Rest day is like Marmite; You either love it or hate it!
For individuals who train very regularly, the idea of NOT
going to the gym for a whole 48 hours can be stressful.
No gym = No gains… No progress… No CARBS… right?
Not exactly. As stressful as it is having to take a day off
from training, it is actually doing you more good than harm in relation to your
progress.
Resting is the most important part of the muscle-building
process. When you exercise, you are tearing your muscles, and your body builds
muscle when it is resting, not exercising! So therefore when you are resting,
that is when all of your hard work starts to create the desired results.
If you choose to work your muscles again before you have
given them time to repair, then this can cause muscles to become over trained,
and this can have a huge negative impact on your training. Over trained muscles
become very fatigued, and you will find that your muscles are weaker, slower,
produce less force and sometimes become uncoordinated. These symptoms can lead
to poor form / technique, which inevitably could lead to injury.
Exercising also takes its toll on your central nervous
system (CNS). The CNS can become over trained just as muscles can. Even if you
leave enough time between workouts for each muscle group to recover, your CNS is still being used in every
single workout no matter what muscle group is being worked, so it is important
that it is given at least 1 full day of recuperation per week! The CNS can also
be effected by general life… such as if you’re going through a stressful time.
(I.e. redundancy, divorce, stressful job, difficult relationships).
Sometimes it can be difficult to identify if we are
suffering from over training, but generally your body will inform you. If you’re
feeling sore, fatigued, and that you’re forcing yourself to train then
generally you may find that you’re doing more harm than good by working out. Go
home and rest up!
I found that by incorporating 2 rest days a week, I am able
to give my body right time that it needs to recover, and I’ve seen some
brilliant results myself! Not only have I seen progress in my physique, but if
I have a whole day off, I find that when I go back to training I am absolutely
electric with physical and mental energy and I feel so ready to TRAIN!
If you rest fully then you come back stronger than ever.
Active rest days.
Some of you may have a rest day included in your programme
at the moment, but it is known as an “active rest day”. These active rest days
are where you go to the gym but you don’t perform your usual routine and tend
to stick to something a lot gentler like cardio / endurance, and the idea is
that your body is “resting” from doing its usual intense exercise. I have to
say, I am still guilty of having the occasional “active rest day”. This is
almost like an excuse for us to still be able to train on a rest day! But
really an active rest day isn’t a rest day at all.
If you are at the gym, then you are exercising, so you are
not at rest. Active rest days should be treated with extreme caution. Yes, you
can still “be active” on your rest day, you don’t have to spend the whole day sitting
on your arse watching TV. But it is advised that you try to avoid the gym completely
in order to fully recover!!
What to do on rest
days.
If you’re a HUGE gym rat like me, then avoiding the gym
twice a week becomes difficult. So I’ve derived a list of things that you can
do to try and make rest day more tolerable.
1.
Write a blog about rest days (…)
2.
Arrange to meet up with friends
3.
Meal prep
4.
General cooking
5.
Read a book
6.
Clean your car
7.
Clean your house
8.
Clean your protein shaker
9.
Do the accounts
10.
Sleep
11.
Make a den
12.
Make a mug cake
13.
Eat the mug cake in the den
14.
Online shopping
15.
Real life shopping
16.
Do overtime at work (BAHA No thanks!)
17.
Think about the gym
18.
Plan your next gym session
19.
Re –evaluate your life
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