Resting is Part of the Training

I once heard an instagram reel with the audio that stated, “I’m running on 2 hours of sleep, 4 cups of coffee, and a f**king dream baby LET’S GO🔥”, however, this audio was shared in countless of reels within fitness influencers accounts sharing their workouts. Then I really started to wonder about how many people was listening to this audio and believe that having less sleep, less rest will help them achieve reaching their goals, more so fitness and health goals. Nonetheless, not allowing the body to completely rest, fall into a deep relaxation, and allowing it to recover made me think of this question, ’When one does not allow the physical body to rest & recover, how would one allows the mind to find peace?’

Listen, I’ve been there, I wanted something so bad that I forgot that patience is a virtue, even when it comes to training the body and reaching for any aesthetic, strength, or endurance goals. However, training countless of hours every single day will do more harm than good, especially if one ignores the signs of overtraining and reaching burnout. Adding an active rest and complete rest day into a training program will have you feeling stronger, clear-headed, and ready to go for your next training session.

When an individual exercises they are adding a physical workload of stress onto the body and there are two different types of stress that happens within the muscles during exercise - metabolic and mechanical stress. Metabolic stress is energy that has been stored in individual muscle cells has been depleted, which is the fatigue one feels at the end of a long workout. Mechanical stress is the physical damage to the structures from the muscle protein, such as a heavy and intense glute day and being sore the following day. It is during the rest and recovery phase that the body repairs the muscle proteins and replaces the glycogen used to fuel workouts.

When an individual skips out the recovery phase in their training program overtraining is most likely to occur. When overtraining syndrome occurs it leads to mental, muscular, and hormonal imbalances. Decreased performance, insomnia or restless sleep, depression or psychological stress, injuries and illness are all common signs of overtraining syndrome.

When allowing your body to recover you allow your mind to be at ease, especially from pushing through mental toughness from finishing a heavy set or pushing for those last few miles in a long run. Recovery is essentially allowing tissue regeneration and nutrient delivery, the time when you allow the booty muscles to grow a few extra inches - not going heavy on the glutes 4 x a week.

However, if you feel like you need to get movement in everyday (like myself) because movement is a daily occurrence and don’t want to be at the couch streaming a whole season on Netflix, choose low-impact exercises. By having low-impact exercises incorporated into your training program as your active rest day or recovery it’s easy on the body while allowing you to get nutrients circulating more effectively. Also choosing activities that are low-impact and also improves mental health, such as taking a dance class or having a dance party in your living room, taking a yoga class, going out for a walk in nature, or foam rolling.

There is also several benefits from taking a rest day. When taking a rest day, you are able to catch up with friends at your local coffee shop, spend time with loved ones, start a new hobby like jewelry making or baking healthy desserts. This will allow your body and mind to be at ease and reduce the risk of overtraining syndrome and the feeling of burnout.

The last thing you want to do is skipping the rest and recovery phases from your program, it will increase the chance of injury or illness which will lead to several days or weeks in a hospital, which you definitely do not want to be forced to take a rest day due to the body literally screaming for it. Active and complete rest days will give your mind, body, and soul more ease and will feel stronger and ready for your next training day. Need guidance in building a program and ideas for your active rest days, head over to my coaching section or try 7 day for FREE and I can build you a custimize program based on your schedule and unique needs.

XoXo,

       Coach Ilia Maria