Rest and Recovery
If you have been doing workouts that involve high-intensity training and weightlifting for at least a few months, you recognize how taxing this modality can be on your body. Most of us can’t sustain that high of an intensity every single day during every workout, for a variety of reasons. So this begs the question-how often should we take a rest day?
Most high-intensity programming follows a 3 on 1 off program, which means 3 days in a row of workouts followed by 1 day off to rest. Most athletes will need that day of rest in order to allow the muscle tissue to regrow and the body to recover from the training.
Rest vs Active Recovery:
Days away from the gym might be known as rest days, but it can be helpful to think of them as growth days. Downtime between workouts when our bodies have a chance to actually build muscle (more on this below).
While an active recovery day requires doing low-intensity movement, taking a rest day, on the other hand, you will be taking the day entirely off from working out and not partake in any physical activity at all. Again, total rest means you don’t do any physical activity at all.
An active recovery day is exactly what it sounds like — you’re taking time to recover from a vigorous workout session while remaining active. Allowing your body to heal and repair its muscle tissues from intense training means getting your body moving in different ways when you’re outside the gym.
When done right, active recovery offers a plethora of benefits. Besides giving your muscles time to heal, research has shown this type of recovery can help clear the body of lactic acid (which reduces your chances of soreness) while also increasing your muscles’ ability to endure intense exercise.
Additionally, active recovery offers those of us who dread days outside of the gym an option to move our bodies. Performing low-intensity activity helps remind you that listening to your body and dialing it down sometimes isn’t simply a cop-out — it’s vital in muscle recovery and improved performance.
Examples of active rest include mobility work/yoga, walking/light jogging or a leisurely swim.
When to take a day for rest / recovery?
If you regularly experience “gains” in the gym, your overall health is good, and your injuries are minimal and manageable, then your recovery-to-training ratio is probably just right. However, if you aren’t seeing progress in the gym, you have chronic or acute injuries that don’t seem to go away, and you’re constantly feeling tired, you may need more recovery days.
A lack of recovery might not be the only culprit if you’re feeling exhausted and your performance is suffering. The cause could also be nutrition, sleep, or stress. It’s important to pay attention and record not only your workout scores and lifts but how you feel each day and details about your nutrition and sleep patterns. Once you start writing down not only your workout “scores” but also how you’re feeling, your motivation levels, how you’re sleeping, and your nutrition, you’ll get a better sense of your ideal rest and recovery schedule.
Rest and recovery are essential parts of training, but it can be difficult for some of us to strike the right balance. Some people push themselves to the brink, not realizing they’re sabotaging their own progress by training too often, while others struggle with motivation and take too much time off then wonder why they aren’t improving.
Knowing when to take a rest day vs. an active recovery day is going to vary person-to-person, so it is important to listen to your body as well as your emotional state. If you are dreading going to the gym (where you normally feel excited about going) that might very well be a cue for you to take a total rest day.
Recovery=strength
Rest days are when real progress is made. Without rest, we will never truly recover physically or mentally, which makes good quality rest arguably the most important part of the recovery process.
Strenuous workouts cause muscle breakdown, while rest allows our bodies to rebuild and recover (which is what makes our muscles bigger and stronger!) High intensity training challenges and “conditions” the body and will improve efficiency of the heart, increase capillaries in the muscles bringing greater blood flow (more oxygen and nutrition), and increase glycogen stores within the muscle tissue. During a recovery period our cardiovascular system builds to greater levels to compensate for the stress that was applied during a workout. The result is that you are now at a higher level of endurance and performance. This is also the time when our bodies replenish glycogen levels. Glycogen is the molecule that fuels activity. As we exercise, our glycogen gets depleted, and when we don’t give our bodies enough time (and nutritious food) between workouts to replenish this fuel source, we start feeling fatigued and tend to underperform. If proper recovery time (rest) is not given then the body cannot regenerate. If an imbalance between intense training and inadequate recovery time persist,s not only will performance plateau or decline, but you also will run the risk of injury.
The Takeaway: Rest and recovery days are an essential part of any workout routine. Our bodies have limits to how much stress can be endured before breakdown and/or injury occurs, and rest days help both the body and mind recover from workouts. If there are no rest days in your routine, continuous muscle breakdown without the chance to rebuild will hinder your progress in the gym.