Have you ever gone on vacation without completing a workout for a week and then come back to the gym worried about your performance? Then, you surprise yourself on your return workout and end up crushing it or maybe even hitting a new personal best? That, my friend, is called recovery.
Recovery and rest days are just as important as the actual workout days. The "no days off" culture or the "two a day workout" mentality is a recipe for burnout or worse, injury. At BUILD.POWER.GRIND we proactively seek those who might be overtraining, and ask them to slow it down during our workouts! The culture of – “missing a workout is unacceptable” - should be changed to “missing a rest day is unacceptable”. As far as two a days go, it’s simple- unless you are a professional athlete there is no reason to make your body go through two workouts a day.
Recovery plays a huge role in the process of building the muscle and stamina that you are working so hard to gain. Skipping rest days can actually hold you back from realizing these gains. Muscle growth does not happen during the exercise it happens during rest days and more specifically, when you sleep!
(more on sleep in a future blog)
When you perform an exercise you create micro-tears in your muscle fibers and place significant stress on your nerves, joints, and bones. This is okay if we are recovering properly and not over training. If not you're not recovering properly, then you can trigger an excess release of cortisol (stress hormone) and increase your potential for injury.
Don’t wait until your body makes you stop.
The best step you can take to prevent over training and burnout is to schedule your rest days. We recommend a minimum of 1-2 rest days per week. Often times, it is harder for us to take rest days than to workout. The real mental toughness is being diligent when it comes to taking care of your body, not beating your head into the ground until you are injured.