Rest days: Your secret weapon to lifelong fitness

When you’re on a roll, you don’t want to stop. But here’s the secret: more isn’t always better!

Rest days are an integral part of your workout routine, not a blank space on your calendar.

Rest days are your secret weapon in the long game of building fitness over a lifetime. They allow your body to recover, repair, and return even stronger. Regardless of your fitness foals or they type of training you are doing, rest days are essential to prevent overtraining and burnout and get you on track for a lifetime of healthy movement.

If you aren’t working with a trainer or on a specified plan, you may be wondering how to know if you need a rest day. Pay attention to the cues your body is providing: persistent muscle pain or soreness, inability to complete a regular workout, continued feelings of sluggishness following a workout, increased incidence of injury or illness, or changes in mood, sleeping patterns, or food cravings are all indications that your mind and body may need a rest. Remember: Physical and mental tiredness can lead to poor decision making during a workout routine, which increases the risk of injury and decreases enjoyment.

Read on for benefits of taking a day off and some examples of great rest day activities.

1. Muscle recovery and repair. Vigorous exercises causes tiny microtears in the muscle tissue, which cause inflammation and manifest as soreness a day or two after trying a new exercise or movement pattern, or increasing your regular workout duration or intensity. Taking time to do active recovery (see below for examples) help stimulates blood flow to the muscles and hasten recovery. As your muscles repair themselves, the individual fibers get thicker, longer, and more numerous, which leads to gains in muscles strength over time.
2. Reduce your risk of injury or illness. Taking rest days allow your muscles to replenish their glycogen stores which helps prepare for your next workout. Injuries can be prevented by avoiding excessive strain and repetitive stress on the same muscle groups. Your body’s natural inflammatory response to a hard workout can add stress your immune system. For most healthy adults, this stress is very minor and temporary and actually helps you get stronger and fitter in the long run.
3. Improve your performance over time. Just like completing a repetition of a biceps curl gets your bicep muscle stronger, completing a workout in a workout plan becomes a building block for improving overall fitness over time, when coupled appropriately with rest and active recovery.
4. Support sleep. Exercise produces a stress on your body – depending on your exercise timing or intensity, this stress can cause a lengthened hormone response that actually interferes with your body’s natural production of melatonin and other hormones associated with sleep by increasing levels of epinephrine, norepinephrine and cortisol. Over training – i.e., or training too frequently or intensely over time with insufficient rest built in to your program – causes overstimulation of your sympathetic nervous system and leads to increased resting heart rate, elevated blood pressure and higher basal metabolic rate. These systemic adaptations make it difficult to fall and stay asleep. Taking a rest day can allow for the time and space for these natural hormone fluctuations to re-balance to your baseline so you can enjoy restful and restorative sleep.
5. Improve your mental game. One of the biggest motivators to us as humans is to see progress. Taking a day off can feel like the anthesis of progress – it can feel like doing nothing! But I challenge you to reframe how you consider rest days. Rather than ride a wave of momentum and stack up multiple back-to-back workouts, rest days challenge us to re-set and dig deep. We need to reconnect with our why, to rediscover our motivation when it comes time return to our workout routine, refreshed and rested. Resetting and restarting does amazing things to our confidence that fitness will stick and become a healthy habit, rather than an all-or-nothing commitment that we pick up intermittently

OK, got it – I need a rest day! How shall I spend it?

Think of rest days as opportunities to contribute to your overall health in a meaningful way. To compliment your physical health, you can use the time you’d normally dedicate to exercise to hydrate well, get a massage or chiropractic adjustment, or take a long bath.

If you want to move, try an enjoyable, low impact activity that compliments your fitness routine. Enjoy time with your family and friends. Take your dog for a walk. Try a restorative yoga class or befriend your foam roller. These activities are called “active recovery” – they promote circulation, balance, and flexibility to maximize the repair that your body can naturally do on its own.

Be sure to take a mental break, too! Read a book, watch TV, volunteer, or spend time on a hobby. Find a new recipe you want to try in next week’s signature menu. Write in a journal and reflect on your accomplishments of the past week. Practice gratitude for the opportunity to rest and recover. Your mind and body will thank you, and you’ll return stronger after each rest cycle!