David Nyeste

Why Recovery Is Existential The most valuable lesson I learned in my years as a competitive swimmer was that the human body has one major advantage over machines: the power to super-compensate. Supercompensation is the capability of the human organism to restore above the initial performance level after exercise. Basically how this works is this: Training/ physical exercise does damage to your body - muscles, mitochondria, neurons, tendons are strained, energy reserves are depleted. After your workout your organism immediately starts to rebuild your body. The exceptionally cool thing that distinguishes living organisms from machines is that your body is smart: it will recover a notch above the initial level - this magical behaviour is called ‘supercompensation’. If you manage to hit the right volume, intensity and most importantly: the appropriate recovery repeatedly, you will improve over time. If one could apply this principle to machines you could for instance buy a Fiat Panda and w...

God, Grant  Me This is a meme -read the following headers- I see very often these days. I have to remind myself of its validity from time to time. Even though I am not a religious guy, I believe there's a higher force that is present in all matter and in all life. Thus I am going to refer to this higher force as 'God', even though I don't think there is some devine entity that steers the fate of all things and living creatures. Alright, let's not get too philosophical here. Let's start with a lesson I've learned in my early years and that I like to challenge every once in a while: The Strength  to Accept the Things I Cannot Change People usually learn this lesson the hard way in school. I gained the impression -actually still valid to this day- that the German school system is majorly flawed in its concept, that it is the mission of education to make young people memorize knowledge instead of understanding concepts. I still have those in/famous rhetorical qu...