Why stand when you can sit? Why sit when you can lie down?
That's how I approached things during my pro days. I wasn't moving much when I wasn't training. The less I moved outside training, the smarter I thought I was being. Legs up on the wall, feet up on the coffee table, horizontal by 9 pm.
Recovery to me meant doing nothing, as hard as I could.
I was doing twenty or more hours a week of training. Swim, bike, run, some core strengthening. I was knackered. The sitting felt deserved.
Looking back, I'd still rest hard. But I wouldn't be a sedentary athlete. I'd walk more. Resting hard and sitting all day aren't the same thing. I confused them for years.
I see a different athlete now. Someone training five, maybe six hours a week. Who sits at a desk for nine hours a day, then commutes sitting down, then sits on the couch to recover from all that sitting.
They're doing what I used to do, but without the high load.
Here's the thing nobody told us back then. Recovery isn't the opposite of movement. It's the opposite of stress. Sitting still doesn't heal you. It just stops you from adding more.
Blood flow does a lot of the actual work of recovery.
It clears waste products, it delivers nutrients, it keeps tissue from stiffening up. And blood flow needs movement to happen properly. A body sat in a chair for nine hours isn't recovering. It's stagnating.
So if you're an athlete with a desk job, the couch isn't your friend the way it can be for a pro carrying a huge training load.
A walk after lunch will do more for you than another hour sitting still. Standing up between meetings, taking the stairs, pacing during a phone call, none of it is going to interfere with your training. If anything, it'll improve it.
Rest when you need to rest. But don't confuse being still with being smart. Sitting isn't recovery. It's just sitting.
