Stop pushing through. Why the strongest leaders need to stop more.
I am training to climb Mt. Matterhorn. This week I'm barely moving. And it's making me stronger.
I'm preparing to climb Mt. Matterhorn (Switzerland) later this year. For weeks, my training has been hard and consistent — long hikes with added weight, stair master sessions, strength training, conditioning, mobility. I have integrated nutrition, sleep, training and data. My body and mind have been completely committed to building the capacity for one of the most demanding climbs in the Alps.
And then this week? I'm walking. Doing yoga. A light gym session. That's it.
It's my deload week. And it feels — wrong.
Why? Because mentally and physically I feel fine. I'm not exhausted. I'm not burned out. I'm not injured. My instinct is that I don't need this.
I could do more. I should do more. I have the energy. I have the drive. Why would I hold back?
This impulse is completely natural. It's also completely wrong. And it's the same impulse that over time destroys the capacity of the highest performers in business.
The paradox the best athletes know
Here's what sports science tells us about the deload week: the pause is not where you rest. It's where you grow.
Muscle fibres don't develop during the workout. They develop during recovery. The training session creates the stress — micro-tears and metabolic demand. The pause is when the body does something extraordinary: it doesn't just repair back to where it was. It overshoots. It adapts to a level higher than before the stress.
Sports scientists call this supercompensation — the post-recovery period during which the body reaches a higher performance capacity than before the training stimulus. (1) First described by Russian physiologist Nikolai Yakovlev in the 1950s, it is now the foundational principle of elite athletic training. (2)
Sports Science Insight.
Supercompensation is the biological basis of all athletic improvement. Elite athletes have deliberate training rhythms — cycling between stress and recovery. The Tour de France rider does not race every day. The Olympic sprinter does not sprint every session. Their performance keeps rising because their training is structured around planned recovery, not continuous effort and output. (3)
The most critical insight: if we never deload, we never get the supercompensation.
We interrupt the adaptation cycle. We accumulate fatigue on top of fatigue. And eventually, over time, our performance declines despite all the effort.
Not because we're weak, can't train well enough, or don't have the capability to become the best we want to be. It's the exact opposite — we were too capable and we pushed through.
The same capability that makes us excellent also makes us good at ignoring the signals meant to warn us.
We know this about athletes. We ignore it entirely about ourselves.
Here is what we say instead:
"I'll rest when I'm tired."
"I don't need a break , I feel fine."
"I just need to push through this quarter."
"I can't afford to stop right now."
Sound familiar?
The problem is that high performers are genuinely capable of enormous, sustained output. We can push through. Our system is strong. And this becomes our mousetrap.
The same capability that makes us excellent also makes us brilliant at overlooking and overriding the signals we need to pay attention to — in order to sustain the same level of performance, and reach higher.
Breaks, plateaus, burnouts don't happen overnight. They come slowly.
First we stop growing. And then one day we find ourselves in a place where we arrive home at night and feel there is nothing left that gives joy anymore — it feels as if nothing matters. We are simply exhausted, joyless and often feeling numb.
Reframing the break: Capacity is built in pauses.
Most of us see breaks through one lens: recovery. We were depleted, now we're refilling.
This framing is fine, but it misses the deeper purpose. And it almost never motivates a high achiever to actually take the break, because high achievers don't feel depleted until very late.
The break is not where we recover. It's where we grow. Capacity expands through pauses.
Here is a different frame, backed up by science:
Performance Psychology
Performance psychologist Jim Loehr, co-founder of the Human Performance Institute, spent decades studying elite athletes. Together with journalist Tony Schwartz, they translated this work for executive performance. (4)
Their core insight was simple but radical: the highest performers don't operate at a constant level of output. They train and work in cycles. Sustained performance requires rhythm - between intense demand and deliberate recovery. The recovery isn't optional. It's the mechanism that makes the performance possible.(5)
In mountain climb training - or any athletic training - this looks like a deload week: doing half the intensity and half the volume before the next peak.
In leadership it looks like pauses: micro, meso and macro.
Adult Development Theory
Harvard psychologist Robert Kegan found that adult development - the kind that expands our capacity to handle more: more complexity, more pressure, more ambiguity - doesn't happen through loading more skills and competencies into our brains. (6)
It comes from transforming how we think.
This transformation requires what Kegan calls a holding environment , a term originally named by psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott (7) and later applied to leadership development by Harvard professor Ronald Heifetz in his Adaptive Leadership framework. (8)
A 'holding environment' is a space - psychological, relational, or structural - that is safe enough to allow us to loosen our grip on who we currently are, so we can grow into who we need to become.
In practice, this is the space we create when we step away from the daily rush - through a retreat, a coaching relationship, a sabbatical, or any deliberate pause that allows us to step back and examine:
Where am I?
What patterns am I holding onto?
What needs to shift for me to grow into the next level of leadership?
Without this space, we stay operational. We execute. But we don't evolve.
Put these three together and the message is clear: the pause is where our capacity expands.
Not just our energy levels. Our actual capacity — to lead, to think, to hold complexity, to connect, to become.
However, not all pauses are equal.
And the reason most leaders feel perpetually un-recovered is that they only ever attempt one type — and even then, not well.
More on the three levels of pauses and what each one builds — in my next newsletter.
Reflection Corner
1. Where in your current rhythm do you have a genuine pause - not a break from work, but one that allows real mental disengagement?
2. What would a real pause look like for you - one where your mind is fully elsewhere, not just your body?
3. When did you last take a pause that genuinely changed something in you - not just restored your energy, but shifted how you see?
4. What would your next pause make possible - not just for your energy, but for who you are becoming?
5. Do you have a holding environment - a relationship, a space, a practice - that allows your capacity to expand and grow?
Warmly,
The strongest leaders don't push harder. They rest smarter and recover better.
References:
1. Yakovlev, N.N. (1955–59). Supercompensation theory — foundational principle of athletic periodisation. See also: Wikipedia overview. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercompensation
2. NSCA (2017). Central Concepts Related to Periodization. National Strength and Conditioning Association. https://www.nsca.com/education/articles/kinetic-select/central-concepts-related-to-periodization/
3. Haff, G.G. (2011). The Science and Practice of Periodization: A Brief Review. Strength & Conditioning Journal. https://journals.lww.com/nsca-scj/fulltext/2011/02000/the_science_and_practice_of_periodization__a_brief.6.aspx
4. Loehr, J. & Schwartz, T. (2001). The Making of a Corporate Athlete. Harvard Business Review, January 2001. https://hbr.org/2001/01/the-making-of-a-corporate-athlete
5. Loehr, J. & Schwartz, T. (2003). The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance. Free Press.
6. Kegan, R. (1994). In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life. Harvard University Press.
7. Winnicott, D.W. (1960). The Theory of the Parent-Infant Relationship. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 41, 585–595.
8. Heifetz, R., Grashow, A. & Linsky, M. (2009). The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing