Why Are Rest Days Important?
To begin, what is a rest day?
A rest day is a day off training and essentially a time to give back to your body. It is really super important that you rest on your rest days.
When you’re in the midst of your training zone, skipping a rest day can seem tempting - but failing to break your stride can be detrimental to your training progress. Rest days are actually one of the most important days in your training routine - they provide your muscles with the time they need to rest and recover properly. Press pause on your workout and read on to learn more about why rest days are so important for your training progress.
How important are rest days?
Exercise is about balance, and time out is an essential part of any workout plan - without rest days your performance can suffer considerably. So next time you’re deep in the training zone and ask yourself ‘are rest days necessary?’ - the answer is - absolutely.
The benefits of taking a rest day:
Rest days help to alleviate muscle pain and soreness:
Rest days provide the body with a chance to remove lactate from the muscles - this helps to alleviate muscle pain and soreness.
Rest days repair and build muscle:
Muscle is actually developed in its repair phase. Each time you conduct a workout you create tiny microscopic tears in your muscle tissue. Every time you have a rest day, your muscles start to heal and grow back stronger - this helps you to carry out the same workout with less effort in the future. Rest gives your body time to adapt to your training - helping you to grow stronger and fitter.
They help you to avoid injury:
Failure to take a much needed rest day could lead to injuries. Pushing yourself to exercise when both your mind and body are tired means you’re more likely to train with bad form or have an accident. Rest days also allow your mind to rest - fatigue can lead to poor decision making during a workout which is likely to increase the risk of injury. You will also be at risk of overuse injuries - this is because you’re constantly adding stress and strain to the body if you don’t allow it the necessary time to repair itself.
Rest days help with fitness progress:
Too much exercise without enough rest can lead to burnout - this can profusely mess with your central nervous system leaving you feeling constantly tired and drained.
Rest days allow you to train even harder:
Taking time to reset, recharge and recover helps your muscles to become less sore and fatigued. Rest days help to replenish your body's glycogen energy stores, this helps to reduce muscle fatigue and prepare muscles for their next workout.
How to spend your rest day?
How you spend your rest day is really up to you. If you have been training really hard, you may decide to kick back and watch netflix, or unwind reading a new book.
You may choose to stay active with light exercise - swimming or walking can be ideal for this.
Or why not incorporate mindfulness within your recovery routine with yoga or foam rolling.
A rest day also acts as the perfect opportunity to do some meal prep for the week ahead.
How often should you schedule a rest day?
You should aim for one rest day each week. That said, it is important to listen to your body and take a rest day when you feel tired and sore too.
What to wear for a rest day?
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Listen to your body, take time to recover and hydrate to get closer to reaching your fitness goals.
BETTER NEVER STOPS