You'd Never Train Like This. Why Do You Lead Like This?

You wouldn't dream of riding at threshold seven days a week. You know what happens: overtraining, declining power, eventual breakdown.

Yet look at how your team operates. Full gas. Every day. No periodisation. No recovery weeks. Just linear effort from January to December.

You already understand energy oscillation. You live it on the bike. The question is: why haven't you applied it to your team?

Performance psychologists Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz identified this exact problem in their Harvard Business Review research on what they called the "Corporate Athlete." Their finding was stark: while athletes engage in rhythmic interval training, executives pursue linear energy expenditure—leading to burnout and diminishing returns. Read the original HBR piece.

The recovery phase isn't luxury. It's where adaptation happens. You know this from your training. Your FTP doesn't improve during the interval—it improves during the recovery that follows.

Your team works identically. But you've designed a system that treats every week like race week.

Step 1: Audit the Performance Pyramid

Loehr and Schwartz identified four capacity levels: physical (sleep, nutrition, movement), emotional (quality of energy), mental (focus), and spiritual (purpose). Failure at any level compromises everything above.

Most leadership teams sacrifice physical capacity first when pressure rises. You'd never skip sleep before a sportive. Why accept it before a board presentation?

Your action: Where is your team's pyramid weakest? That's where recovery efforts focus first.

Step 2: Identify Your Race Days

A Grand Tour team knows exactly which stages matter. They conserve energy on transition stages to peak for the mountains.

Your quarter has the same rhythm. Map the five to seven moments that will disproportionately determine results—board presentations, major pitches, strategic decisions. Build your team's energy oscillation around those peaks.

Your action: Look at next quarter. Which days are genuinely race days? Everything else is conservation.

Step 3: Design Recovery Rituals

Recovery isn't rest. Rest is passive—collapsing on the sofa, scrolling your phone. Recovery is active and intentional, like your Zone 2 rides.

For teams, recovery rituals might include: walking meetings, meeting-free deep work afternoons, structured "what went well" debriefs, or explicit agreements about response times outside hours.

The research from Premier Sport Psychology confirms that high-performing teams use two-question debriefs: "What went well?" and "What confused us?" These aren't bureaucratic—they're recovery rituals that process experience. See the CORE framework.

Your action: Choose one recovery ritual. Implement it as non-negotiable.

Step 4: Protect the Oscillation

The hardest part isn't design—it's protection when pressure rises.

The All Blacks "sweep the sheds" after every match, including World Cup finals. Senior players grab brooms and clean the locker room. The ritual doesn't disappear under pressure—that's precisely when it matters. More on the All Blacks' culture.

Your action: What recovery ritual does your team commit to protecting, even when things intensify?

You periodise your training. Start periodising your leadership.

Your team isn't a machine. It's a system that performs best when it oscillates—just like you do.

What's stopping you from applying your training principles to your team? Hit reply—I read every response.

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