Ben MortonLeadership Trainer, Coach and Speaker

The importance of deliberate rest

24 Jun 2026 · 1 min

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1:07

In this segment Ben Morton reflects on the role of deliberate rest and recovery in high‑intensity training, especially ahead of an 86‑mile ultramarathon. He asks viewers whether they schedule intentional rest periods or simply maintain constant intensity, and distinguishes between passive downtime and active recovery. Morton describes his current focus on mental recovery and a light physical taper, using mountain environments as a personal reset. He outlines his training philosophy of alternating demanding training blocks with purposeful rest, emphasizing that rest is not a gap but an integral part of the work that supports performance.

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Think about this year, for example. Do you have periods of deliberate rest and recovery planned in, or are you just working at the same level of high intensity continually? And when you do take a break, are you actively recovering, or are you perhaps just working a little less somewhere different? This week is mostly about mental recovery for me. Plus a little bit of physical tapering. See, the mountains are my reset. They always have been. And in a week's time, as I'm filming this, I'll be running my second ever ultramarathon, an 86 miler. And the way I've trained for it is using the approach I've been talking about today. Periods of demanding training and then periods of deliberate rest. But this time round, I've been thinking about the rest slightly differently. I've not been thinking of it as a gap between the blocks of training. Rather, I've been thinking about the rest as part of the work.