Importance of Rest Days
Importance of Rest Days
It has been awesome to see how so many of you have been keeping up with your workouts while the gym is closed! Some of you have found yourself with some more free time and have been filling that with even more exercise! While we know that staying active is the key to mental and physical health, it’s as important as ever to make sure that we are also allowing time for our body and mind to rest and recover!
Here are some reasons that we need to incorporate rest days:
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- Muscle Recovery – Rest allows the body to learn from and adapt to recent physical stress, repair muscles, rebuild, and be stronger and better adapted for the next physical challenge.
- Mindset – workouts are not only fatiguing physically, but mentally as well. Rest days allow you to shift your focus and re-fuel your motivation. It will allow you to focus on other things that you enjoy doing and get back to working out with excitement and energy.
- Prevent Injuries – Overuse is one of the most common causes of aches, pains and injuries from your workouts. When your muscles are fatigued, they are more vulnerable to injury. Rest will again allow for recovery!
- Variety – Rest days force you to get out of the gym and participate in other forms of activities such as hiking, biking, yoga, swimming. Apply your fitness in other ways
- Boost performance – Rest and recovery are vital for performance. Rest days allow the body to repair and strengthen itself so that it can deal with greater amounts of stress.
- Improve sleep – Rest days will allow you some extra time in your day to sleep in or maybe take a nap. Sleep is your secret weapon in athletic performance!
Rest days allow for physiological and psychological benefits that are vital to athletic progress! They help strengthen your body, sharpen your focus, and reinvigorate your motivation so that you actually want to keep training!
Coach Caileigh
