Do you exercise 3x, 4x, 5x+ each week? Do you get enough rest in between your workouts? Resting your muscles and your body is just as essential as exercising. After your intense workout sessions your body needs time to repair itself. During your workouts, your muscles experience tiny tears. Don’t be alarmed by this because this is essential for muscle strength, development and growth. In order for your body to recover properly, it needs rest.
How do you rest your body if you are working out multiple times a week you might ask?
What you would need to do is to make sure you don’t work the same muscles each day. True enough, you are using most of your muscles when you work out but you usually isolate them. Say for instance, on Mondays you work your legs, Wednesdays you work shoulders and back and on Thursdays you work biceps and triceps. On Wednesday and Thursday you worked your arms but different muscles in your arms. You isolated your workout to a certain primary muscle group. So if you were to work out M-F, be sure to not work your primary muscle group on consecutive days.
Another way to give your body the rest it needs is to strength train muscles every other day and incorporate only cardio on the days in between. For example, strength train or tone on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and do cardio only on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday or Sunday. It all depends on what days you choose to strength train/tone and do cardio.
What will happen if you don’t allow your body to recover properly?
Injury can occur. You can get poor results that can be very discouraging. You can also get burned out. These all hinder progress and healthy maintenance.
What about sleep?
Sleep is also a part of resting. It allows your body to recover from stress. Sleep also allows your muscles to relax as well as have enough energy to tackle the next day that is ahead of you. There have been many studies performed that have yielded 7-9 hours each night as being the ideal amount of time needed. Now we all know that other factors play into us getting the proper amount of sleep. Most of us lead busy lives and at times it seems as if there isn’t enough time in a day to do what we need to do; and it shows in the amount of hours of we get to sleep. It is true that some people can get 7-9 hours of sleep and it might not be good sleep. Some still wake up tired and groggy. This may be due to restless sleep elements such as sleep apnea, severe snoring, muscle cramps, poor circulation, etc. Always always always remember to listen to your body. It will let you know if there is a problem. Get the help that you need so that you can get the rest that you need. Your physician is only a call away if you are really concerned about your inability to get the proper rest due to any of the aforementioned problems as well as others that weren’t mentioned.
Until Next Time,
Indulgenceiskey
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