The Importance Of Rest Days

Planning rest days into your training schedule is essential to avoid injury and to allow bodies to heal and to build muscle. Yep you heard me right; you really should be skipping the gym.

Training at a high intensity for a prolonged period, particularly in the same way, say running 15km a day, every day, is not allowing the muscles that you are trying to build to get stronger. It is also stressing the same joints and ligaments in exactly the same way, day after day. This will inevitably lead to stress related injuries. You are also unlikely to be improving your time because you are probably running the same route in the same way every day.

However if you crave your daily dose of endorphins you don’t have to give up on exercise completely. Swimming is a good cross training partner for running, or give yoga a try.  Walking it also a great rest day activity and you can add in a few hills if you want to bring up the intensity.

Having a training plan is a great way to ensure that you are getting a well balanced workout with sufficient rest days.  With a bit of planning you can see the problems in your training so, for example, if you absolutely have to run two days in a row, don’t run in the evening and then in the morning and try to vary the kind of running you do. Or run an interval speed based session and then do a longer easy paced run the next day.

It doesn’t just work for running though; smashing out the same pump class or spin session twice a day in the long term is not going to help you. Your body needs recovery time to get stronger and will quickly adapt to the routine which, in turn, will mean you won’t be working as hard.

Eating correctly will aid recovery post workout. Make sure you drink plenty of water and have a protein rich snack or meal soon after your workout. Avoid synthetic ‘protein bars’ and other gym type snacks, which are very high in sugar and additives. Go for a banana smoothie, chocolate milk or maybe something with eggs.

You may find that you need to fuel your body differently on rest days also as your calorie requirements will be less.

Do you have rest days? Do you find them beneficial or make it hard to stay on track?