Rest Days Uncovered

Here's how to leverage your rest days and make the most of them!

📖 3 minute Read

Before diving into the topic, let’s quickly clarify that a rest day doesn’t have to be a day of total and absolute rest. This is a big misconception! Certainly, some will do absolute rest days and thats okay. But in fact doing some other rehabilitation work or really light exercise like walking, might be a good or even better move.
We all know, rest days give us muscle recovery, energy restoration, longterm sustainability in the sense of not overworking and so on and so forth. Now, every rest day will look different for every person. It’ll come down to how you balance your training, what you train and what you do outside of exercise in you day to day life.
But how can you leverage those “less active” days? Here’s how.

When you normally train super hard, those days qualify extremely well for some recovery and injury prevention work. Take a look at:

Stretching and mobility exercises, to help you lose tension, accelerate recovery and prevent injuries.

Some light cardio. Contrary to popular belief, just laying on the couch will do something, yes, but really not much. Actually keeping your body in motion prevents it from going into training completely stiff the next day. Think of it as jumping into ice cold water instead of already being in up to your hips and then submerging.
It also does a great job at clearing fatigue, i.e. post workout soreness, etc. and promotes recovery even further.

Massage therapy to encourage blood flow, also reduce stiffness and break up scar tissue. If you don’t have access to a therapist or professional, a great alternative is to invest into a massage gun. Works great in combination with stretching and mobility!

So as you see, those “less active” days don’t even have to or maybe should be (depending on you) even be that less active. A core principle is to pick what fits you best! For example, let’s say you lifted weights and trained legs and you’re really sore, it might be the better choice to do some massage therapy and stretching, instead of going for a run. As always, find what works best for you and use that to your advantage.
Now you know how to leverage your rest days! See you on Thursday.💪

Sources:
1)https://myacare.com/blog/the-importance-of-rest-days-as-part-of-your-workout-program
2)https://fitbod.me/blog/should-you-do-cardio-on-rest-days/

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