Rest Days…love them or hate them, they are an important part of your fitness routine. Why?
There are lots of reasons why it’s important to take rest days:
- Rest Days Allow Time for Recovery. When you exercise, it causes these microscopic tears in the muscle tissue. Rest allows cells, called fibroblasts, to repair these tears, allowing the tissues to heal and grow, resulting in stronger muscles.
- Rest Helps Prevent Muscle Fatigue. During exercise, your muscles’ glycogen levels are depleted. When you rest those muscles, you are allowing those glycogen stores to refill, helping to prevent muscle fatigue and soreness.
- Rest Days Help Improve Your Performance. Yes, you read that correctly. When you overtrain, you get burnt out and you start to lose motivation. By taking a rest day, you allow your body and mind to refresh and you’ll have the energy to make your next workout successful.
- Rest Days Reduce the Risk of Injury. Putting continuous stress and strain on your muscles can put you at risk for overuse injuries. If you think taking one rest day is hard, try being laid up for a couple weeks with an injury. Taking a rest day can help you avoid unnecessary injury.
So, what should your rest days look like? A rest day doesn’t necessarily mean a day of laying around doing nothing. Activities like taking a walk, light swimming, or doing Yoga are great rest day activities where you can get in some low impact, healthy movement, while still allowing your body and muscles time to recover.
The other big question people have is how many rest days they should be taking. This is dependent on each individual person, their fitness level, and what kind of exercise they do. Someone who is very active and works out regularly may not need as many rest days as someone who is just starting off. A good rule of thumb would be 1-3 rest days depending on your fitness level, with 3 days being more on the beginner end of the spectrum and 1 or 2 of those days being light activity, as mentioned above.
