[Bruce Achterberg]

Recovery isn't just about your muscles. Try not to think of your body as a set of individual parts, but rather, a large, interconnected whole working together. While you may be giving your muscles enough time to recover (muscles recover pretty quickly), your other bodily systems will be taxed since recovery is a process in itself. You may gain some stamina potential, muscle-wise, but because you've been chopping your body down for the last few days with an intense training routine, your overall bodily efficiency will probably be lowered. Perhaps the fact that you've been consuming more protein will mean that you need more energy for digestion, so while your muscles are recovering, energy that would usually be freely available to you will now instead be used up with that extra digestion.

Every action has an equal (and opposite) reaction

You could compare it to speaking. For example, I have toastmasters speech that I have to present soon, and I could use a similar approach to you, practicing it at hourly intervals every day before performance. The problem with that approach is that I'd be so caught up in my speech, probably obsessing over the details, that I'd lose sight of the big picture and be a bit mentally frazzeled.

What I'd rather do is practice for over the course 2 days, then use the remaining days to just let my subconscious process it and give my brain a break so when the day comes to give the speech, while I may not be as prepared as I would if I practiced *every* day, I'd feel well-rested on the day of the presentation, which would consequently add energy to my performance which could very well assist me if my content isn't as good as think it is. Perhaps I'll be in a more relaxed state of mind and I may end up focusing less on delivering the content perfectly and more just being myself, effectively establishing a better connection with the audience.

Kind of a strange example, but my main point is that, at least for me, recovery is more of a holistic thing, not something that can be compartmentalised.

Use the resources you have effectively

At the core, this is about time management. Your intention is to perform well. You believe you have two resources to help you align with that intention: your time and your body. It's a question of "what will give me the most effectiveness within the time I have?"

Perhaps you'll get more benefit from spending a few days relaxing, listening to some motivational material, focusing on your goal, visualising yourself doing well, spending some extra time in the kitchen preparing some fresh fruit and veggies in addition to your regular meals to fuel your body with everything it needs, and/or maybe even doing something totally unrelated such as hanging out with some friends and having some fun -- whatever will positively impact you. This way, when the day comes, you're not only fully rested, but you'll be motivated to perform, and, most likely, itching to get out there and do something because you've just been in a recovery period -- a period of contraction before an intense expansion and outputting of energy.

As far as I understand, you want to "shine" (ie. do well; "burn brightly") for a short amount of time (ie. however long your performance will be), so perhaps, like a space shuttle, it's best to store up all of your fuel for one big push to "get you out of orbit" (ie. perform damn well).

Questioning your assumptions and thinking outside the box

Overall, my goal here isn't so much to tell you what to do, since I honestly don't know what you should do -- I'd need more information about a lot of things before I could make intelligent, beneficial suggestions with any certainty. My goal is to make you think about any alternate options and get you past the notion that "more training is the only beneficial thing". It may be, but it may not be, and this is why considering a few options will help you make a better decision. The fact you made the post you did shows that you aren't 100% confident with it.

If anything, my advice would be to select something, whether or not you think it's 100% ideal (you probably won't know what's ideal until you experiment a bit), and fully align with your decision, determined to not just "see if it will work", but to make it work. Believe it will give you the desired results you seek -- excellent performance -- and focus on empowering yourself (ie. "I have everything I need right now to give an excellent performance") instead of relying on things outside of you for power (ie. "I need to spend time doing training and eating a certain way to gather the energy I need to perform well").

Do your best, but don't reply on speculation

An alternative suggestion would be to, as a side project that you can do along with whatever you decide to do, is to say, "ok, I'm going to try this approach one time, and see how it does... then the next time there's a final coming up, or maybe even in the course of regular training, I'll try another approach (simulating the conditions of a final if you decide to try it in the course of regular training)".

Use whatever information you gain to improve your decision, such that you find something that you know will be effective from experience for the next time you need to prepare for a final.