The Myth of Balance: Why Oscillation Fuels High Performance

We’ve all been told at one time or another to chase balance. Find our center. Don’t let the scale tip too far in any direction. It sounds good in theory—controlled, symmetrical, stable.

What if we’re looking at balance from the wrong scale? Yes, balance on average, but maybe that balance looks like a series of ups and downs when we zoom in. Biological systems aren’t built for stasis. They’re built to move, flex, and adapt. The human nervous system doesn’t thrive on stillness. It thrives on oscillation, on rhythmic shifts between effort and ease, tension and release.

Trying to live in a permanent state of balance is like asking our heart to beat in a constricted, constant range (How realistic is it to stay in Zone 1 HR…forever?). What we’re really looking for is something more dynamic: a system that can expand and return, not just hover in place.

Biological Systems Love to Swing

In nature, there are no flat lines. The healthiest systems don’t stay still—they sway. Heart rate variability is a prime example. It reflects how our body alternates between sympathetic activation (go mode) and parasympathetic recovery (rest mode).

Those with higher HRV tend to recover faster, perform better under pressure, and show greater resilience to both mental and physical stress. The key is not just in the highs or lows. It’s in the range. Range shows how much flex our system has to meet the moment and then return to baseline. That’s a hidden engine of performance. It’s not just about being calm. It’s about being responsive.

The Stress-Relaxation Cycle Isn’t Optional

Every meaningful output, whether it’s a sprint, a presentation, or a personal decision, costs something. The nervous system doesn’t just ramp up and stay there. It’s wired to activate, then deactivate. This cycle of activation and return is hard-coded into our physiology, from the cellular level to the behavioral.

What throws us off the most isn’t stress itself. It’s the lack of recovery after stress. Without that pendulum swinging back into calm, the body starts to operate as if the threat never ended. That’s when the subtle symptoms appear: disrupted sleep, emotional rigidity, reduced focus, and even decreased coordination.

It’s quite easy to interpret these changes as mental lapses or question if we’re training in the right ways. In reality, they’re just the signs of a system stuck in a prolonged state of readiness. The machinery never powered down.

Chasing The Myth of Balance Can Lead to Suppression

The standard definitions of “balance” tend to gloss over an integral aspect—balance can become a trap. In trying to keep everything level, we can suppress our natural rhythm. We don’t sprint when it’s time to push. We don’t drop deep into rest when the window opens. Over time, this creates a nervous system that’s too muted to respond optimally to challenges and too tense to recover.

This is where burnout starts to creep in, not necessarily from working too much, but from working in a way that’s non-cyclical. That feeling of constant low-level tension, of never quite landing or launching, is often mistaken for resilience. Under the hood, it’s just nervous system friction.

Physiologically, we know that the body and brain perform best when they oscillate between different states. Ultradian rhythms, natural 90-120 minute cycles of energy, are a clear example. Ignore them, and performance suffers quietly over time.

Health Isn’t a Static Target

Wellness is commonly associated with a final destination–a perfectly tuned state where nothing fluctuates. While idyllic, this mindset doesn’t reflect how our systems actually work. Health isn’t a singular point on a graph. It’s a range. It’s a space between effort and restoration and between alertness and softness.

The most effective athletes, thinkers, and leaders don’t live in one state. They return to their optimal state. That’s the real skill. It’s not about holding a pose. It’s about the precision and speed of the reset. That’s why training recovery is just as important as training performance.

It just take a slight reframing to overcome the myth of balance. The ability to recover and return is what keeps performance sustainable. Chronic overactivation blunts precision. Chronic underactivation blunts drive. Neither works for long.

Expansion Requires Return

Performance psychology highlights the role of restoration in driving expansion. When someone builds emotional or physical capacity, they’re really building range. That range only holds if the nervous system believes it’s safe to return from the edge.

If a person constantly pushes forward without oscillating back, the system starts to resist forward motion. The brain flags novelty or challenge as dangerous, not because of the challenge itself, but because there’s no trust that recovery is coming. Eventually, the system starts pre-bracing, and the ceiling for output quietly drops.

That’s why so many of us hit invisible walls. The cause is rarely physical fatigue. Asking ourselves to perform without a clear path to recovery erodes trust with our nervous system. The nervous system needs a map or it will slam us into that wall without an explanation. Recovery builds that map.

A Small Practice with Big Impact

Scientifically, incorporating ultradian recovery breaks (15–20 minute intervals of true downregulation every 90–120 minutes) work wonders for regulation. Realistically, 15-20 minute breaks throughout the day might be a major challenge. Taking 10 breaths or closing our eyes for a minute every two hours or so is much more doable and still provides benefits. These aren’t just “pauses.” They’re intentional drops in stimulation where the nervous system is invited to exit go-mode and re-center.

Research shows that taking these breaks not only improves mood and cognitive clarity but also increases physical output during training blocks that follow. We’re not talking about taking a nap if we opt for the longer break option, though naps are also helpful. These pauses are about restoring rhythmic flow.

More importantly, they signal to our system that intensity and recovery can coexist. That safety and drive aren’t opposites. They’re partners. It’s in that relationship between movement and stillness that real health lives.

References

1. Shaffer, F., & Ginsberg, J. P. (2017). An Overview of Heart Rate Variability Metrics and Norms. Frontiers in Public Health, 5, 258.

2. Kleitman, N. (1963). Sleep and Wakefulness. University of Chicago Press.

3. McEwen, B. S., & Gianaros, P. J. (2011). Stress- and allostasis-induced brain plasticity. Annual Review of Medicine, 62, 431–445.

4. Lehrer, P., & Gevirtz, R. (2014). Heart rate variability biofeedback: how and why does it work? Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 756.

5. Goleman, D., & Davidson, R. J. (2017). Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body. Penguin Random House.