Rest & Recovery

Have you ever gone on vacation without completing a workout for a week and then come back to the gym worried about your performance only to find yourself curshing the workout 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. We are pro-actively seeking those who might be overtraining in our gym and asking them to slow it down! 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 those rest days can actually hold you back from realizing these gains. Muscle growth does not happen during the exercise it happens during your rest days & more specifically when you sleep! (more on sleep in a future blog)

When you perform an exercise you create tiny tears in your muscle fibers and place significant stress on your nerves, joints, and bones. This is ok if we are recovering properly and not over training. If not, we can trigger an excess release of cortisol, create adrenal insufficiency/adrenal fatigue, and cause hormonal imbalance or chronic injury.

The best step you can take to prevent over training and burnout is to schedule your rest days.

Don’t wait until your body makes you stop.

Schedule those rest days and mitigate those issues. 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.