I coach leaders and entrepreneurs. This is where they get stuck and stubborn.

Nutrition and breathwork to recover fast as a high performer.

Angela Shurina
3 min readJan 20, 2023

High-performing individuals in sports and business.

Often they hire me for this one thing (whether realizing that or not) — making them to get consistent with recovery.

If there’s anything I learned on my journey and from working with clients -
“One can only go as intense as one is able to recover”

Funnily enough, that’s where my clients are the most stubborn — I get it, it’s hard to stop myself from go-go-go too!

RECOVERY.

My friends used to tell me often — “Angela, can you just relax?”
I used to be that person who was always on to the next thing.
And I wasn’t happy no matter what I achieve.
And I was never quite there.
And I would consistently burn myself out which made my progress get stuck.

(I actually thought that regular burnout like once or 2 per month is a totally normal thing! Until I shared it with my own coach. What’s burnout? — when life loses its colors and you aren’t pumped about doing much.)

My clients are exactly the same often when we start working together.

I have to be very firm to make them stop and schedule recovery.
But it’s where their next level is.

(Initially, they believe it’s a waste of time and for the weak kind of people. Not high performers. “I’ll rest when I die!” Type of people.)

RECOVERY.

From the recent research, high performers really need to pay attention to 2 things:

1) Choline intake
2) Breathwork

EAT YOUR EGGS

Choline is important for switching on “rest-and-digest” mode.

Without the ability to switch rapidly and often between on and off states — you aren’t good at recovery, and you go from being on-on-on to burnout, wasting time to get back to normal.

This ineffective switching often leads to not being able to recover effectively, and over time, especially for older-and-wiser individuals, this leads to a decrease in drive and performance.

With age, we get worse at everything, including recovery.

Back to choline.

It is an essential nutrient.

Choline isn’t included in most multivitamin solutions.

Choline is important for muscle contraction, slowing down cognitive decline, for memory and learning, for healthy liver, brain and heart, healthy glucose metabolism (hello diabetes), for REM sleep (and mental health regulation).

As a part of cell membranes choline is important for basically everything. And till recently nobody talked much about it.

(Nutrition is still a very young science).

The tricky part?

The richest sources are 2:

  • Eggs
  • Liver

Eating liver every day isn’t sustainable (nor that you want to).

So eat your eggs, 2–3 of them daily, the goodness is in the yolk.

And on top of that eat plenty of meat, poultry, fermented dairy, beans and veggies (other ok-in-bulk-choline sources) — and you’ll be getting your required choline amount.

(Supplements are also available but whole foods come with a much wider range of benefits than just sourcing choline)

Into recovery nutrition?

Eat your eggs!

NOT ALL BREATHWORK IS EQUALLY EFFECTIVE

They did this study testing the most effective breathwork protocols for recovery, stress management and mood boost.

Cycling sighing (5 minutes of it daily) was the winner!

I recommend exhale-focused breathwork for my clients to do right after training to recover faster, before work to start the day on a calm-and-focused note and before bed to stop racing mind from solving problems, to fall asleep faster and to sleep better.

Here’s the article with more information and a description of how to do it.

“New Stanford Research Confirms the 1 Style of Breath Work That Is Most Effective at Reducing Stress and Improving MoodThe style of your breathing matters.”

▶️Share your thoughts and questions on what you’ve just read below and if you need specific advice — reach out angela at brainbreakthroughcoach.com

Recover! — That’s where your next level is.

😃Thank you for reading! Brought to you by your brain’s coach — Angela Shurina, committed to sustainable productivity and human potential.

www.BrainBreakthroughCoach.com

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