A Cut Below the Rest
REMOVING THE SPLINTER
And so our experience of—what we come to know as—fitness becomes an endless cycle of false starts. A flush of enthusiasm, followed by slow dissatisfaction, frustration to the point of stopping, then guilt and anxiety—dampened only by the next surge of enthusiasm.
Ad nauseam.
Not so much a path, even a well-worn one, but rails.
And with our ideas about rest equally mistaken, one only mirrored on the flipside of the equation—and for the same reason. The calendar says it’s a rest day. The program prescribed it. Motivation is low. We feel guilty. We’re too busy. We’re disciplined. We’re lazy. Every reason, every rationalisation— anything and everything except what your body reports.
As in any system where one element affects all, it’s no surprise to find that here too, we’re equally one-noted. And so our recovery, too, although on a far shorter (daily) cycle, becomes the same series of attempts.
It is good— dare I say ‘normal’ — to feel tired at the end of each day.
It’s not so good to be exhausted. Let alone during the day. Everyday. Physically bone tired, with a side of flat fogginess. As a default— and not just disproportionate to anything that was done, but seemingly unrelated.
Seemingly, because:
The body always tells the truth. Our interpretation of it is almost always wrong.
Exhaustion is rarely the result of doing too much, but of doing things poorly. Task-switching, fragmented attention, constant interruption, and cognitive load that never ceases.
Because this exhaustion is rarely the result of doing more, it’s the result of doing things poorly. Task switching. Fragmented effort from constant interruption. High (enough) cognitive load that never ceases. We are not working harder.
We are working worse.
And while we can and should clean up our focus, attention and awareness, and— beyond the scope of this essay— learn to manufacture the mental ease of ‘flow’ — even then, in the absence of a fitness practice, it assuredly leads to a misread when it comes to rest.
And if you’re now thinking, What!, I can’t even get doing nothing right!
You’re spot on. Almost. Because exhaustion is almost always taken as a signal to rest, when more often than not, what’s missing is not recovery.
And, once again, I’ll direct you to your foot. Because you might have been on your feet all day— taking what you needed from your feet— without once considering what they might need. Admittedly, it seems rather absurd. Feet are for standing, after all.
And you’re right. But extend that same one-sided extraction—always taking, never giving—to the entire system. Physical and psychological. All day. Every day.
And then you’re so exhausted you plonk yourself down on a couch with a remote, or you pick up your phone. And lock yourself in for a few more hours of mindless mental churn until something jars you out of it and you stumble into one more night of unsatisfactory slumber, before waking bleary-eyed to go through the whole grim process again.
Ad nauseam.
You’re exhausted because you wouldn’t know deep rest if it reached out of whatever screen you’re hypnotised by and slapped you.
But it’s not just physical fatigue, of course. There’s also the low-grade dissatisfaction, or irritation with… everything. And that comes from deadlines, decisions, notifications, and conflicts—all of which activate arousal systems (cortisol, adrenaline) but offer no resolution.
That’s why this feeling seems to draw from both poles. You’re wired and tired. because you aren’t restoring equilibrium, only further scrambling it.
All leading to an eternal restlessness and displacement that comes from never working to the limits of your physical capacities—much less regularly— compounded by chronic mental stress with no physical outlet.
Tension without release. To use that beautiful Shakespearean turn of phrase from The Matrix— you have a splinter in your mind that comes from steadfastly ignoring your physical and psychological needs.
Not once in a while, or a couple of days a week, but at every turn.
As. Per. Normal. An unwavering disregard for what you are.
Correspondingly, you never enjoy the deep physical and psychological rest and relief that comes from doing so.
And you never will with more of the same. The autonomic nervous system is exactly that: autonomous. Involuntary. You can’t wish yourself relaxed. You can’t think your way into recovery. Training is one of the few places in modern life where a full fight-or-flight response is not only possible but rewarded, where the stress response can discharge completely, where arousal finds resolution.
So, if you want to rest, you’ve got to earn it.
Not morally or, worse still, transactionally - “I worked hard, so I deserve this.”—but fundamentally.
Deep rest is the product of real demand. Not perceived effort, not busyness, not suffering, but something your body recognises as legitimate: consistent, integrated, sustained. Because you can only recover from what you did, and if there is no real signal, there is no real response.
Again, your body and mind reflect what you do. Exactly. And so when your efforts are piecemeal and either unbalanced or even missing the physical or psychological challenge, or similarly fragmented, inconsistent, or hollow, then so will your recovery be.
And so we sit in a strange physiological middle ground: never fully “on,” never fully “off.” Like a car idling—engine running, fuel burning, wear accumulating, but going nowhere. Not stressed enough to adapt, not recovered enough to repair.
Lose, lose.
The longer you are unfit, the more that splinter will callous and sooner or later, that nagging, gnawing feeling of the organism— you — trying to signal what it needs, in the only way it can, means you will never rest.
But then, most don’t know what they’re missing. Over time, something more subtle happens: you lose your reference points. What stress feels like. What recovery feels like. What “normal” even is. Everything sits in that same dull middle ground—never fully engaged, never fully restored—and so inevitably you begin to believe this is just how it is.
Such that the feeling of being well rested is the outlier of all outliers.
You could spend three weeks on a beach with a total disconnect from work and no internet connection, and still miss it. And most do. Because all it requires is enough acknowledgement, respect, and alignment with what you are. And when you experience this properly—when effort is real and rest is earned—it feels different. No guilt. No negotiation. No background noise. Just a system returning to baseline.
Certainly, there are those who move from one warm blanket to the next and are miserable for it, but that feeling— when rest is legitimately the best physiological and psychological card to play— is an utterly alien concept to most of society.
That is rest.
And with a practice weaving the demands of body and mind throughout your life, the appropriate rest becomes just as seamless. Not a standalone act —nothing is— but a response.
Never a ‘reward’—as we’ll look at next time—but a simple chain of cause and effect.
So if you want to escape this weary damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t malaise, punctuated only by the resentment of false choice, the answer is a practice. A practice that asks and answers the demands of body and mind—never to dominate your life, only underpin it.
To remove a splinter so that you can live and rest in peace.
And if that’s not having your cake and eating it, I don’t know what is.
Enjoy your weekend
- OLI