Importance of Rest Days



My new goal weight! lol


After speaking to a friend (who will remain nameless :)) today I decided to do a little research on the importance of giving your body a break every once in a while.  I fully believe that your body needs time every once in a while to recover.  I also fully believe that your mind needs a break.

My reasons are:

• You don't want to burn out.
• Your body will get used to the work out and plateau.
• You can hurt yourself.

Now, those are just the reasons I came up with, with no evidence to indicate one way or the other.  So, after searching the good ole' world wide web, I came across this article.

Runners World Article

Their reasons are:

• Prevents overuse injuries
• Restores glycogen stores
• Prevents mental burnout

I know for me personally, I sometimes feel that if I'm not doing things 100% then I'm failing but that's not true.  Last year I was having a lot of hip pain caused from my back.  I was currently working out and doing a lot of the elliptical machine.  That is extremely low impact but it was still causing my pain to flare up.  After talking to my surgeon, he encouraged me to continue to keep working out but the second I felt just the slightest twinge of pain to stop.  He said even if it was only 5 minutes to stop.  5 minutes was better than nothing but 10 minutes certainly wasn't worth hurting myself more.

 

So, my personal opinion, I think you will ultimately do yourself more harm than good if you don't give your body a break.  You have to take care of yourself, first and foremost, otherwise you might just miss a months worth of workouts vs 1 workout a week.