Page 138 - The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin_Neat plip book

recover between arduous thought pr ocesses in a ches s gam e. At LG E the y ha d
discovered that there is a clear phy siologi cal connect ion when it comes to

recovery—cardiovascular interval training can hav e a pr ofound effect on your
ability to quickly release tension and recover from mental exhau stion. Wha t is
more, physical flushing and ment al clarity are very much int ertwine d. The re
was more than one occasion that I got up from the board four or fi e ho ur s int o

a hugely tense chess game, walked out side the pl aying hall, and spr int ed fi ty
yards or up six flights of stairs. Then I’d walk back, wash my face, and be
completely renewed.
To this day, virtually every element of my phy sical training revolves around

one form or another of stress and recovery. For exampl e, dur ing weight
workouts, the LGE guys taught me to precisely moni tor how muc h time I
leave between sets, so that my muscles hav e ampl e time to recover, but are still
pushed to improve their recovery time. When I began thi s form of int erval

training, if I was doing 3 sets of 15 repetitions of a bench pr ess, I woul d leave
exactly 45 seconds between sets. If I was do ing 3 sets of 12 repetitions with
heavier weights, I would need 50 seconds between sets, if my sets were 10 reps
I would take 55 seconds, and if I was lifting heavy weight s, at 3 sets of 8 reps , I

would take one minute between reps. Thi s is a good baseline for an average
athlete to work with. In time, with cons istent work, rest periods can be
incrementally shortened even as mus cles gr ow and are stressed to the ir large r
healthy limits.

Over the years I have gotten better and bet ter at retur ni ng from ment al and
physical exhaustion. While in my ches s career the neces sity of suc h int ens e
body work may seem strange, in my martial arts life it is clear as da y—t he
fighter who can recover in the thi rty seconds bet ween rounds and in the

irregular intervals between matches will hav e a huge adv antage over the guy
who is still huffing and puffing, mentally or phy sically, from the last ba ttle. On
a more dynamic level, in Tai Chi Chuan , real martial po wer spr ings from the
explosion from emptiness to fullnes s, or from the soft into the ha rd. So the re

are countless moments when I will release all tension for a spl it second in the
midst of a martial flurry. Ultimately, with incr emental training very muc h like
what I described in the chapter Making Smaller Circles, recovery time can
become nearly instantaneous. And once the act of recovery is in our bl ood, we’ll

be able to access it under the most strained of circumstances, becoming masters