High Performance at Work: Lessons from Origin Week
Tomorrow night, Queensland and New South Wales play the Origin decider at Suncorp. Half the country will find a way to watch it, including people who couldn’t tell you another score from the season.
Something Better Learning Founder, and former Queensland Maroon, David Shillington points out is that the game isn't really won on the night. It's won in the weeks leading up to it. In the days before a decider, elite squads actually wind training back, not up. Sleep gets treated as non-negotiable, recovery sessions are scheduled with the same discipline as the game plan, and just as much preparation happens in the players' heads as it does on the field.
We all have our own version of Origin week. Whether it’s a stressful exam block, a busy week at work, or the pitch you’ve been building for months. But we typically don’t prioritise recovery the way athletes do. Rather, we just put our heads down and hope we make it to the other side in one piece!
What actually happens in the lead up to Origin week
In the days before a decider, elite teams don't ramp training up intensely — in most cases, they wind it back. Contact and volume drop mid-week to protect the body for game day, and sleep becomes close to non-negotiable. Recovery sessions like physio, massage, structured downtime are scheduled in, not squeezed into whatever time is left over. And a significant part of the preparation happens away from the field entirely: video review, visualisation, mentally rehearsing the moments that will matter before the game takes place.
Every player at Origin level is elite, and the ability gap between the two sides is close to nothing. What actually separates a team that performs from one that doesn't usually comes down to the conditions they're given, and those conditions don't happen by accident.
The performance science behind it
In 2001, performance psychologists Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz published “The Making of a Corporate Athlete” in Harvard Business Review. Their argument was that executives who want to perform at their best need to train the way elite athletes do, and that means treating performance as a function of managing energy, not managing time.
Elite sport runs on the same logic in practice. The Australian Institute of Sport's own recovery framework for high-performance athletes is built around four pillars — Recovery, Environment, Sleep and Travel — treated as seriously as the training program itself.
Workplace psychology backs this up from a different angle. The Job Demands-Resources model shows that people hold up under pressure when their resources (including recovery) are matched to the demands placed on them, and burn out when they're not. Different field, same conclusion: performance and recovery aren't opposites. Recovery is what performance is built on.
So the question worth sitting with: are you designing your week for capacity, or just gritting your teeth and hoping for the best?
How to actually design a week for capacity
A few starting points, drawn from what elite performers already do deliberately:
Protect sleep in the lead-up — it's the first thing to go when a week gets busy, and the thing you can least afford to lose.
Schedule recovery windows into the week itself, rather than hoping there's time left over for them.
Keep nutrition and movement in the week rather than letting them get squeezed out. Plan ahead with ready-made-meals for busy work weeks, and healthy snacks on-hand to avoid reaching for unhealthy options.
Set clear boundaries and say no to non-essential asks, in the lead-up to high pressure moments.
These small, daily habits around sleep, movement and self-regulation mirror the concepts we teach in 25 Days 25 Plays, developed in collaboration with athletes including Dave.
For leaders: designing systems for optimal team performance
Individual habits only go so far if the culture around them still expects people to push through regardless. If your team is heading into its own big week, the same design thinking applies at a team level, not just a personal one.
A few things leaders can actually do: build recovery into how the week is planned, rather than leaving it to be individually absorbed. Model it — if you don't protect your own recovery, don't expect your team to protect theirs. And normalise it before the pressure hits, not after someone's already burnt out.
The bottom line
Elite teams don't leave performance to chance, and they don't treat recovery as optional. It's scheduled, protected, and taken as seriously as the game plan itself.
Most workplaces still treat a big week the opposite way, as something to survive rather than something to design for. Origin week is a reminder that the two are not the same thing, and that recovery isn't the break from performance. It's part of it.
If you want to start taking a more proactive approach to wellbeing and performance, not just in the week that matters, try Play One from 25 Days 25 Plays completely free.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Through deliberate, scheduled recovery: reduced training load, protected sleep, structured recovery sessions (like physio and massage), and mental rehearsal — all planned with the same rigour as training itself, rather than left to whatever time is left over.
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Frameworks like the Job Demands-Resources model show that people sustain high output when their resources (including recovery) are matched to the demands on them. Recovery isn't time off from performance; it's what performance is built on.
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25 Days 25 Plays is Better Learning's flagship wellbeing program: a 25-day program of daily 10-15 minute ‘plays’ covering things like sleep hygiene, movement, stress regulation and positive self-talk, each introduced by an Australian athlete drawing on their own experience of building mental fitness under pressure.
