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I get asked by classes and clients all the time– Is it okay if I work out every day? And the answer is that recovery is very important and often the forgotten variable in your fitness routine.
Overtraining affects our bodies in multiple ways.
If you’re someone who has a hard time taking a rest day, you may think differently after reading this. While I respect your commitment, skipping your recovery is doing more harm than you think.
Six Things That Happen When You Don’t Take A Rest Day
1. You Become Irritable, Moody and Crabby
Overtraining leads to self-critical thinking: do you ever say to yourself, “I’m training my butt off but I’m getting worse, not better!”
Your energy goes down, your body suffers and you fall into an emotional, psychological downward spiral.
YIKES!
Let’s face it, when you are in a constant state of pain and soreness, you are irritable and your threshold for mental stress is decreased.
2. You Get Injured
This is a no-brainer problem from overtraining. Overuse of the muscles, tendons, and ligaments creates a constant state of inflammation in the body and the joints.
The likelihood of injury is increased. And if you aren’t fueling properly after your workouts, you may be losing muscle mass not gaining.
3. Your Endocrine System Fatigues
When you constantly do high-intensity exercise, you go into adrenal fatigue and your body starts overproducing cortisol, exactly the opposite of what you want to happen.
Exercise reduces cortisol until you overdo it. Too much high-intensity exercise with no rest produces too much of that darn cortisol, otherwise known as the fat-storing hormone.
4. Your Sleep Suffers
You may be physically tired but can’t fall asleep because your body is over-stressed.
Growth hormone is responsible for helping to repair our muscle tissue and is produced in the deep REM cycle of sleep; if you are not getting good quality sleep, your muscles aren’t getting a chance to fully repair.
5. Your Immune System is Compromised
Can’t shake that cold? Maybe it’s because you are going too hard and your immune system can take several days to recover just like your muscles.
Increased cortisol, as mentioned above, as well as adrenaline, suppresses the immune system and research shows that 90 minutes of high-intensity exercise can make you more susceptible to illness for up to 72 hours afterward.
6. Your Performance Suffers
Going hard in an intense workout every single day is difficult for anyone.
Not only can you get bored of your routine, but your body can also lose its ability to function at its optimal rate.
Meaning rather than taking a rest day and coming back hard the next day, your performance will suffer in each workout until you give yourself a breather.
Want to steer clear of all these problems?
Well, it’s easy: just take a rest day!
How To Make The Most Of Your Rest Days
1. Massage sore muscles.
After packing in several sweat sessions in a row, you’ll likely have a few sore muscles. Use your rest day to give yourself some needed TLC with an at-home massage.
In addition to relieving tension, massage can help reduce pain, decrease swelling and improve blood circulation to promote the healing of soft-tissue damage, bruising, and muscle fatigue. It also helps improve flexibility and mobility faster, while reducing overall stiffness.
2. Strive for “Active” Recovery
As for taking a recovery day, you don’t have to sit around on your butt all day. Instead, strive for an active recovery day.
Do some gentle yoga, take a walk, or do some stretching.
All of these activities will still give your body the break it needs and actually help to loosen tight muscles and get that lactic acid buildup moving.
3. Hydrate
While hydrating every day is essential, pay special attention to hydrating on your rest day.
It’s one of the best ways to help your body recover and maximize performance in your next workout.
Consider this: in a living, moving body, skeletal muscle is more than 70 percent water which means in order to put healthy, functioning muscle on your body, you need to drink water.
And because muscle burns more calories than fat at rest, when you add more muscle to your body, you burn more calories just going about your daily tasks.
So, if you drink more water, you’ll be better able to increase muscle mass and therefore, burn calories.
So next time you pat yourself on the back for never missing a day of intense exercise, take a chill pill and give yourself a day off. You and your body deserve it.
Chris – I am similar in age to you. Do you recommend more than one rest day per week. Lately, I feel like I need more than 1. Please advise. Thank you!
Hi Teri – you know you’re body best and if it’s telling you to incorporate more rest, then you may need to! I’d recommend still doing “active recovery” on your rest days, however – walking or light yoga!