People who first start working out want to hit the gym every day. It’s a common mistake. They put in grueling workouts daily but fail to see the progress they want. What’s missing? It’s rest days. Your body needs a day or two of rest, especially between intense exercise sessions. When you do an intense strength-building workout, it causes tiny microtears in the muscles. It takes a day or two to heal. After the tears heal, the muscles are bigger and stronger. If you don’t give your muscles rest and recovery time, you do your body a disservice. Your progress will never match your goals.
Rest days are recovery days.
Just because it’s a rest day, it doesn’t mean you’ll lounge on the couch. Even if your muscles are sore, getting up and walking or doing light exercise is beneficial. If you lift weights and have a rigorous whole-body session, focus on light exercises like swimming. You’ll boost your circulation to help improve recovery and remove the lactic acid build-up. Have fun with the kids and play games to make rest day family day.
Skip a lot of rest days by alternating muscle groups.
You don’t have to wait 48-72 hours to do strength training, just make sure you focus on different muscle groups. You can increase the intensity because you’ll rest those muscles and work on different muscle groups the next day. It still helps to take a rest day twice a week to let your body rest. You can alternate days of strength building, flexibility training, and aerobic training to boost recovery. Let your body have a complete rest once a week.
Taking one day away from exercise increases your focus and prevents injury when you exercise.
You’d fry your brain in a month if you spent seven days a week at your desk doing calculations. The same thing happens when you overexercise and push it to the limit seven days a week. It not only helps maintain proper form, but it also helps maintain focus so you limit the risk of injury.
- You won’t lose ground by taking a rest day. It takes two weeks of being idle to have any noticeable change in your progress. A day away allows you to come back to the gym refreshed.
- Too much training can affect your immune system. Even though exercise burns off stress hormones, it also creates stress that decreases your immunity. If you’re fatigued it can be just as bad as not working out at all.
- Fitness and healthy habits involve more than a healthy menu and working out. Getting together with friends, helping others, and people-centric activities are healthy activities. People who socialize live longer than those who don’t.
- Burnout is a real problem for people pushing too hard to get fit. It’s both mental and physical. Including rest days in your schedule can help prevent it.
For more information, contact us today at Revolution Training