BLOG 5 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD TAKE A REST DAY IS EMPTY
1. They help you get stronger
While you may think fitness gains are only made when you're beasting yourself during a sweat session, rest is just as important if you want to hit your workout goals.
Every time you work out you create microscopic tears in your muscle tissues. When you rest, your muscles start to heal and grow back stronger, meaning you'll be able to do the same workout with less effort in the future.
2. They help you avoid injury
If you skip rest days, it could lead to longer spells out through injury. Working out when your body and mind are tired means you're more likely to have bad form, trip or stumble. You're also at risk of overuse injuries as you constantly stress and strain the body and don't allow it the necessary time to repair itself.
A recent study found that overuse injuries were the most common types of injury in elite athletics, leading to at least three weeks out of training for affected athletes.
So if you want to avoid weeks or even months of being unable to train, make sure you give yourself sufficient time to rest.
3. They help you make fitness progress
Train too much without resting and you could see your fitness progress grind to a halt or even go into reverse. Exercise releases stress hormones and, just as working long hours with no days off can negatively impact your health, too much exercise without enough rest can lead to burnout.
Also known as overtraining syndrome, burning out can affect your central nervous system, throwing everything out of whack. Your central nervous system is made up of different parts including the sympathetic nervous system - which triggers fight or flight mode - and the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps calm your body down again. If you're not taking the time you need to rest and recover, then the constant stress of exercise can mess with your system's natural responses.
This can leave you feeling constantly tired and drained. Workouts can feel much harder than they used to and you may struggle to do exercises you found fairly straightforward before.
4. They mean you can train even harder
We all know that feeling. You've just finished 30 seconds of flat-out exercise in your HIIT session and swear you couldn't do another evil burpee again, ever. Then, just 20 seconds later, you're ready to go hard and attack it again.
That's what rest days are like. Taking time off gives your body and mind time to reset, recharge and recover. Your muscles will be less sore and fatigued and, instead of just going through the motions, you'll be able to give your next workout the effort it needs to get results.
Studies have shown a lack of sleep can result in low motivation to take part in leisure activities you usually enjoy, and failing to take mental breaks to recover from exercise can have a similar effect. Mini breaks keep your motivation running on overdrive, preventing exercise from becoming a chore. Absence makes the mojo grow stronger.
5. They help you build long-term habits
A survey of over 2,000 people found that 33 per cent who don't exercise say it's because they don't have the time. While we all know how easy it is to fit a HIIT session into your daily routine, that becomes much harder, logistically and psychologically, if you're trying to do it every day of the week.
Rest days help make your schedule more flexible, leaving you to build workouts around your life rather than vice versa. Having that flexibility can also make your workout regime more sustainable - if you are unable to workout one day, then you can swap it for your rest day and complete your workout later in the week without compromising your training. This helps you build healthy habits you can keep up for life, too.