You all know rest is important for muscle recovery. If you don't, you're still in that fired up stage of wanting to get better and train all the time AKA you haven't gotten good enough that training sessions become marathons, and your body feels like ground beef after a 3 hour wrapped squat session followed by an hour and a half of bench pressing. And ENJOY THAT! But if you're past that point this little tidbit is for you.
The week after my meet, I do nothing besides rest and eat and relax. Get my mind as far away from training as possible. You have to realize you cannot make an entire training cycle out of maxing out, both physically AND mentally. We know those guys that always work up to 3 plates on bench (or something) every monday and ALWAYS fail! It doesn't work that way, and it is no way to make progress or get stronger. This is the same way for the mental approach to training. It can't always be on, and locked in, or else we risk burnout or exhaustion to the point of regressing on our hard earned efforts.
I used to be the guy yelling in the gym all of the time, the guy going to dark places before every workout, and constantly beating myself up over a missed lift or a bad session. This might work in the short term, but as many of my peers on elitefts have noted, this sport is about longevity and the avoidance of breakdown.
In a normal training cycle, I will try to get a minimum of 8 hours of sleep a night, and if I have the time for a nap that day even if it means lying down for 15 minutes just to breath and relax, I will take that time to do so. I've found this focus on rest and more specifically relaxation to be incredibly beneficial towards my training performance, and my continued enjoyment of the hard things I have to do, like the aforementioned 5 hour marathon sessions.
Another avenue to touch on is the finite resource of "recovery" we have. The nerd in me likes to think of myself as having a "health bar". It can only recover over time. But we have these cool things like food, sleep, and recovery modalities to maybe boost that bar filling back up again! However, this health bar isn't depleted just from training hard. Having a physical job drains it, choosing to go play a pickup game of basketball with your friends drains it, even staying out later than intended and having an extra drink drains that bar! It is NOT an unlimited resource, and we as athletes have to operate under the assumption that it will run out at some point. And therefore, we need to prioritize. After my meet? I'm having fun, I'm staying out late, I'm drinking, eating, and not thinking about focusing my resources on training. But as I enter that next training cycle, I'll be the guy to stay in and watch a movie rather than going out. I'll take a nap, rather than watching another episode of that burger TV show. I'll find a place to sit as soon as I reach the restaurant with my girlfriend. It's finite, and as a powerlifter training to be the greatest in the world, I place the majority of that "health bar" towards training, and I maximize its regeneration through avoiding the stressful things, that may seem fun at the time. Momentary pleasure, versus long term satisfaction.
So this is why I'm the master of the "Irish Goodbye". Urban Dictionary that if you don't know what it is. So go take a nap when you've got a meet on your mind and put your everything toward that training cycle. Once that meet is over and done with, go out and do your partying. At least that's what I do!