Why Your Body Needs Rest Days!

Rest Days, Why Your Body Needs Them!

You’re pushing yourself at the gym or in your at-home workouts. You want to see results and you want them as fast as possible. You hear stay active, get exercises, lift heavier, do two a day’s. No matter what your goal is, MORE is not always better!

Your body needs rest days, your body needs that time to recover and repair. This is a crucial part of your progress no matter your fitness level!

Skipping rest days will not help you show results any faster. In fact, skipping rest days can lead to overtraining and burnout. So take the time to properly recover from all of your hard work, and you will see your benefits from your work that much faster!

Benefits And Why Your Body Needs Rest Days:

1. Rest Days Give Your Muscles A Chance To Grow

Whether you are lifting heavy, running mile after mile, or crushing interval training you are creating tiny tears in your muscles. As your body repairs these tears, your muscles grow stronger so they are able to perform the same workout with less effort the next time!

2. Prevents Muscle Fatigue

Exercise depletes your muscle’s glycogen levels. If these levels are not replaced, you will experience muscle fatigue and soreness. Additionally, your muscles need glycogen to function, even when you are not workout out. By getting enough rest you prevent muscle fatigue by letting your glycogen refill!

Did you know that you can aid in the recovery of glycogen? By providing your body with proper nutrition before and after working out you can help aid in your recovery process. This is where I always add 1st Phrom Post Workout Stack into my daily routine. Phormula-1 and Ignition together give your body exactly what it needs immediately following a workout. Aiding in that recovery and feeding your muscles the protein they need.

3. Reduces The Risk Of Injury

When your body is overworked, you’re more likely to relax and lose form, drop weight, or take a miss-step and fall.

If those tiny tears don’t have time to repair, they can become muscle sprains which then leads to the need for even more rest, while you are forced to recover. Which only leads to a setback in your training.

4. Rest Days Also Improve Performance

If you don’t get enough rest it can be hard to complete normal tasks and routines, let alone push yourself in any workout. You may find yourself unmotivated to workout, tired before a workout, and lack of motivation to push out that last rep!

Even if you do push yourself, without those rest days you are still underperforming. Rest days increase your energy and motivation which prepares your body for a successful workout.

5. Rest Days Help Your Sleep!

One of the most important things your body needs is sleep! I have said it a million times if you are not getting 7-9 hours of sleep a night you are not getting enough sleep.

Regular exercise improves your sleep, but taking rest days are also helpful. Rest can help your get better sleep by letting your hormones return to a normal balanced state. Then while you are sleeping your body is able to easily releases hormones to help your muscles repair and grow.

What Do Rest Days Looks Like?

While it can be tempting to sit on the sofa, order delivery, and binge-watch a new tv series, rest days are not about being totally lazy 100% of the day!

However, the ideal rest day does look a little different for each person. This depends on the intensity and frequency of your normal routine, as well as your lifestyle outside of working out.

You may have a ton of energy on a rest day, in which case it is good to use up some of that energy, but that doesn’t mean go lift weights or run 10 miles. It is still your rest day.

The Goal Of A Rest Day Is To Keep Your Heart Rate Relatively Low, And Not To Exert Your Muscles Too Much.

Here are a few things that can been done on your rest day:

1. Walking or hiking
2. A slow swim
3. Yoga
4. Stretching
5. A light bike ride

Are all good options. They get you off the sofa but don’t require much effort on your heart or muscles, allowing your body to remain in recovery mode.

How Should You Fuel Your Body On Rest Days?

People think that since they are not pushing themselves in the gym they need to eat less on rest days. This is absolutely not true. The only difference on your rest day should be, that you might not take your pre or post-workout supplement. But other than that you should be feeding your body the same amount of protein, carbs, and fats on a rest day as you would on a heavy workout day. Properly nourishing your body on a rest day is vital to the recovery process.

How Often Should You Incorporate A Rest Day Into Your Routine?

Rest days should be at the very minimum 1 day per week and can be as much as every 3rd day, for example, 2 days of work 1 day of rest. However, this does depend on your personal goals, how quickly you would like to see results, and the amount of change that actually needs to take place. If you are looking for quick results be sure to give your body at least 1 day of rest per week.

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