By the healthiergang writer , medical student.
Rest days
Rest is an essential component of training. A period of non-activity is necessary for the muscle to recover from the damage it has been subjected to. Muscle tissue does not grow when it is trained.
The muscle is not able to hypertrophy efficiently if it is subjected to continuous work. What allows an athlete to improve his abilities, whether these are a better physique or other goals, is the period in which he allows his body to recover.
Taking a day off from workouts after intense exercise is key. One of the models to describe the mechanism that leads the muscle to grow is that of "super compensation". This somewhat describes the time-dependent trend of the condition of the muscle. Super compensation can be described as a sinusoidal curve.
This means that the muscle is at a certain level, training it this level decreases in proportion to the effort it is subjected to and then with the rest it returns to the previous level but slightly strengthened.
The difference between the initial and final level features a slight jump which is just what the muscle has super compensated for. When the muscle is subjected to too much stress, be it too high intensity or too high frequency or a combination of both, the body is unable to cope with the recovery process. This condition can lead to a stagnation of one's progress or even a decline in one's performance.
1. When to Enter The Rest Day?
Many experienced athletes are able to listen to their bodies and know when they need to rest. However, this is not a good reference for any type of athlete. Everyone has a different mentality, there are those who are able to adequately balance training with rest, while those tend to always push themselves to the maximum. For example, if you go to the gym with the intention of doing a light walking session on the treadmill but you end up doing a centometrist run.
A completely opposite example is those who, with the excuse of resting, do little or nothing in the gym and train very rarely. If we take the best successful athletes as a reference point, it can be seen that most of them train with a frequency of several days a week. The days they train give their all and then allow their body to recover from the intense effort to return to the gym stronger than before.
2. What Influences Them?
Surely the frequency of rest days varies according to different variables in your training and lifestyle. Let's start with the way you train. If you train with a medium-low intensity you can also train every day of the week, vice versa if the intensity of the workouts is very high.
Another variable is whether your schedule includes a workout focused on different muscle groups or on the whole body. A card that favors a focus on a specific muscle group allows the following day to train another muscle district as long as the previously taxed one is not involved.
Considering your lifestyle it is important to take into account the quantity and quality of your sleep, if it is integrated with specific products that allow a faster recovery. The type of work that takes place, also the type of diet that is practiced and one's extremely subjective recovery capacities, must also be considered.
3. What to do on rest days?
A rest day does not mean a complete absence of physical activity. In fact, you can do low-intensity exercise or movements that do not involve a large amount of intense work. This means, for example, doing a quarter-hour session of rope jumping, a medium-intensity run, a light form of cardio or working on muscles such as abdominals and calves which can tolerate even a daily workout.
Indicatively, if it is difficult to put on mass it is more recommended to take a day of complete rest while if the goal is to lose fat it certainly helps to accumulate a greater weekly volume of work that allows greater calorie consumption.
Conclusion
Rest is as important a component as training itself and nutrition. It is necessary to prioritize this factor and manage it intelligently based on several factors. Rest can also be done by doing activities with a slight impact on the body.
