Many people feel like they’re cheating when they take a rest day. They’ve worked so hard in the gym or at home, they’ve run around all week, and now they’re going to do nothing? But that’s not true – your body doesn’t actually gain strength when working out. It gains strength when it’s recovering.
And that’s no motivational quote. When you work out, you create tiny microtears in your muscle fibers. Those fibers need time to rebuild and heal stronger than before. Without giving that time, you’re simply tearing down tissues with no opportunity for growth. In fact, you’ll hit a plateau when feeling tired all the time, poor performance and injuries starts to set in.
However, a majority of people don’t know what a true rest day is. They think resting means lying on the couch for twenty-four hours straight, or feel too restless and do a “light workout,” which is an oxymoron. Sometimes, it takes heavy consideration to get the perfect rest day.
What Actually Happens When You Recover
It’s not just your muscles that need a break. Your nervous system is also taxed. Every time you engage in a strenuous workout, you’re relying on your fine-tuned large and small motor movements, balance and tolerating discomfort to get you through. That’s mentally draining and both systems require energy.
When you don’t take breaks, you start experiencing something more than sore muscles. You start noticing that your sleep quality starts to decline (despite fatigue). Your mood worsens. You might catch colds more often because your immune system tanks. Some people start noticing that their resting heart rate increases – your body telling you it’s not happy with chronic stress.
This is where inflammation comes into play. In short spurts, exercise causes inflammation; it’s the natural process of repair. However, when you’re constantly exercising without breaks, it keeps inflammation high, which leads to joint pain, chronic soreness and feeling like you’ve gotten beaten up all day.
The Active Recovery Mentality
Rest doesn’t equate to doing nothing. Active recovery boasts faster recovery than doing nothing at all (but again requires some serious thought).
A great gauge to go by is how you feel breathing wise and if you’re feeling work out burn. For example, going for a walk is an excellent choice for active recovery. You’re getting blood flow to your muscles without creating new trauma. Some people enjoy low impact stretches or yoga sessions. Swimming at a slow pace is also effective. If you’re out of breath or have any burn, you’ve gone too hard.
You’re looking for feel-good movement that will enhance how you feel in the moment and afterwards, but not wear you out or require another recovery period after said session.
Linking Recovery To What Goes In
Food matters on rest days more than people realize because you’re in recovery mode and need fuel. Many people think they should cut calories on rest days since they’re not burning them with exercise; this backfires since rebuilding fibers needs energy.
Everyone knows protein is ideal post-workout, but anti-inflammatory meals often get overlooked post-workout; berries, fatty fish, greens and other anti-inflammatory agents are ideal to keep the inflammation down from microtears and staying hydrated helps – your body needs H20 for almost every process in recovery mode.
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Sleep Is Non-Negotiable
It doesn’t matter if you’re eating right and taking everything you need; if your sleep is garbage, your recovery will be garbage. Most recovery happens while we sleep; growth hormone levels increase while we sleep and that’s when the real work – tissue rebuilding – happens on the most efficient level for the duration of your workout.
However, overtraining absolutely messes with your sleep cycles as well; it’s a vicious cycle of needing sleep to recover but being incapable of doing so due to subpar recovery efforts at night – and therefore during the day – it takes a conscious effort to realize you need to slow down even if you don’t want to.
Cultivating a wind-down routine helps; taking time to cool your room down at night, saying no to screens before bed and keeping your bedtime similar every night will help as well. Most people need help winding down – especially if their bodies are still fired up from training – so don’t be afraid to explore different means of calming down.
How Often You Truly Need Rest
There’s no right answer; it all depends upon the person. A person who lifts heavy four times a week, needs more rest than someone who does light cardio three times a week (and as we get older, our recovery times get longer).
Generally speaking, aiming for at least one full rest day a week is effective but two may be necessary. If you’re cross-training a lot, consider taking one week out of every month lighter with volume and intensity across the board.
Listen to your body; if you start dreading workouts you normally enjoy doing so, that’s a signal; if you’ve been putting in consistent efforts but performance isn’t improving – in fact, it’s declining – then that’s another signal you’ve hit an unfortunate plateau; constant soreness that fails to improve is basically your body screaming at you to back off.
Making Rest Days Feel Intentional
It’s all about mindset when it comes to rest days; if people are used to pushing themselves all of the time and then doing nothing, they feel guilty or lazy because they don’t feel like they’re working toward anything beneficial anymore.
Therefore, switch up how your mind perceives rest as part of training rather than part of a break from training; some people use it as an opportunity to work on mobility/flexibility with foam rolling or stretching – doing something productive without creating stress on the body – and others rely on mobility-related meal prep or goal accomplishment for their coming workouts; it just requires figuring out how you can be productive without undoing yourself in recovery mode.
When Rest Isn’t Enough
Sometimes it’s not enough until you’ve been training hard for four months straight and a true deload or deload week or even week off needs to happen (it feels super counterintuitive but you’ll come back stronger).
Trusting this process is hard but taking a week off won’t ruin everything you’ve accomplished; your muscle memory will allow you to bounce back faster than you anticipate – and arguably much faster than someone without proper recovery rests – as opposed to keeping constant chronic fatigue/tension/stress that’s holding you back from getting back on track anyway.
Rest days aren’t about being lazy; they’re about being smart enough to not care about temporary setbacks and instead value what it means to get stronger. Your body doesn’t care about your motivation levels or determination; it only cares about its ability to work for what you’re asking it – and it needs the proper amount of time to adjust before it can fulfill its obligation efficiently on your behalf without stress on itself forcing you into submission anyway.