, nourishment. Now, depending on how long you’ve got and what your day looks like, I really believe
Jess Spendlove (27:32.976)
there is a brain break for everybody. So if you’ve only got a couple of minutes, one or two minutes, if you’ve got back-to-back calls or meetings all day, how can you create the conditions to step away, breathe and down-regulate? Maybe it’s just a lap around the level or around your house or around the block or up and down the stairs for a flight or two. If you’ve got a few more minutes, can you do some exercise snacks?
Can you do some squats? Can you do some star jumps or burpees? Now, I realise if you’re in the office, you’re thinking, no, I can’t do that. But is there an opportunity for somewhere private? Can you go to the bathroom? Can you go to a meeting room? If you’re at home, well, less excuses there. For me, well, I haven’t busted out a burpee in a while, if I’m honest. But the air squats or the star jumps or the running man, they are what I’ve been doing.
and I’ve been doing them every hour. So I’ve actually been doing them outside of my brain breaks, but you can definitely use them as part of your brain breaks. And then if you’ve got more time, 10 or 20 minutes, I really think the best thing you can do is get outside and go for a walk. There’s so many benefits there. There’s movement, there’s oxygen, there’s taking time away from screens. If you can walk near blue or green spaces, so be in nature, that can even reduce the stress response greater.
If you haven’t had enough sleep or you’re feeling tired, maybe you listen to a meditation track or a yoga nidra track or that’s also known as a non-sleep deep rest. So there’s a few options there depending on the one to two minutes, the three to five minutes or the 10 to 20 minutes. Choose what works for you. Schedule it in your diary. Have the reminder pop up. It’s so easy to get sucked into the project or the inbox or for the meetings to go over and for us to be not intentional with our
time and then all of a sudden we forget. So if we can use these things to help us and to remind us, we should use them. And think about it, how many times do we schedule our meetings or every single work commitment in our diary? We need to be using that for our personal commitments to ourself as well. And that is our brain breaks.
Jess Spendlove (30:02.286)
And so as we come to the end of this episode, reflect back on those questions, reflect back on what am I currently doing daily, weekly, quarterly or yearly, proactively and intentionally to absorb the stress and load.
And if the answer to all of that is nothing, well, you are not alone. Know that this is a huge opportunity that exists for you. And when you can start intentionally and proactively and strategically implementing recovery into your days, your weeks, your quarters and your years, this is a potent performance accelerator. It’s time to stop thinking of recovery as a reward and as a luxury.
time to start understanding that sustainable performance is not built on intensity alone. It is built on rhythm and it is built on pulses. A performance pulse with a recovery pulse.
Elite sport knows it. The military knows it. It’s now time for everybody to not only know it, but do it and execute it. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode and you think and if you’ve enjoyed today’s episode and you have a friend or a family member or a colleague who you think would enjoy this, please send it along to them because I know recovery is a huge opportunity for so many people. So many people are just pushing through operating in the red
operating at 100 % and then confused as to why they’re getting tired, exhausted or burnt out. Recovery is a huge opportunity and you know what? It’s also enjoyable. That’s the best thing and so whether it’s a few minutes, whether you’re focusing on the daily, the weekly, whatever the opportunity is for you, it is enjoyable and it is the thing that’s going to drive your performance now and for the long run. Thank you for tuning in to another episode
Jess Spendlove (32:01.936)
episode of Stay at the Top. As always, I love hearing from you so if you’ve got questions, feedback, reach out to me on LinkedIn, Instagram or email and on that note I’ll be back again next week with another episode helping you not only reach the top but sustainably stay there. I’ll see you all then.