The Power Of Strategic Rest

Lawyering is physical. The depositions. The trials. The appellate briefs.

The intellectual brawl takes a toll on our bodies. The inability to disengage our legal minds leads to interrupted sleep patterns and bouts of insomnia. Insomnia leads to perpetual fatigue. Fatigue leads to compromised concentration. Compromised concentration requires increased hours to consume important information. Our dark hair turns grey. Our waistlines grow. Our blood pressures tick upward.

Because we are lawyers, we logically recognize the physical toll of our trade and rationally attempt to remedy it. We go through phases of competitive exercise immersion. Trapped in our professional worlds of abstract “wins” and cases that drag on forever, we relish scratching our competitive itch in the finite worlds of weekend triathlons and local 5Ks.

We find comfort in our training regimens. The exercise-induced exhaustion slows the speed of our thoughts and fosters increased focus. We run away from our clients and co-workers. We swim through arguments to be made at upcoming hearings. We bike towards more fluent opening statements.

As the miles tick by, our minds find similarities between the work we perform in our Oxfords and the play we perform in our Asics. Lessons are learned through burning muscles and aching joints that can be applied to our professional lives. The value of the pre-race taper and post-race recovery is an example of such lessons.

The Value Of The Pre-Race Taper

Endurance athletes ranging from swimmers to runners utilize the pre-race taper to maximize their performance in a given competition.

For months at a time, elite endurance athletes push their bodies to the brink of total annihilation. In peak training phases, the Olympic swimmer, Michael Phelps, swims nearly 50 miles a week, swimming for 5-6 hours a day, six days a week. In addition to time spent in the pool, he lifts weights three days a week, performing body weight exercises such as push-ups and weighted pull-ups.

While grueling periods of training are necessary for elite fitness, optimum race day performance often hinges upon a delicate phase of training known as the taper. The taper is a period of time (usually a few weeks) before a major targeted race wherein the quality and quantity of the athlete’s workload is steadily decreased. Rather than increasing the intensity of the workouts in anticipation of the big race, the workouts are decreased so that the body can begin to rest and rejuvenate. The rest and rejuvenation of the taper period are seen as a vital part of the process of preparing the body for peak human performance at the targeted time. Regardless of the training in the months leading up to a race, an insufficient taper can leave the leave the athlete sluggish and unprepared to race.

Trials are intellectual endurance competitions. Maintaining good technique and cognitive clarity in the face of unanticipated variables and mind-numbing fatigue are part of the challenge.

How many of us build a meaningful taper period into our pre-trial preparation? Pre-Trial Orders. Motions in Limine. Jury Instructions. Jury Interrogatories. Witness outlines. Witness prep sessions. Whether attributable to poor pre-trial planning or plain old procrastination, we often find ourselves increasing, not decreasing, our workload as we approach a big trial. Is that conventional wisdom smart? Could a planned taper period actually improve our legal performance when it matters most?

The Value Of The Post-Race Recovery

While the taper is used to optimize short-term race performance, endurance athletes use the post-race recovery period to maximize long-term overall performance.

Ultra marathoners run grueling races in excess of 26 miles. Iron Man triathletes compete in a race that consists of a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike, and 26.2-mile run. These types of elite endurance races pound the body into submission. The cumulative effect of hundreds of miles of pre-race training coupled with the stress of the race day competition leaves the body on the brink of total failure.

During the post-race recovery period, training is drastically reduced or stopped all together for a period of time following a particularly taxing competition. With time away from the grueling training regimen, the body’s biological systems are no longer under the stress loads. The period of rest allows broken down muscles to heal and become even stronger. Athletes experience overall increased health as their immune systems strengthen with the rest. The post-race recovery period is a vital part of preserving the athlete’s long-term ability to successfully compete.

How many of us bounce from one highly stressful legal project to the next without a proper recovery period? Do we adequately acknowledge the toll that it takes on our minds and bodies? Most of us have a long list of reasons why we feel we cannot afford to take more time to recover. Could selfishly claiming our recovery period actually increase our productivity for both our clients and our firms?

The doom and gloom statistics about lawyers’ mental health are everywhere. The suicide rates. The increased depression. The career unhappiness. The commodity we sell is our mind. When it is “on the fritz” we cannot effectively compete. Most of us will never run ultra marathons or swim in the Olympics. But perhaps we have something to learn from these athletes.

The game changing power of strategic rest.

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Jed Cain is a trial lawyer and partner with Herman, Herman, & Katz, LLC in New Orleans, Louisiana. Jed writes about family, the law, and Louisiana current events at Cain’s River. He can be reached by email at [email protected].