The Importance of Recovery Days
When you’re trying to achieve your fitness goals, it’s often tempting to push yourself to the limit and exercise every day. However, over-exercising can lead to injury, burnout, and a decrease in performance. To avoid over-exercising it’s important to build rest days into your routine.
In the following article, I’ll take you through the benefits of rest days, discussing what active recovery looks like, and how to plan a workout schedule with rest days that maximises performance.
What Is a Rest Day?
A rest day is a day when you take a break from your regular exercise routine. Instead of pushing hard with high-intensity workouts, long distance running or weight training, you take a break, and participate in either no physical activity, or low-impact activities that help your body recover.
Make sure to incorporate rest days into your fitness routine to ensure that you're giving your body the time it needs to recover and perform at its best.
How Often Should You Have Rest Days?
The frequency of rest days depends on your fitness goals, exercise routine, and overall health. Generally, it’s recommended to schedule one rest day per week into your routine. However, if you’re doing high-intensity workouts or training for a specific event, you may need to take more frequent rest days to avoid injury or burnout. Best to listen to your body and adjust your routine accordingly.
Why are Rest Days Important?
Reduce Stress and balance hormones
Taking a short break from your fitness routine can help reduce stress and prevent burnout, allowing you to come back to your fitness schedule with renewed motivation and focus.
Rest helps your muscles recover
Recovery days are important because the break in exercise allows your muscles time to repair, which can help prevent injury and improve overall fitness.
Rest days are especially important if you weight train, as weight training stresses and tears your muscles (this is a good thing!). By allowing your muscles a day to rest, it helps to speed up recovery and helps your body rebuild muscles.
Helps you have more energy to maintain performance
While you exercise, your body depletes glycogen reserves, taking time to rest helps your body to replenish these stores, allowing you to maximise your performance.
What Low-Impact Activity Can I Do On a Rest Day?
If you prefer to keep your body moving on your day off, you could give a low impact workout a go.
Low-impact activities are a great way to stay active while allowing your body to recover on rest days. Below are a few low-impact activity ideas you can do on your next rest day?
Walking - A walk helps maintain cardiovascular health and promotes blood flow to your muscles without putting too much strain on your joints.
Swimming - This full-body workout is gentle on the joints and provides a good balance of cardio and muscle engagement.
Yoga - Practising yoga can help improve flexibility, balance, and strength while also offering mental relaxation and stress relief.
Pilates - This low-impact exercise focuses on core strength, mobility, flexibility, and balance, making it a great option for rest days.
Stretching & Foam Rolling - Stretching or foam rolling can help release tight muscles, promote relaxation, and prevent injuries.
Remember to listen to your body and adjust the intensity of these activities as needed to ensure adequate recovery during your rest days.
Summary
Rest days ARE NOT a sign of weakness, they’re an important part of any effective fitness routine. By allowing your body to recover, you’ll be able to perform at your best and achieve your goals more efficiently.
