It's Time to Put Down the Dumbbell
No matter how determined you are to get in shape, you still need to include rest days as part of your training regimen. Rest days allow your muscles to recover and can help balance your mental health. Before you go to the gym for the fifth day in a row, review these 20 important reasons why you need to take rest days.
1. Muscle Recovery
Working out can cause tiny tears in your muscle fibers. Rest day allows your body to repair these tears and for your muscles to recover from recent strenuous workouts. Muscle recovery can not happen without rest days.
2. Prevention of Overtraining
By adhering to rest days, you can ensure that you don't overtrain. Overtraining can cause fatigue, decrease your performance, and increase your susceptibility to a higher risk of injury.
3. Better Quality of Sleep
High-intensity workouts can place a lot of stress on your nervous system. This can negatively impact your quality of sleep. Rest days promote deeper and more restorative sleep by balancing hormones like melatonin and cortisol. Sleeping better can boost your energy, mood, and memory.
4. Improved Mental Health
Being active and working out releases endorphins, which is great. Overtraining, however, can lead to anxiety, irritability, or depressive episodes. Rest days provide a mental break, so you can recharge mentally and emotionally.
5. Lower Risk of Injury
Exercising every day without taking a break increases your risk of sustaining an injury. This schedule will make you more susceptible to tendon, joint, and ligament tears. Rest days allow your body to recover, and can make the next workout more impactful.
6. More Powerful Immune System
The stress of exercise on your body can weaken your immune system. By sticking to regular rest days, you can keep your immune system strong and avoid getting colds, prolonged illnesses, and infections. Rest days allow your immune system to fight off pathogens effectively.
7. Hormonal Balance
Working out can elevate your cortisol level, and sustained high cortisol levels can promote fat retention and mood swings. By breaking up your workout days with rest days, you can lower your cortisol and let beneficial hormones, like growth hormone, repair tissues and build muscle.
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8. Better Performance and Gains
When it comes to working out, more isn't always better. Your performance at the gym can actually improve after a rest day. Days off are great for your muscles, joints, and nervous system, and can make your next workout even more productive.
9. Increased Focus and Motivation
Training every day can wear us down, making us feel less motivated to get through a rigorous workout. Rest days will give you the mental, emotional, and physical break you need, and can reignite your enthusiasm.
10. Promotes Joint Health
Your joints can feel the brunt of your time at the gym. If you frequently do high-impact activities, like weightlifting, you might be on the precipice of injuring a joint. Rest days will let your joints heal by promoting lubrication and reducing inflammation.
11. Avoid Mental Burnout
Rest days are about more than just letting our joints and muscles take a day off. You need a day away from the gym to avoid mental burnout. Without rest days, you won't have a chance to clear your mind and emotionally reset. You're likely to become more irritable and experience fatigue.
12. Increase Energy Levels
Working out can boost your daily energy levels, but at some point, your body may resort to a state of fatigue. Rest days can prevent this from happening by replenishing glycogen stores, the body's main source of energy during exercise.
13. Great Longevity in Training
Rest days can help you work out for longer and have more successful training sessions. Exercise burnout often comes from a lack of rest, not from working out too hard one afternoon. Listen to your body, and respect its need for downtime.
14. Enjoy a Better Technique
Fatigue from working out too much can cause us to compromise our form or technique. Being exhausted won't help you get the most out of your workout, so take a rest day and ensure you have the proper form for lifting weights.
15. Strengthens the Cardiovascular System
High-intensity cardio workouts are important for your health, but they can place stress on your heart and blood vessels. This stress can strengthen your cardiovascular system, but too much of it can be harmful. Rest days give your heart a chance to adapt and stabilize.
16. Gauge Progress Better
A rest day allows you to gauge your progress and whether you are getting closer to your health goals. It's also an opportunity to reflect on how you're feeling, and not get trapped in the cycle of working out without enjoying the benefits.
17. Enjoy More Productivity
Training every day can monopolize your time and energy. It can bleed into your work schedule or your social time with friends. Stick to a rest day or two every week, so your creativity and productivity don't dip.
18. Maintain Enthusiasm
A strategically-placed rest day can help you maintain your enthusiasm for exercise. On the other hand, working out for weeks without a break can sour your attitude toward going to the gym and result in you quitting altogether.
19. Good for Nutrient Absorption
Exercising depletes your energy, and recovery requires nutrients like protein and carbohydrates. Rest days give your body some time to absorb nutrients, which contributes to energy restoration and muscle repair.
20. Prevents Plateuing
This might sound counterintuitive, but training too much and without rest can impede your progress. Your body needs time to recover and to become stronger.
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