Why are Rest Days so Important?

"No pain, no gain." "You can rest when you’re dead." "Don’t stop when it hurts, stop when you’re done."

Classic toxic fitness quotes that are marketed as ‘motivation’. When in reality, all these do is perpetuate the toxic mentality within the fitness world. I am not here for it.

You need to listen to your body and pain is often an alarm system from your body to stop, that there is something wrong. Rest days or just rest in general can often be deemed as lazy behavior when in reality rest can be as important as your workout days.

If you do not have rest days planned in your programming and aren’t sure if you should have them, here are some signs:

• You have trouble falling asleep

• You are physically exhausted, have continued feelings of sluggishness

• You have increased levels of stress or burn out

• You have persistent muscle pain or soreness

• You struggle to finish your workouts

• You are experiencing reduced benefits from workouts

Rest days allow you to progress more and faster than if you just powered through. More is not always better when it comes to exercise. You can't be hard on your body everyday and expect it to function at the best of it’s abilities. Rest days allow your body time to repair and refuel. Energy stores are replenished and tissues that were damaged from the stress of exercise are repaired, allowing your muscles to grow.

Rest days are an opportunity to honor your body and appreciate all it does for you. Rest and recovery days can look different for everyone. There’s complete rest/recovery and there is active recovery. Both are helpful and are appropriate in different circumstances. Complete rest/recovery entails you doing little to no activity. While active recovery can look like doing the same or different activities at a much lower intensity.

It’s an opportunity to change up your routine, though it does not completely disregard your other habits that you have implemented to help you. It's an opportunity to check in with yourself and what may or may not be working for you.

I think it’s important to remember what can happen if you do not incorporate rest days. It can result in unrelenting muscle soreness and chronic fatigue that can lead to overuse injuries, sleep disturbances, sickness and impact your mental health.

So, let’s let go of and challenge the mentality that rest is a sign of weakness and you have to 'power through pain'. Let’s honor our body and everything that it can do for us.

References & Continued Reading

https://us.myprotein.com/thezone/training/pt-rest-day-mp/

https://www.brit.co/how-many-rest-days-per-week/

https://www.cnet.com/health/fitness/how-to-tell-you-need-a-rest-day-and-when-to-keep-going/

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/rest-day

https://aaptiv.com/magazine/rest-day-mistakes

https://blog.nasm.org/wellness/shedding-a-new-light-on-your-rest-day?cq_cmp=19022157328&network=x&utm_term=&utm_campaign=CPT_ACQ_SHOPPING_WEB_PMAX&utm_source=google&utm_medium=paidsearch&hsa_acc=2454829191&hsa_cam=19022157328&hsa_grp=&hsa_ad=&hsa_src=x&hsa_tgt=&hsa_kw=&hsa_mt=&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gclid=Cj0KCQiAxbefBhDfARIsAL4XLRqMd-HlUHO6KlHVi0VRcrC0sQSUyCfkhu4vx1Nxn5EMhMnFT3zMXr8aArvvEALw_wcB

https://www.acefitness.org/resources/everyone/blog/7176/8-reasons-to-take-a-rest-day/#:~:text=A day of rest allows,any tissues that need it.